The Saudi ministry of culture and information has finally issued its long-threatened regulations "to protect society from erroneous practices in electronic publishing".

Along with most Arab regimes, the Saudis are nervously aware that the internet and other forms of electronic communication have opened up a huge gap in their once-solid control of public discourse, and the new rules are a belated but futile attempt to plug it. Not surprisingly, the rules also confirm that the ministry doesn't really understand electronic publishing.

Clause Two of the document defines "electronic publishing" as meaning whatever the ministry wants it to mean. It specifically includes "electronic journalism", websites of "traditional media", forums, blogs, "messages", mailing lists, chat rooms and archives, etc, but also "any other form of electronic publishing that the ministry may choose to add".

The basic aim is to extend the old (and thoroughly discredited) requirement of registration and licensing for traditional media to the new media – and this is where the ministry starts to tie itself in knots. Recognising that total control is not a practical option, it has decreed that while some types of electronic publishing will be subject to compulsory registration, for others the registration will only be  voluntary.

Compulsory registration applies to "electronic journalism", websites "displaying audio and visual material" and the "broadcasting" of "messages".

Voluntary registration applies to blogs, forums, personal websites, mailing lists, electronic archives and chat rooms.

This raises more questions than it answers, and it looks completely unworkable. At what point, for example, does a blog or personal website start to count as "electronic journalism"? Does the compulsory registration kick in if a blogger posts "audio and visual material"? And the rules about "broadcasting" of "messages" raise a whole lot of issues over the use of mobile phones.

Ahmed al-Omran (who blogs as Saudi Jeans) also considers theregistration procedures:

To register, a Saudi citizen must be at least 20 years old with a high school degree or above, and if you plan to launch a so-called "electronic newspaper", the ministry must approve of your editor-in-chief, just like they do for dead tree newspapers. 

The law says the editor is held accountable for all content published on the website, but says nothing readers’ comments. Is the editor also held accountable for those?

Another worrying piece in the law says those who get permission must provide the ministry with the information of their hosting company. We can conclude from this that [the ministry] won’t simply block your website for readers inside the country, but they can also deny access to your website from anywhere by forcing the hosting company to take your site offline altogether. Scary. 

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 2 Jan 2011.