Saudi Arabia Requiring License For Online Media

Beetle B. writes "According to Saudi Arabia's leading English newspaper, Arab News, online newspapers, blogs and forums will now need to register with the Ministry of Information and Culture for licenses to operate, according to new regulations that the ministry announced Saturday it is to introduce. Abdul Aziz Khoja, minister of information and culture, said that the system is 'in line with the development moves that the media sector is witnessing.' He added that the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech and that the ministry is eager to ensure there is transparency. He also said that the rules will be made open to improvement in the future."

Comments

Fairness

[bonch]

Saudi Arabia's neat little version of the Fairness Doctrine. I'm sure the government will stick to its word that there will be no restrictions on free speech. What could possibly go wrong in having governments regulate the internet? Other than governments being the most corrupt organizations on the planet, I mean.

Re:Fairness

[devxo]

What could possibly go wrong in having governments regulate the internet? Other than governments being the most corrupt organizations on the planet, I mean.

Yeah, we should stop them from regulating anything. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Fairness

[Microlith]

The FCC, the same organization that freaked out over Janet Jackson's nipple, wants to regulate the internet.

Your sig shows that you aren't qualified to comment on discussions like this. Fundamental failure to understand issues purely to take an anti-government stance draws into question your willingness to actually discuss issues.

Not to say that Saudi Arabia won't abuse this, they will, but suggesting that the US is trying to "regulate" the internet just shows a complete (and willing) failure to understand the topic.

Re:Fairness

[jameskojiro]

No, we should limit their control over us at every turn in which they attempt to usurp more power for themselves.

No Goverment = Anarachy = Bad

Total Government = Totalitarinism = Bad

Limited Government = A lot better than the above two choices.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't jerk your knees so hard, bro.

Let's wait until the dudes grasp the enormity of the job they just appointed themselves too, and see how they handle the wonderful workload of policing the internet. Even their small corner of it. There will be plenty of time for government-bashing then. I guess some people will probably end up executed because of their blogs, but then I guess people tend to get executed a lot over there. It's a cultural thing, I guess.

AC

Re:Fairness

[Attila Dimedici]

but suggesting that the US is trying to "regulate" the internet just shows a complete (and willing) failure to understand the topic.

Perhaps your definition of regulate is different from mine, but hasn't the FCC introduced "net neutrality" regulations? What, if not the Internet, do those regulations apply to?

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than governments being the most corrupt organizations on the planet, I mean.

It's a good thing, then, that the U.S. doesn't have deep ties with them and is planning to dispose of the despotic regime running the place any day now. Wait a minute...

Re:Fairness

[makubesu]

Governments are the most corrupt organizations on the planet? Yes because everyone knows that big corporations are actually run by angels and bunnies, who would never do anything wrong...

Re:Fairness

[XxtraLarGe]

Limited Government = A lot better than the above two choices.

Sorry, I don't have mod points, and probably won't have any in the near future, so here: +1. :-)

Re:Fairness

[commodore64_love]

>>>Yeah, we should stop them from regulating anything

Strawman argument. He did not say the government should not regulate all things - only that speech should not be regulated. Nor did he say the world is black-and-white, and that one must always assume the extremist viewpoint without nuance..... as you have done.

Re:Fairness

[Microlith]

The carriers, obviously, and how they handle your data. They haven't gone and dictated what content can appear on the internet, or any such nonsense like the GP was trying to imply by citing the "Fairness Doctrine".

Re:Fairness

[HaZardman27]

I'm sure the government will stick to its word that there will be no restrictions on free speech

I'm interested in how they're going to handle this. Maybe in order to obtain a license, you must agree that your forum/blog will only contain content deemed appropriate, thus the government is not technically restricting anyone's free speech, they're only forcing others to do so. It seems that if they had no intentions of censoring, they would have no reason to start this licensing process to begin with, but then I haven't yet RTFA so perhaps it is explained there.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we should stop them from regulating anything. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, "regulations" are usually lobbied for by the industry they're regulating and just serve to protect established companies and hurt their competition. Plus, the regulatory agencies end up being full of executives from the companies they're supposed to be regulating. Also don't forget that corporations are creations of the state that really just serve to separate profit from accountability.

Re:Fairness

[oldspewey]

governments being the most corrupt organizations on the planet

Nor did he say the world is black-and-white

Actually, he pretty much did say the world is black-and-white.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>Yeah, we should stop them from regulating anything

Strawman argument. He did not say the government should not regulate all things - only that speech should not be regulated. Nor did he say the world is black-and-white, and that one must always assume the extremist viewpoint without nuance..... as you have done.

And you should learn what sarcasm is....

Re:Fairness

[Richard Steiner]

Sure, but for what value of $Limited...?

It isn't the idea of limiting government that's usually the issue, but the degree to which the limitation should occur.

Re:Fairness

[Attila Dimedici]

So, regulating the people who provide you with access to the Internet and how they provide you with access to the Internet is not regulating the internet? If that is not regulating the Internet, what exactly would constitute regulating the Internet?

Re:Fairness

[h4rr4r]

No, these are regulations for ISPs, not the internet itself. Regulating the internet would be something like forbidding all mention of former presidents employment by foriegn dignitaries.

Re:Fairness

[vegiVamp]

Any power that any government proposes to assume because it "feels it needs them", "to combat mostly-unspecified public threats" et al should be cause for shooting the requesting politicians in the knee within half an hour of failing to produce founded and quantified justification.

Any power that any government doesn't really want because it's "too complex to administrate" or "a drain on the budget that brings no tangible benefits" but the population will see actual benefit of in the near and/or remote future should be forcibly put upon them.

Yes, I'm aware that that still makes it fuzzy as hell. It all comes down to those seeking power not being supposed to be allowed near it, really.

Re:Fairness

[CannonballHead]

Sarcasm is a rhetorical tool to make a point. Just because he said it sarcastically does not mean he was trying to make a point; it was his underlying point that commodore64 was trying to answer.

Re:Fairness

[Mia'cova]

Well, only the 2nd paragraph in seems block a good number of people from even applying.

"The regulations also specify punishments in case of violations. These include the obligatory publishing of corrections, fines and bans for various time periods, including total bans. Applicants for licenses need to be Saudi, no less than 20 years of age, have high school certificates in the least and documents testifying to their good behavior. Online newspapers also need to employ editors in chief who have been approved by the Ministry of Information and Culture."

Re:Fairness

[NatasRevol]

How is regulating access to the internet realistically different than regulating the internet? Which is why everyone was up in arms over net neutrality.

Re:Fairness

[tolgyesi]

What about a limit where a minority of the population can not overthrow the government, but a majority can. To keep it in this range, a good feedback loop is needed though that I have not seen anywhere in practice.

Re:Fairness

[clarkkent09]

Well the standard libertarian argument is that the government should be limited to protecting citizen's rights. This means protecting them from physical force by others, which can take many forms, including theft, fraud etc. Many legitimate powers of the government then follow: legislature, courts, police, military and various supporting functions such as collecting taxes or finding some other means to fund them. To quote Ayn Rand: "A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objectively defined laws". This is more or less in line with the US constitution (or at least they are both on the same side of the argument - far less government than we currently have). Any powers that we grant our government beyond the above should be viewed with suspicion and avoided if possible.

Re:Fairness

[amicusNYCL]

Corporations do not claim that they aren't in the game exclusively for profit. They don't lie about what their priorities are, it says right in their charters that their number one duty to stockholders is to earn revenue and increase profit and value. People running governments, despite having many of those same inclinations, never admit to that and act like it works some way other than how it actually works. This is why Senators seeking re-election always talk about how bad it is in Washington and how it needs to be changed, expecting us to forget that it was them that made it that way. They say it's terrible, it's corrupt, it's hard to get anything meaningful done, it needs to be changed, and oh, won't you please send me back?

Re:Fairness

[PopeRatzo]

What could possibly go wrong in having governments regulate the internet?

Well, considering that the US government created the internet with taxpayer money using technologies developed at publicly funded institutions, it only seems fair that they should be able to regulate it.

