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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."
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.
They just revoke your license when you say something they don't like.
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.
"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).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
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.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel