14 Jan, 2010
A Sad Day for The Internet in Jordan: a gag order
Posted by: BamBam In: a post by BamBam| jordan
- Image by zawtowers via Flickr
A Jordanian court has ruled that Internet sites should adhere to the print & publications(Media) laws that governs the work of print media. As a consequence all the penalties that are extended by this law will be applicable to anyone that is posting anything on the internet.
The reasoning for this stems from the argument that the wording of the print & publications law defines print as ” any publication that is used to document meanings, words or ideas in any method”
The case that opened this topic is of one Ahmad Salameh, former chief of Al-Hilal newspaper and journalist
who claimed that he had been slandered by Ammon and Rum news sites. I didn’t read of any proof provided of what harm was caused to Mr.Salameh other than the words that where used by the sites.
Now I’m sure that those words really hurt his feelings. I feel for him, I really do…
Either way the consequence of this ruling is the following, ready boys and girls of the blogging and internet age?
First of all the list of No’s. If you do any of those you’ll subject to a fine that’s between JOD 15,000 – 25,000:
Anything that goes again national responsibility
Anything that goes against Human rights
Anything the goes against islamic and arabic sensibilities
Anything that would harm the King and the royal Family
Anything concerning the Jordanian armed forces or security apparatus unless otherwise authorized
Anything ridiculing any of the religions or sects recognize by the constitution
Anything that harms the national unity and incites on committing crimes
Anything that ridicules, disses or slanders heads of Arabic, Islamic, or friendly states, or disturbs Jordanian relationships with other countries
Anything that promoted deviancy and corrupts morals
Any False information or gossips that harm public interest, Government institutions or those who work in it.
Any information related to the secret session of the national council
Any non-disclosed government documents
Anything that would shake the confidence people have in the national currency
Second: the head of a publication (i.e. everyone on Web 2.0 is a publisher FYI) is the owner of everything published in their publication. That means that internet sites take responsibility for those damn trolls and it’s really easy to frame someone by just trolling their site.
Third: Anonymous publications are banned, every publication should include the REAL name of it’s author and his address. Avatars, anonymous blogging, guest commentators and anyone else who does not include their address is not allowed. Now think with me how smart it will be to post your home address when commenting on the internet ?
The upside to all of this that the law stipulates that the only thing that Jordan can do to foreign publications that break this law is bar their import to Jordan. so the worst, logically, thing that could happen is that they block your site…Way to go if you want to improve Jordanian IT industry. Practically you might have just maimed a whole sector of IT because everyone will be scared to host their websites locally ! Never Mind about any of the social networking sites like watwet who are now being held responsible for everything any of their users say on their service.
Imagine if Yahoo or Google was held responsible for anything their users will say on their networks, how crippling will that be to innovation?
So thank you so much Mr. Ahmad Salameh for bringing this on us.
The really funny part of this is that today there was another news item about media freedoms which talked about how unfair they were and how they didn’t reflect the reality in the kingdom … OOPS
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