If you look at the history of the internet, I think it can be argued that things really started to go wrong when corporations started staking out claims on it. To the extent that these big corporations will exert increasing control over the internet, I predict that it will become less like world-altering communications revolution that it started out to be, and more like a cross between a shopping mall and cable television. As much as I like streaming video, it's not nearly as important to me as irc or nntp was, back in the day. I would trade streaming video for assurances that anyone can put up a website and they're not going to have their traffic prioritized downward in order to make sure that telcos can maximize their profits.

In my own unscientific polling, it seems like people's desire to see Net Neutrality laws govern the internet goes up if they are old enough to have used the internet in the first decade of its existence. If all you know is Facebook and Hulu, you might not know why anyone's making a fuss about keeping the playing field level. And if the EFF thinks net neutrality is a good thing, that's good enough for me. I'm more inclined to believe their take on it than I am to believe that AT&T or Comcast have my best interest at heart.

Re:Fairness

[jace_d]

Of course you should understand that a government is an entity that takes the power, so the limited of a limited government as time goes by,is a totalitarian government. Mainly because granting more power to a government can be done by law, and no government ever cedes power. It keeps climbing up the ladder slowly, only to come cascading down under revolution. Then the series repeats.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US we have that; it is called the Constitutional Congress or Constitutional Convention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Congress). It can declare the current government null and void and can create a new one to take its place. However, it requires a VERY large majority. 2/3 of the states have to declare that they want it to happen. And, once the members to represent the Convention are seated, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

Re:Fairness

[interkin3tic]

Wait, someone -not- talking in extremes? ... (brain explodes)

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, regulating the people who provide you with access to the Internet and how they provide you with access to the Internet is not regulating the internet? If that is not regulating the Internet, what exactly would constitute regulating the Internet?"

If done how "net neutrality" is suppose to be, then this regulation is to prevent the ISP companies from regulating the content by punishing users from using "unapproved" websites. For instance without the neutrality then an ISP could charge you for the bandwidth you use - but not count the bandwidth used by specific sites that have deals with the ISP. For instance, if they had their own video hosting site, they could waive the bandwidth used on that while charging you for the bandwidth you use on youtube, and/or throttling the bandwidth on those sites. The net result would be less and less use of the competition not because the competition sucks at what they do, but because you won't be able to afford to use it.

When you have large companies doing things like this, it opens the doors for the government to regulate since those big companies can be "persuaded" with fines, laws, etc to cooperate since they very much have something to lose.

Mind you, I vaguely remember the version of "net neutrality" that the FCC was implimenting isn't what net neutrality was intended to be. I'll let someone else clarify that assuming anyone even reads this. :P

Re:Fairness

[Attila Dimedici]

I have a question. How does regulating the company that provides you with access to the Internet differ from regulating the Internet?
If the FCC were to require ISPs to throttle certain types of traffic (say bittorrent), would that not be regulating the Internet? That would be "regulations for the ISPs.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Internet" is not your home PC, or your DSL connection, or your ISP. "The Internet" is the collection of routers that form the network between the collection of servers that hold the content we typically refer to as "The Internet."

Regulating a service provider doesn't affect the internet any more than regulating a plumbing contractor affects the municipal water system.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, someone -not- talking in extremes? ... (brain explodes)

Meh, give the GP a few more layers deep in a thread and you'll quickly learn "limited" means "effectively zero, but somehow magically betterer than anarchy". Happens all the time around here.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

How is regulating access to the internet realistically different than regulating the internet?

The same way that regulating car speeds and whether or not you are allowed to drive a car on a sideway is very different to telling you that some destinations are forbidden and you will be hearing from the police if you visit them in your vehicle.

(Actually I don't have an opinion on this, just saw an opening for a car analogy and BAM, there you go.)

Re:Fairness

[Opportunist]

The government only needs to regulate what needs regulation. Now, what needs regulation? Basically, the government's job is to protect the weak from the powerful. When a policeman protects you from being mugged by someone with a knife, that's one example. Protecting the people from the greed of corporations is another. Even protecting the (les tech-savvy) people from internet fraud might be a point where the government should step in.

I refuse to accept that the government is so weak that it needs to be protected from its citizens. If it is, remove the government and install one that needn't be protected from those it supposedly protects. I don't need a protector that fears me, how should it instil fear in what I need protection from?

Re:Fairness

[BeanThere]

Governments are the most corrupt organizations on the planet? Yes because everyone knows that big corporations are actually run by angels and bunnies, who would never do anything wrong...

Hmm, let's see, governments have been responsible for the Jewish holocaust, Apartheid, both World Wars, the Chinese 'Cultural Revolution', the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan genocide, the Khmer Rouge genocides, the massacre of millions in the Soviet Union. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people dead, countless more lives ruined and harmed, and I haven't even scratched the surface.

What's your list for corporations? Microsoft 'cut off Netscape's air supply'? Enron cooked the books? Cigarette companies had advertisements showing doctors smoking. Companies often lobby for regulation that protects their markets.

I'm sorry, I'm struggling to think of examples that put corporations in anywhere near the same league of evil as governments.

Re:Fairness

[TheSync]

Well, considering that the US government created the internet with taxpayer money using technologies developed at publicly funded institutions, it only seems fair that they should be able to regulate it.

It is true that the US government funded a few early notable networks as well as early research on internetworking protocols.

However angels, venture capital, and shareholders funded the actual NETWORKS that your packets are flowing on today.

Plus there are plenty of RFCs written by employees of private companies (such as RFC 2326 / RTSP or RFC 2328 / OSPF).

The reason the Internet is a success is that many of us fought AGAINST REGULATION in the 1990's.

Re:Fairness

[tepples]

You can't get information into or out of the Internet except through an Internet service provider. So a layer 8 regulation that affects all service providers connected to the Internet is in effect a layer 8 regulation over the Internet.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

These people do not only stop at so called regulating the internet. An incident that happened ~ 2 wks ago sums it up. The only website in the middle east that was mirroring Wikileaks documents and translating them to Arabic was Al-Akhbar newspaper http://www.al-akhbar.com/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/world/middleeast/29beirut.html from Lebanon. The newspaper website was hacked by the Saudi Arabia's people and the website stayed offline for ~ 1 wk. The newspaper returned but without the Wikileaks articles. This newspaper was translating the Wikileaks documents to local language (Arabic) and was exposing the corruption and stupidity of the local leaders.

Although Lebanon still has slightly lax freedom of press laws, but a local newspaper can never stand against dictatorships and regimes that continue to fund radical Islam and fundamentalism.

Re:Fairness

[CrimsonAvenger]

Governments are the most corrupt organizations on the planet? Yes because everyone knows that big corporations are actually run by angels and bunnies, who would never do anything wrong...

Here's a useful item to scale things with:

Apple just passed a Market cap of $300 billion, joining Exxon/Mobil as the one of the only two corporations that large.

The US budget for 2010 was $3550 billion.

Re:Fairness

[Atzanteol]

Yay! I can play false dichotomy too!

Corporations are corrupt you say? That must mean you think *the mob* is a bunch of angels and bunnies!

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not an argument, that's a statement of your doctrine. Libertarian arguments against arms of government such as medical licensing and road-building are much more nuanced and especially laughable.

Re:Fairness

[Exclamation mark!]

Exactly. When statements like these are brought to you by the country that has a ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice and the only country in the world with no public cinemas I think we should all watch our sodium intake on this one.

Re:Fairness

[illumnatLA]

From here on out, all online media coming in to my personal fiefdom (aka my computer) will need to register with my Ministry of Culture (aka my girlfriend) for a license. License fees must be paid immediately. Slashdot... where's my check? .

Re:Fairness

[Nursie]

"What's your list for corporations? Microsoft 'cut off Netscape's air supply'? Enron cooked the books? Cigarette companies had advertisements showing doctors smoking. Companies often lobby for regulation that protects their markets."

Umm, are you retarded?

Corps have poisoned waterways and land with industrial pollutants, destroyed lives and killed people through abusive business practice. And this is before we look back at times when they were unregulated and workers were expected to work unreasonable hours in dangerous conditions for very little pay, often getting maimed or killed by the machinery they were supposed to work with, with no recompense for themselves or their families. Or getting cancer, emphysema or a million and one other 'occupational hazards'

Re:Fairness

[BeanThere]

Umm, are you retarded?

Corps have poisoned waterways and land with industrial pollutants, destroyed lives and killed people through abusive business practice. And this is before we look back at times when they were unregulated and workers were expected to work unreasonable hours in dangerous conditions for very little pay, often getting maimed or killed by the machinery they were supposed to work with, with no recompense for themselves or their families. Or getting cancer, emphysema or a million and one other 'occupational hazards'

Firstly, governments have also poisoned waterways and land with industrial pollutants. Secondly, what's the death toll for on-the-job safety issues in the whole of history, do you truly, HONESTLY think it even remotely approaches the death toll from the government death and destruction? Just my short list above is probably 50 million odd murdered. Third, much government destruction is just deliberate murder for the sake of murder, while on the job deaths were always attempted to be minimized, they were by accident not on purpose. Fourth, in most cases that dangerous work was voluntary (and where it wasn't, government was usually involved). Fifth, corporations were at least improving lives in other ways, such as mining new resources, while ethnic or political slaughtering of millions of people doesn't. Maybe I'm "retarded" but I suggest you re-evaluate whether the facts truly fit your worldview.

Re:Fairness

[Nursie]

Firstly, governments have also poisoned waterways and land with industrial pollutants. Secondly, what's the death toll for on-the-job safety issues in the whole of history, do you truly, HONESTLY think it even remotely approaches the death toll from the government death and destruction?

You'll notice my post doesn't mention governments at all.

on the job deaths were always attempted to be minimized

ROFL. Read about the industrial revolution sometime.

they were by accident not on purpose.

First sensible thing you've had to say...

Fourth, in most cases that dangerous work was voluntary (and where it wasn't, government was usually involved).

Yes, voluntary, with the simple alternative of starving to death of one chooses not to work there!!

Fifth, corporations were at least improving lives in other ways

By the knock on effects of lining the pockets of the owners at the expense of the lives of many workers, sure. And in the democratic world the government also improves lives in a myriad of ways.

Maybe I'm "retarded" but I suggest you re-evaluate whether the facts truly fit your worldview.

What do you know of my worldview from that one post? Fuck all, that's what.

You're retarded because you slam governments for heinous crimes and then say that corporations have done nothing worse (!!) than a little fraud here and there. You clearly have no idea of history and the battles that the people (in the form of government control) have won against abusive business practices which caused death, dismemberment, poverty and misery. Is it as bad as the worst abuses of (usually but not always non-democratic) government? Hell no, but to brush away the history of employment rights in the west (and to ignore child labour etc in other parts of the world) is ignorant in the extreme.

You know what's dangerous? unequal distribution of power, be it in the form of government, the imbalance of power between a company and its workers, or any other forms. Why? Because some humans are scumbags and will harm others for their own gain, out of fear or even just out of spite. Whether it's a politician or a CEO I don't give a rats arse.

Re:Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in that case, Net Neutrality is something that ought to make Libertarians very happy then. In a nutshell, it is a rule that says "if the government isn't allowed to regulate/censor/mess with the internet, then neither may the corporations".

Of course, the corporations aren't happy with that, they want to regulate the internet. Therefore they're trying to re-cast the debate. Strictly speaking, banning regulation is a regulation itself; hence "zomg, the government is trying to introduce regulation", they just forget to mention that it's a regulation to *ban* regulation. :-P

Re:Fairness

[HungryHobo]

and has it ever declare the current government null and void ever? for any reason? has it ever even come close?

Re:Fairness

[HungryHobo]

I've heard that repeated many times yet governments often reduce their military, governments often bring in new laws or interpret old ones in such a way that they tie the hands of other wings of government or otherwise limit their own power.

Governments often tend to take more power gradually but often they're taking it from each other such as in the case of state governments vs federal or they're taking power away from their rivals such as with the different wings of governments like the courts vs the executive without always absorbing the powers in question themselves.

so if you must have governments make sure that wherever there are 2 voices there are soon 200.

Re:Fairness

[PopeRatzo]

The reason the Internet is a success is that many of us fought AGAINST REGULATION in the 1990's.

My point was not about why it's a success (depending on how you measure "success"). It's about why it exists.

If anything can kill it, it will be the companies that are vying for absolute control via prioritizing.

Overall, are you pleased or disappointed at the way the Internet has developed since the early '90s?

Re:Fairness

[Asic Eng]

How does regulating the company that provides you with access to the Internet differ from regulating the Internet?

In differs in the same way as: ensuring that all citizens have the opportunity to vote, versus forbidding certain groups of citizens to vote.

You guys in the US usually don't like to hear this, but large powerful organizations (though useful) have this tendency to reduce the freedom of individuals - it matters not in the slightest if that organization is a government, a corporation or a church.

Re:Fairness

[vgerclover]

I don't see firemen/roads/hospitals in that equation.

Re:Fairness

[Attila Dimedici]

So, you think it is a good idea to give one very large, very pwoerful organization (the government) more power in order to prevent several less powerful, not as large organizations (ISPs) from acquiring power that they might use to reduce the freedom of individuals? People not in the U.S. (and many people in the U.S.) seem to forget that historically the organization most likely to reduce the freedom of individuals is the government.
Your example fails because the organization being regulated and the organization doing the regulation in your example are both the government (possibly two different governmental bodies, but still the government).

Re:Fairness

[Asic Eng]

historically the organization most likely to reduce the freedom of individuals is [...]

The church, sorry. Corporations don't have a very long history yet, so that's probably not the best method of analysis.

I guess you misunderstood the example. I'll try to do better: you could e.g. pass a law to stop workers from being prevented to vote by their employers. Historically companies have sometimes been in a position to exercise extreme control of their employer's life. Imagine a small mining town where everything is owned by the mining company - employees need to buy at the company store, housing is only available in company accommodation etc. A bit like in many Chinese companies today. A company in such a position could easily control how their workers vote. (Not in China, that's unnecessary there.)

In the case of net neutrality you have corporations trying to exert control over freedom of expression on the internet and the government ought to stop that.

As for governments being more powerful than corporations ... that's somewhat doubtful - by now some corporate funding is pretty much required to even run for election, and there are many other ways to bribe elected representatives as well - which corporations regularly do. On top of that - corporations are transnational by now - they are no longer easily controlled by governments.

Re:Fairness

[Attila Dimedici]

If you believe that Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, or any other current ISP are a bigger threat to personal freedom and/or more powerful than the federal government, there is no point in me trying to have a rational discussion with you. For that matter, if you believe that ISPs have a greater interest in exerting control over freedom of expression than the federal government, you are not a rational actor.

Re:Fairness

[Richard Steiner]

Eek! The redcoats are coming!! :-)

Re:Fairness

[Isaac Remuant]

Now compare it to economically weaker countries...

Re:Fairness

[TheSync]

Overall, are you pleased or disappointed at the way the Internet has developed since the early '90s?

Incredibly happy with the way the Internet has developed. My main nits are due to technology directions (such as NAT and multicast routing or lack thereof) that ended up going wrong despite good intentions, not business issues. In terms of government regulation, hands have been kept off, and free speech has ruled beyond my wildest dreams (in most countries, anyway).

In the early 90's, I didn't think I'd ever see a URL on the side of a bus. The first time I saw one, I was astonished.

I remember cold-calling companies for web sites, and they'd tell me "none of our customers would ever use the Internet".

I still find it incredible that I can watch high-resolution, full-frame rate movies in my home over the Net.

Sounds like an MBA

[Anonymous Coward]

He's got the Governmarketing down pretty good. Your speech is totally free, you just need a license to ensure total accountability for your transparent actions. Enjoy your increased accountability, online citizens!

Regime change...

[RightSaidFred99]

They have an oppressive non-democratic monarchy/theocracy, I'm sure the US will be there soon to institute regime change, right? Right?!

Wait, you mean we are best of buddies with those shitbags? Color me surprised.

No laws restricting free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

They just revoke your license when you say something they don't like.

Re:No laws restricting free speech

[BatGnat]

Bingo!

Re:No laws restricting free speech

[elrous0]

Could be worse. If you're a woman, you won't even be able to get a license in the first place.

Re:No laws restricting free speech

[cgfsd]

By revoke, you mean execute the person, correct?

Unclear on the Concept

[eric02138]

This action merely underscores the Saudi Government's technical ignorance of the nature of the Internet.

Re:Unclear on the Concept

[Mashiki]

No they understand it quite well. If you're not broadcasting what they want, you're a threat to the government. Even more so in dictatorial-monarchies and despot ridden hellholes. Can't let the peasants know life is better anywhere but there.

Re:Unclear on the Concept

[elrous0]

To paraphrase Matt Damon in Syriana, most of the Western world is indulging Saudi Arabia's backwards religion and thuggish government only because we know that, the day after the fuckers run out of oil, they'll be thrown right back out into the desert and right back into the "Hillbillies we don't give a shit about" file.

Saudis today, the US about 5 years from now

[Anonymous Coward]

Because terrorists might run them, and we have to make sure there is accountability. We can't have an anarchy on the internet, it's too important!

And we won't use it to restrict political views or leaks of embarrassing information.

At first.

Re:Saudis today, the US about 5 years from now

[5KVGhost]

Maybe. But I suspect you're focusing on one threat while ignoring other dangers.

The consumer-level restrictions are more likely to be justified by the left. Watch for expansions of libel, "hate speech" and "cyber-bullying" restrictions (Hi, Canada!), and "fairness" laws. Because hate, unfairness, bullies, and lies are all bad, you know, and must be banned in order to have a free society.

At the next tier up, it's be the FTC and the FCC divvying up authority over everything from packet shaping decisions on major backbones to determining who is allowed to offer access to whom, and at what price. Oh, and seizing domain names without warning. To stop illegal activity and ensure a level playing field, you understand.

Oh, and emergency powers so one agency or another can shut it all down to save us from the threat of cyber-warfare. Because ISPs and network engineers who make a living in this field don't know anything about that important security stuff.

Re:Saudis today, the US about 5 years from now

[couchslug]

"Because terrorists might run them,"

Because the wrong bunch might run them. KSA is a corrupt monarchy clinging to power only because the House of Saud is so vast.

Have all the freedom of speech you like

[Drakkenmensch]

As long as you don't say anything bad about the government, mmmmmkay?

Free Speech Won't Be Restricted

[Ukab the Great]

You merely need to register with the Ministry of Free Speech. Due to a backlog of requests in Saudi Arabia, your license to speak freely might take twenty years to process.

In Further News...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

This just in from the Ministry of Truth^H^H^H^H^HInformation and Culture: "We have always been at war with Eastasia."

Licensing and Freedom

[BJ_Covert_Action]

When I was growing up my buddy's dad told us a story. He talked about how he and his dad used to go out into the woods and cut firewood, fish, and hunt without a license. They just took these rights for granted. Hell, he even told us about how he shot a buck in some guy's front yard when he was a teenager. That was life back then in the sticks. Anyways, when he was younger, his dad made the comment to him that, when he got older, one would need a license to fish, hunt, and cut firewood. He also predicted that, eventually, you would only be allowed to do these things in certain, designated parts of the wilderness, rather than anywhere the road ended in bush.

Anyways, those predictions have come true, at least here in the California. That always stuck with me and got me thinking. I have ten bucks that says, when I am my roomate's dad's age, you'll need a license to upload most, if not all, content that you want to the internet. You might require a license to legally access the internet at all. You'll be required to get a license to allow you to consume alcohol, if it's not prohibited outright. And you'll need a license to run a wireless networking node, you know, so that you can't set up a shady mesh network that is not policed.

So those are my predictions for the next 20 years. Every time I see a story like this from Saudi Arabia, China, or, hell, even places like Australia with their internet censorship boogeyman that their government keeps bringing up, I just figure that the U.S. will wait a year or two before enacting those same policies here. I'm so sick of this bullshit about living in the land of the free but continually watching our freedoms get sold to the highest bidder. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but mark my words, the internet will be licensed in the U.S. before long.

Oh, one more, if 3D printing becomes cheap and accessible, you'll be required to get a manufacturing license to produce anything. That one will get enacted under the name of that God-foresaken commerce clause.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Joehonkie]

Hell, he even told us about how he shot a buck in some guy's front yard when he was a teenager.

And thanks to him this is why we have to have licenses.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[TaoPhoenix]

Unfortunately I agree with the basic themes of your post, and it only remains in what precise detail it goes. We already have the alcohol license - it's called "Zero Tolerance" ID Carding.

Problem is, looks to me like these stories are accelerating. Sometime soon I wanna' dig in and graph these stories because it's looking like some cross between Battleship, Monopoly, and Bingo.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Angst Badger]

Anyways, when he was younger, his dad made the comment to him that, when he got older, one would need a license to fish, hunt, and cut firewood. He also predicted that, eventually, you would only be allowed to do these things in certain, designated parts of the wilderness, rather than anywhere the road ended in bush.

Some of this is just population growth. Fishing licenses have always struck me as silly, at least for non-commercial fishermen using poles instead of nets. But when it comes to hunting and felling trees, if everyone was allowed unlimited access, we'd run out of trees and deer pretty damn quick, just like we did with the buffalo. Licensing just prevents (or at least delays) the tragedy of the commons.

If there were fewer of us, as their were in our grandparents' day, we could probably go back to having fewer restrictions. Of course, to get there, we'd need to start licensing reproduction.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Kirijini]

I have ten bucks that says, when I am my roomate's dad's age, you'll need a license to upload most, if not all, content that you want to the internet.

Technically, if the content wasn't actually created by you (i.e., you are the author), and if the content is not public domain,* then you *do* need a license - from the owner of the copyright over that content - in order to upload it.

But, I imagine that you're not railing against private ownership and control of resources. Just the conflict between government stewardship of resources and individual liberty.

* I mean "public domain" in the expansive sense - e.g., ideas are public domain, fair uses of content is public domain, etc.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so sick of this bullshit about living in the land of the free but continually watching our freedoms get sold to the highest bidder.

The price of Freedom is eternal vigilance.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[PhysicsPhil]

You're comparing two different things.

Hunting/fishing/wood chopping requires a license because humans have proven themselves pretty adept at hunting/fishing/chopping things to extinction unless artificial controls are present. There's no equivalent problem with the creation and distribution of digital media.

Your fear of excessive regulation is not unreasonable, but the analogy with the protection of physical resources is.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, we wouldn't need licensing if people used common sense.

If you over-hunt, over-fish, or clear too many trees supplies become depleted. The effects impact not only the resources being over used, but anything that depends upon them. Licensing is the most obvious answer because it is hard to tell when someone has taken more than their fair-share or more than the environment can handle, yet it is easy to tell when someone is using those resources without the proper papers. (Got a buck in the back of your truck. No license. Here's the fine.)

The same can be said for public safety. Too many people driving unsafely? Too many people who don't know how to handle a firearm? Tie licensing to training, revoke license when necessary, and make it difficult to pursue those activities without a license.

Like it or not, a lot of people don't know or don't want to use their common sense on the internet. If people didn't use it to break the law (e.g. piracy and hate speech) or to publicly attack others (usually without sound evidence or through making dishonest claims) then licensing/regulation wouldn't be necessary. But people do. So everyone has to live with the consequences.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[perpenso]

Hell, he even told us about how he shot a buck in some guy's front yard when he was a teenager.

And thanks to him this is why we have to have licenses.

And mandatory hunter's safety classes which are a large portion common sense firearms safety, a larger portion informative firearms safety, a small portion ethics and a small portion actually hunting related.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[John Hasler]

> And thanks to him this is why we have to have licenses.

Shooting a deer in someone's front yard is trespass and reckless endangerment. Licenses are irrelevant.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[BJ_Covert_Action]

There was nobody around. The "front yard" was multiple acres large (the advantage of living in the middle of nowhere). There was no fence up. There were no "No Trespassing" signs up. So in reality, no, there was no reckless endangerment. At the time, the trespassing laws were loose enough that it didn't really qualify as trespassing either. He did end up getting a ticket, for discharging a firearm near a residence, or something like that. But that wasn't really a big deal.

I understand the necessity for firearm safety and rational application of hunting skills and tools, but before you go slapping a bunch of legal terms on a simple anecdote, you might want to understand the context of the story first. In the county where he grew up, some forty years ago, the entire police force consisted of a local constable, the sheriff, and a self-proclaimed private investigator. It was a different time in a place remote enough that you might not be all that familiar with the history.

The resident owner's biggest complaint about the whole deal was that he didn't get to shoot the buck himself apparently.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[circletimessquare]

"Hell, he even told us about how he shot a buck in some guy's front yard"

and that's what always bothered me about some people who complain about limits on their freedom. they really are complaining about their "right" to impose on the freedoms of others

the rest of your post is spot on. but no service is done to the cause of freedom when you confuse freedom with your "right" to impose on others

for example: the right to smoke in an office, or a bar, or on the street. what about my right to fresh air? so the real story with smoking, and with you shooting deer in someone else's yard, is less about loss of "freedom", and more about complaining about the loss of license to impose on other people's rights and freedoms

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding the last paragraph, about needing a license to run a 3D printer; Bruce Sterling wrote a short story called Kiosk about that very thing. You can read the story here : http://www.wattpad.com/75756-kiosk-by-bruce-sterling.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

This would, no doubt, be a flawlessly accurate prediciton, if there were no such thing as IPv6.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Thomasje]

If there were fewer of us, as their were in our grandparents' day, we could probably go back to having fewer restrictions. Of course, to get there, we'd need to start licensing reproduction.

The jury is still out on that. In China they went with regulating reproduction, but in Europe and Japan fertility rates are falling on their own. My personal theory is that it is actually possible for entire nations to come to their senses and start behaving responsibly, and those non-enforced low fertility rates could be evidence of that, but of course it remains to be seen whether the current demographic trends will hold long enough to really make a difference.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[scharkalvin]

There is a big difference between licenses for hunting or fishing and using the internet. The first is a regulation to preserve our natural resources, which have been plundered greatly since this country was mostly unknown wilderness. Streams have been over fished, woods over cut, and game over hunted. Think of the buffalo and whales to know what will happen if it goes unchecked. Licensing and registering hunters and fishermen helps enforce limits on harvest to make sure that these resources will be around for our grandchildren. The fees for these licenses should go toward enforcing the laws protecting the environment. I know the gun lobby is against licensing gun owners, but maybe the law could be turned into their favor. Require that a gun owner must pass a test to prove he can safely use a gun, and a marksmanship test to prove he can shoot straight! Maybe the NRA will pick up more members by providing gun classes.

OTOH a license to make use of my 1st amendment rights goes against those rights. I suppose having to suck up to Ma Bell or Comcast is about the equal of a license though.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

There was nobody around. The "front yard" was multiple acres large (the advantage of living in the middle of nowhere). There was no fence up. There were no "No Trespassing" signs up. So in reality, no, there was no reckless endangerment.

No, in reality, he was the problem and the very reason we need training and licenses indicating the holder has had training. In a more civilized land, assuming this was a recreational hunting trip and not a matter of not knowing where he was or some other desperation situation, he would have had the foresight to at least look up a vague notion of whose land it was BEFORE firing lethal weapons at wildlife on it for fun, fences and signs or no.

Face facts: Your buddy's dad was a primitive hick.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[BitZtream]

Fishing licenses have always struck me as silly, at least for non-commercial fishermen using poles instead of nets.

Non-commercial fishing licenses are more or less a tax, as are hunting licenses in places where limits aren't an issue.

I'm happy to pay for a fishing license because that money is then used to stock the lakes I fish in and do research into keeping the areas I fish healthy for me to fish in down the road.

Inland lakes are extremely overfished in the US these days. Florida has been destroyed by tourism from a fishing perspective.

You also have to deal with the people who come out to the lake and use casting nets to catch fish to take home, if what they catch isn't big enough, they just let it die on the shore or dock, of course these guys aren't licensed anyway.

The license fees help to pay people to keep the lakes, rivers and other waterways alive. They pay for some of the boat ramps I launch from. They pay for the educational services and kids fishing trips and outdoors events to educate our children about the damage they can do and how to prevent it.

In short, fishing licenses are just like hunting licenses, they help slow down the damage being done by over population and waste, and I'm really okay with it as a fisherman myself, but that could be because I'm lucky enough to live in an area that cares a lot about its waterways. The last 6 times I've been out on the lake, 4 of those times I saw and conversed with researchers or wardens about the state of the lake and any problems I might have noticed or think of. The $35/year I pay for a fishing license is probably the most productive use of money I ever make ... well, short of buying Apple stock back when they weren't worth crap :)

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[quickgold192]

At least you don't need a license to grow food in your backyard...

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Creepy Crawler]

Which the Zero Tolerance Alcohol Carding always surprised me...

I can go into a grocery and buy fleishmann yeast, distilled water, cane sugar, grape juice, a big jug to put it all in in, and a balloon for a fermentation lock. And out comes wine. Really bad wine, but it is alcoholic.

Or I can, legally, buy all proper beer supplies, starting from speciality yeasts, upper tier hops, malt (either in grain or syrup form), and all the equipment required for amateur beer making. And I can do this at any age... BUT HOW DARE I CONSUME IT IF IM UNDER 21!

Damn those precursors! They need to ban SUGAR!

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, to get there, we'd need to start licensing reproduction.

Or allow hunting humans ...

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Angst Badger]

The jury is still out on that. In China they went with regulating reproduction, but in Europe and Japan fertility rates are falling on their own.

The impression I get is that fertility rates fall with prosperity, as they have done at least from Roman times to the present. If China succeeds in creating general prosperity for its citizens, I wouldn't be surprised if their reproduction regulations become obsolete. US reproductive rates have been declining for decades, too; much of our population growth comes from immigration. It would be interesting to see how closely the population growth rates of the US, Europe, and Japan correlate with their relative wealth disparities.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Angst Badger]

Mod parent up. Point taken, and I stand corrected and informed.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll be required to get a license to allow you to consume alcohol, if it's not prohibited outright

Unenforceable. It is not practical to restrict yeast and sugar. If they ever try to license alcohol, they'll have to license bread too.

They tried this one before. It was impossible.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Steauengeglase]

"and that's what always bothered me about some people who complain about limits on their freedom. they really are complaining about their "right" to impose on the freedoms of others"

INAL and I may be wrong, but my college logic professor would have told me that it is a liberty, not a freedom.

Freedoms are those acts that we do within the law (ie, friend or ties that bind). Liberties are those that we do outside of the law (not specifically illegal, it is simply outside of what is dictated by law, extra-legal perhaps).

The difference may only be semantic, but it has far reaching implications. Pay attention to the kinds of politicians who carefully use those two words. Used correctly, a politician can say something utterly contemptible, but it sounds nice, so no one questions it.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[CrimsonAvenger]

Hell, he even told us about how he shot a buck in some guy's front yard when he was a teenager.

And thanks to him this is why we have to have licenses.

Well, no...

For the most part, hunting licenses are done for two reasons:

1) Once upon a time, deer were rather more limited in number and range than they are now, so the government needed to limit the harvesting of same to prevent their extinction.

2) It takes money to run fish & wildlife departments.

So, working with the hunters (for the most part), the various states instituted licensing of hunters. The license fees paid for the fish & wildlife departments that determined the number of animals that could be killed in any given year with an eye to maintaining/increasing the population available to be hunted.

Net result: we have more deer (and waterfowl, mustn't forget them) than we can deal with. Some states have removed all caps on hunting deer (used to be two per year in some places I've lived, now it's "please shoot at least one a day, so we won't have to pay professionals to kill them in job lots to keep them from starving in winter"), and caps have been increased significantly in every state I've hunted in.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Atzanteol]

That license would have stopped him! Er...

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[BJ_Covert_Action]

No, in reality, he was the problem and the very reason we need training and licenses indicating the holder has had training.

See, the funny thing is, he holds a hunting license to this day. I doubt he would change his behavior all that much. So, your stupid licensing system doesn't appear to be doing much.

In a more civilized land, assuming this was a recreational hunting trip and not a matter of not knowing where he was or some other desperation situation,

It wasn't a civilized land, that was the point of my trying to relate the remoteness of the location. There were, and I would wager still are, some parts of this country where you aren't anywhere near civilization. This happened to be one of those areas. The fact that another fella' decided to build a home in the middle of the forest doesn't make that location civilization. ;)

BEFORE firing lethal weapons at wildlife on it for fun,

It was for food, not for fun. Some folk couldn't always afford a steak at the grocery store you know.

Face facts: Your buddy's dad was a primitive hick.

Oh I get it, you're one of those smug city slicker pansy fucks that think they know a thing or two about how us primitive hicks should live our lives when we purposefully make a point to move the as far away from you as possible. Pro-tip, when your family can't afford meat, and you've been stalking a buck all day through the bush, don't hesitate to pull the trigger even if the deer is eating some other dude's Petunias. Your growling tummy will blame you for not taking the ticket all night long.

Besides, I prefer associating with primitive hicks that understand the concept of context when safety is concerned, rather than piddling around with a smug wanker like yourself who assumes a rigid application of arbitrary rules is the best solution to every situation. Let me guess, you also support keeping marijuana illegal because, well, that's the law, don't you? ;)

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[St.Creed]

The impression I get is that fertility rates fall with prosperity, as they have done at least from Roman times to the present. If China succeeds in creating general prosperity for its citizens, I wouldn't be surprised if their reproduction regulations become obsolete.

In Shanghai and Beijing, they are already turning around and stimulating some couples to produce more kids. Apparently, they see the trend in the cities towards an ageing population. The huge income disparities between country and city will still hold for now, so out of the city I expect things to remain regulated for now. There is a huge difference between cities where adoptions are now becoming more and more common, and girls are little princesses, and the countryside where the un(der)educated still want a son because of how that works with tradition, inheritance and all. Once *that* mechanism is gone (and it is going, make no mistake, but not very fast) the countryside will face the same issues now facing the cities. Except decades later.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[sjames]

At the grocery store, you can buy extracts that are mostly ethanol without any ID check at all.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Red Flayer]

Fishing licenses have always struck me as silly, at least for non-commercial fishermen using poles instead of nets. But when it comes to hunting and felling trees, if everyone was allowed unlimited access, we'd run out of trees and deer pretty damn quick, just like we did with the buffalo.

Fishing is just as bad as hunting and logging in terms of preservation the the resource. I've seen numerous streams, ponds, and lakes fished out completely, to the point where restocking and strict no-fishing rules were required to replenish the stocks. If it weren't for stocking, we wouldn't have ANY trout left in my state.

In my state, fishing license revenue is used to fund fish game & wildlife enforcement. Additionally, if you want to fish for trout, you pay extra to fund the breeding and stocking programs.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[TaoPhoenix]

Exactly. If you want to go to all that work, sure.

That's the difference between Carding and Prohibition - with a 100% ban, people did exactly as you say. But Carding just gets the low-bar cases to show as a politician that You Did Something.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[TaoPhoenix]

SSh! They might start to card those too. Look what happened to Sudafed.

Re:Licensing and Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict in 50 years, all the deer & fish would be near extinction. Rednecks will blame the gubberment for not doing anything to prevent their ancestors from wiping out the populations by overfishing or overhunting.

So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We are so eager to, um, impose absolutely no restrictions at all in a totally open and transparent manner that registration is now mandatory. If it weren't mandatory, we would be not imposing absolutely no restrictions at all, and you would actually be less free! Doesn't it all make perfect sense?

We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

Not because of the environment, but so we stop funding Saudi Arabia. If it weren't for oil, Saudi Arabia would be a few poor camel herders in the desert, and their children would look on their ultraconservative religious views and go "I'm outta here," and ultraconservative Islam would die as a force in this world.

But we are artificially maintaining Saudi Arabia's Wahabbi beliefs every time we fill up our fuel tanks, and Saudi Arabia exports ultraconservative Wahabbism to Pakistan, to absolutely wonderful results, sarcasm clearly intended.

Value systems and cultural believe systems that work in this world create value for their societies and result in rich societies. And those values and beliefs are therefore furthered. Meanwhile, broken value systems and abusive cultural believe systems that don't work in this world result in impoverished suffering societies no one wants to be a part of, and so those societies change to seek out more prosperity. But if your society is sitting upon a giant vat of petroleum, and other societies pay you trillions for that, there's no reason to change, and so you keep these medieval belief systems, because you can afford to do that. We need to make sure Saudi Arabia can't afford to do that anymore.

If Islamic extremism bothers you, then your next automobile purchase should be electric. There's very little you can do in this world as an individual to right horrible complicated wrongs. But here is one clear way you can.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? In that case how do you explain Afganistan? No oil. No wealth. Plenty of fundamentalism and poverty to go around.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[0123456]

Not because of the environment, but so we stop funding Saudi Arabia.

America imports twice as much oil from Canada as Saudi Arabia, and the Chinese will be more than happy to buy any Saudi oil that Americans don't.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

the amount of money people pay to saudi arabia is a function of worldwide demand. and my call to buy electric cars does not apply to only american people

less demand for product x=lower price for product x=less money for supplier of product x

it's just simple economics

do you want fight islamic extremism? buy an electric car. never mind all the other good reasons to do that

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

you didn't notice all the fundamentalist madrassas and mujahedin saudi arabia exports to pakistan and afghanistan?

with whose money is that made possible?

with money that some soccer mom provided when she filled up her minivan

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[serviscope_minor]

Don't forget that the USA gets most of its oil from Canada. Being closer, they're even more dangerous. If you keep buying oil, it will be only a matter of time before they swarm south over the border armed with their all-destroying hockey sticks.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

if the usa stopped buying oil from canada, the price of oil on the world stage would drop. price is a simple function of supply and demand. saudi arabia would get less money

besides, my call to buy electric and not ICE cars is a call to the world, not just the american consumer. anyone who is bothered by islamic extremism can stop funding islamic extremism just by buying an electric car, nevermind all the other good reason why they should be doing that

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Protection of the oil pipelines by making sure that Iran doesn't mess with the Iraqi pipelines. We have large, active military operations on both sides of them.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

But America imports twice as much oil from OPEC as Canada. We use Saudi Arabia as a friendly in OPEC to ensure that our prices don't go up too much, both in OPEC & world wide.

Also, Saudi Arabia has much higher production capacity & reserves. For a stable oil price, we need Saudi Arabia.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[electron sponge]

America imports twice as much oil from Canada

Those Canadians need to be stopped, too, before we're all eating circular bacon and enjoying curling.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Amouth]

Yeah? In that case how do you explain Afganistan? No oil. No wealth. Plenty of fundamentalism and poverty to go around.

except for the extremists who are not poor but are rather controlling the flow of drug money from the poor farmers to the rest of the world.

Afghanistan is poor except for the drug market - then there is a small group making a lot of money.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Beetle B.]

You're going off on a tangent. These regulations are in place not because KSA is a theocracy, but because it is a dictatorship.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Beetle B.]

it's just simple economics

Yes, but your simple economics will also greatly hurt both the US and the Canadian economy.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[BitZtream]

Not because of the environment, but so we stop funding Saudi Arabia. If it weren't for oil, Saudi Arabia would be a few poor camel herders in the desert, and their children would look on their ultraconservative religious views and go "I'm outta here," and ultraconservative Islam would die as a force in this world.

A couple points that should be noted:
40% of US oil is domestic which accounts for almost ALL of the gasoline in our tanks.
Canada is our largest foreign supplier, then Mexico, then ... finally, Saudi Arabia.
If everyone in the US stopped using any crude oil product and we completely stopped importing from Saudia Arabia ... China and India would be happy to suck up the surplus, both of which have economies which are just explosive right now.

So ... if everyone in the US stopped using gasoline completely, the total net effect on Saudi Arabia would be roughly the equivelent daily to what they loose in evaporation ... i.e. They wouldn't notice even a little fucking bit.

Of course, if we stopped using crud oil completely, pretty much everything you own could no longer be made in its current form. You apparently are completely ignorant of the fact that crude oil is used to produce chemicals that are basically used everywhere. Theres plastics, home insulation, fire retardent materials, most of your computer comes from crude or use crude oil products in the manufacturing process.

I love how people think we depend on others for gasoline and have no freaking clue that almost all of our domestically consumed gasoline is also produced domestically.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[blind biker]

America imports twice as much oil from Canada as Saudi Arabia, and the Chinese will be more than happy to buy any Saudi oil that Americans don't.

Oil is a commodity, and it doesn't matter where you buy it from, the price is affected only by the quantity you buy. If the US would stop buying the Canadian oil, there would be some oversupply in the market, and the price would go down. Yes, the Chinese would be very grateful, but the Saudis would not.

Please, do screw this into your heads once and for all: it does NOT matter one iota where a country buys it's oil from. For all intents and purposes, it's one and the same pool.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Toze]

We, and our godless/heathen ways, appreciate American funding of the spread of our beliefs. That global cooling thing you've been hearing about? That's us, exporting international coldism to rogue states.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

You should credit the person who actually wrote that, you know. And yes, you DID get it from someone else. We can tell, because it doesn't appear to have been written by an eighth-grader.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was a monarchy?

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

if you believe that, you have idea what economics is, and so you should stop talking about the subject

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Exclamation mark!]

What do you think they make electric cars out of (or use in the process)? We need to fundamentally shift away from oil before their influence wanes.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[martin-boundary]

less demand for product x=lower price for product x=less money for supplier of product x

it's just simple economics

FAIL. Look up OPEC's history someday. Freshman microeconomics laws don't apply at the worldwide scale.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Beetle B.]

if you believe that, you have idea what economics is, and so you should stop talking about the subject

Thanks for enlightening me.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

enlightenment?

when we stopped using horses and switched to petroleum, was the us and canadian economy hurt? lot of horse raising then

so if we start using CHEAPER electricity, are the economies hurt?

think

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[Beetle B.]

so if we start using CHEAPER electricity, are the economies hurt?

Let me know when you find the magic bottle with cheaper electricity.

Re:We need to buy electric cars

[circletimessquare]

genius: how much does it cost to charge a car? not in the future, right now. look it up. thanks

you really should try to understand the subject before spouting off about it

No Ministry of Truth?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"Ministry of Information and Culture" sounds very wimpy to me. They need a Ministry of Truth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth . That would get those meddling kids on the Internet back into line.

"If it wasn't for those meddling Internet kids ... etc"

Re:No Ministry of Truth?

[Locke2005]

You have committed double-plus ungood crimethink. Please immediately report to the Ministry of Love for reeducation.

Coming Soon

[ThatsNotPudding]

to a [CENSORED] near you!

Seems better than in Hungary, then...

[Anonymous Coward]

...at least judging by this

He added that the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech

Do we believe him?

Unoriginal Lie About Freedom Of Speech.

[purplemecha]

You would think they would have come up with a more original lie, as it is, it's a boring lie. Typical of governments around the world.

"He added that the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech and that the ministry is eager to ensure there is transparency."

So why do I need a license?

[commodore64_love]

"Rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech"

So why do I need to get a license before I can speak on my blog? That alone implies a restriction (no licence - no blog permitted).

Uh...

[Locke2005]

So how does this affect online media hosted _outside_ of Saudi Arabia? Isn't this move just going to drive all bloggers to offshore hosting?

Re:Uh...

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah I'm not sure what the hell they were thinking here O_o

Re:Uh...

[Alsee]

As I read the article, the law applies to the act of publishing itself. (Where "publishing" is pretty much a glorified term for "posting on the internet".) It seems obvious to me that anyone in Saudi Arabia using an offshore host, without registering for a license, would be a criminal in violation of this law.

I wonder if the typical Saudi can hear the same grotesque irony I hear when the Minister of Information said the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech. If not, then maybe it would help if we find an Arabic language edition of the book 1984 and airdrop a million copies all across the Mideast.

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Re:Uh...

[Locke2005]

As opposed to anybody in Saudi Arabia sending content to his cousin in Europe to post to an offshore host? The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Re:Uh...

[Alsee]

As opposed to anybody in Saudi Arabia sending content to his cousin in Europe to post to an offshore host?

Giving the content to someone to publish for you is likely treated no differently from directly doing it yourself. I doubt there's a legal system anywhere on earth that will let you get away with murder simply because you hired someone to pull the trigger for you.

The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Sure. But we're not discussing the technical or practical aspects of the internet. We're discussing a government passing a law to oppress speech. A stupid and/or evil government can and will run around imprisoning people, and it certainly won't care about tricks like sending the content to your cousin to post for you. If catch you they'll lock you up. Such a government only "cares" about the internet's anti-censorship aspects in that it generally just makes them frustrated and more angry and more oppressive attempting to "fix" the problem that their censorship didn't work.

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Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

The sooner they run out of oil the sooner they'll have no choice but to join modern society. Shame I won't live long enough to see this happen.

Re:Oil

[GameboyRMH]

If you're Gen. X or younger, you will.

Re:Oil

[couchslug]

"The sooner they run out of oil the sooner they'll have no choice but to join modern society."

I'd settle for them losing the power that goes with oil and being less able to annoy the civilized world.

Be careful what you write...

[digitaldc]

...or you might be the head of an article without any body.

You're taking too many meds, or not enough...

[GameboyRMH]

Net neutrality is not about regulating the Internet. It's about regulating Internet connections. Your sig is wrong. Your..."understanding" of net neutrality is wrong.

That "net neutrality = fairness doctrine" crap is a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory straight out of Glenn Beck's ass (that's literally where it came from...by "ass" here I mean "the bodily orifice that the most vile waste is excreted from"). By bringing it up, you've obliterated your own credibility on this topic.

Re:You're taking too many meds, or not enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, our government now says that it is not about regulating the internet. But what a lot of people who are against it are worried about is that it is a step towards a government controlled internet. The real debate should be, can we trust the government not to use this to try to leverage more control?

Or more simply, can you trust politicians?

Re:You're taking too many meds, or not enough...

[GameboyRMH]

You can't trust politicians, and you can't trust telcos (or any sufficiently large business), but you can control politicians to some degree.

Can you control a telco? You can vote with your dollars - unsubscribe from the only Internet connection available in your area, or if you're lucky, switch to their only competitor who's no better...and that's about all you can do. Good luck convincing all your neighbors and nearby businesses to do the same. Even assuming there's another option, switching still costs money and often causes downtime, so convincing businesses to vote with their dollars is especially difficult - plus they don't have the same interests as humans in the first place. You can't vote to control the telco unless you own a certain percentage of shares, while any citizen can vote to control a politician. A telco is even less likely than a politician to respond to widespread public outrage. And they won't even toss you a doggie treat once every few years like politicians do around election time.

Control of Internet connections can lead to control of the Internet itself. I'd just rather have a government regulation that says "don't fuck with this connection, keep it a dumb pipe" rather than the telcos having control and fucking with the connection in any way that could potentially make them more money.

Government control is a threat to the Internet, but corporate control by the telcos is a more near-term threat. If we kill corporate control there is still government control to worry about right afterward, that's why I think we'll have to move to a community-controlled Internet infrastructure, but stopping corporate control will buy a little time.

not necessarily

[jDeepbeep]

What is stopping the Saudis (and other oil-rich nations) from simply making heavy investments in coal, for example, and becoming an "energy conglomerate" versus just an "oil magnate." That way, your electric purchases still benefit them.

Re:not necessarily

[circletimessquare]

ummm... what? there's no appreciable coal deposits in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia paying West Virginia for coal isn't exactly a problem. Because the net flow of cash is to West Virginia, not Saudi Arabia. Yes, there's a lot of money floating around in the world of finance, and Saudi Arabia can and does partake of that. But the essential problem is the creation of cash, oodles of it, just for sitting on top of a bathtub full of crude. Not some bond holder skimming off a little extra value for what goes on elsewhere in the world.

Government versus corporation

[MikeRT]

You might want to learn some history there. Corporations are a legal fiction created and backed by government. Every time you look at a truly evil thing that was done and made possible by the scale and legal immunity that individuals in corporations often enjoy, you can thank a government for that.

Re:Government versus corporation

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Stop making sense. If people want to think that corporations get their charters and legal privileges out of a fucking Cracker Jack box, then who are you to spoil their fantasy?

Re:minus 5, troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 12 and what is this?

The rub:

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

Define "media".

Hardly Surprising

[UdoKeir]

The content in Saudi Arabia's domestic mass media is under the control of the government, having to pass through censors before it makes it on air or in print. Furthermore, while the press is said to be privately owned, the editor-in-chief of each newspaper is appointed by the government.

From: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall09/jawad_n/traditionalmedia.html

Traditional media is already under government control. Thousands of people producing online media are less easy to control, so they're only handing out licenses to those individuals they approve of.

Free Speech

[pellik]

Seriously, This will in no way impact their freedom of state endorsed speech.

Or synthesize fuels, or NatGas cars. . .

[JSBiff]

Electric battery-powered cars kind of suck right now. The better solutions (at least for awhile) are probably to either A) Synthesize gas/diesel from coal, using the Fischer-Tropsch process, or start buying Compressed Natural Gas cars, and fuel the cars with CNG (the U.S., at least, has a lot of both coal and natural gas).

If you're worried about carbon emissions, there's also the idea of synthesizing gas/diesel fuel using electricity, water, and CO2. There's a company, which I haven't been able to determine if they're legit yet, called Doty Energy. If the tech is legitimate (and it, at least, doesn't seem to violate any basic laws of physics, so far as I can tell, so that's a good start in the plausibility department).

They claim to have a process to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuel from electricity, water, and CO2. If that's true, we could use nuclear, wind, or solar to produce fuel.

Right now, I favor the Fischer-Tropsch process idea, because CNG requires new cars, and new fueling stations, whereas F-T fuels are the same gas or diesel we already use, so we have distribution infrastructure and cars/trucks/boats that can already use it. Longer term, switching to CNG or electro-synthesized fuels seems like a pretty good idea.

But, I do agree with your basic position - right now, our money being dumped into the Middle East can't be all the helpful. However, it's quite possible that even without oil money, Saudi Arabia wouldn't be much different than it is (except poorer). I mean, look at Rwanda or several other nations where lots of violance and bloodshed, genocides, etc have happened, where despotic, corrupt regimes hold onto power. All it takes to terrorize a population is an army of zealots and a lot of cheap machetes.

Re:Or synthesize fuels, or NatGas cars. . .

[circletimessquare]

yes, Saudi Arabia would probably still be barbaric. but at least it would be poor, its level of prosperity equal to its medieval set of values and beliefs. rather than artificially inflated by oil reserves, which allows them to export Wahabbism to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Without oil in Saudi Arabia, there never would have been a 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden would be a goat herder.

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Goddamn Fairness Doctrine Talking Point

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing like the fairness doctrine. Net neutrality is nothing like the fairness doctrine. Only the Equal Time Rule is anything like the Fairness Doctrine, but no one is talking about that because the fairness doctrine is just some scare tactic talking point to bludgeon opposing viewpoints into submission.

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable and balanced.

License to talk

[javalizard]

I got mine yesterday. it sounds like I should be reporting all of you for talking without a license. After all, I paid $100. The gov't says to just do Google AdSense to make up the fees but, I don't know if i'll have the money even for that if the bankers keep taking it all.

The movie industry chooses the candidates

[tepples]

you can't trust telcos (or any sufficiently large business), but you can control politicians to some degree.

Can you control a telco? You can vote with your dollars - unsubscribe from the only Internet connection available in your area, or if you're lucky, switch to their only competitor who's no better...and that's about all you can do. Good luck convincing all your neighbors and nearby businesses to do the same.

Likewise, can you control a politician? You can vote with your ballot - don't vote, or if you're lucky, switch to the only other candidate who's no better...and that's about all you can do. Good luck convincing all your neighbors and nearby businesses to do the same. In the United States, for example, the news media control what issues and candidates the public cares about, and the movie studios control the news media. As long as this remains the case, elections will continue to have the problem of poor-quality candidates.

any citizen can vote to control a politician

Not if your favored candidate is eliminated before the primary election even reaches your state, or if nobody runs on your pet issue.

Funding someone else's extremism too

[tepples]

anyone who is bothered by islamic extremism can stop funding islamic extremism just by buying an electric car

Then whose extremism am I funding by buying the coal, gas, etc. that my electric power company uses? Or whose extremism am I funding by buying the raw materials for high-density batteries used in electric cars?

Re:Funding someone else's extremism too

[circletimessquare]

if you use thorium powered nuclear reactors, we have domestic reserves. and there's no fundamentalists on the sun

lithium comes from bolivia. evo morales is friendly with hugo chavez, but also lula in brazil, so he's just playing the room, he's not crazy. he wants to help the indigenous populations, being that he is bolivia's first indigenous president

Re:Funding someone else's extremism too

[tepples]

if you use thorium powered nuclear reactor

But if we go "new killer", then the fundies can break in and get the shit to make bombs. Or at least that's what we've been told.

there's no fundamentalists on the sun

But are there fundies in the places where we get raw materials for PV panels? And are there fundies who own large tracts of land on which a huge PV or photothermal array would be installed? (There have to be; otherwise, we wouldn't call them tracts of land.)

Slavery

[assertation]

What do you expect from a country where slavery was legal until the late 60s?

I'm Saudi

[Anonymous Coward]

I dislike all these misinformed posts by people who have never been to the country and have never met anyone from here, I am sure citizens of the US or any other country hate the misinformed posts about their country.

Saudi is a difficult country to understand every country is, please don't post your misinformed rubbish, just because you read a few news articles, a book or two or even if you were based in saudi for a few years, because that is not enough to understand any country, it's varying cultures and politics fully.

The way I see it is that this law -as with a few new laws- is aimed at extremists, there were a few laws put in place that weakens their stranglehold of the country and that is a good thing. I will be honest I haven't read the law itself, just a few articles about it, but seeing the Khoja back it, makes me confident of what I just said.

If you see some programmes on local Saudi TV you will see debates that were unheard of 10 years ago, there has been huge progress, change for the good is coming even it's slow.

and if I wanted to blog I can find ways making myself anonymous ;-)

Re:I'm Saudi

[Anonymous Coward]

sure they are misinformed posts. but you are more misinformed b/c you trust your Lord, al-Saud. al-Saud LOVE to use the excuse of extremism and terrorism to put more control on the people of Arabia. you know there are reformers in jail just b/c they dared criticize the government, let alone al-Saud directly. all there is to know about "saudi" arabia is that is it a corrupt and greedy dictatorship supported by the US and you are their slave b/c you are happy with their metered "progress" and "freedoms" they give you if you are a good boy.

besides, this law will do nothing to "control" "extremist" views.

khal al-saud yinfa3ook.

Defenestration

[conureman]

At some point, the mob will rise up, again; It all depends on who picks up the reins when they hit the furrow.

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