Asharq Alawsat reports on proposed regulations and law pertaining to Saudi media offered up by the new Minister of Culture & Information, Abdulaziz Khoja. Proposals include privatizing Saudi radio and TV and permitting easier creation of new newspapers. All good… actually, very good!

The focus of the article, however, is a proposal to require the licensing of Saudi websites by the government. That is not at all so good.

There are important bits of information missing from the article that make it difficult to be declarative. Just what is, for example, a ‘Saudi-based website’? Is that one running off servers in the Kingdom? It is one whose owner or users are based in the Kingdom, but are run on, say, Blogger? Will Crossroads Arabia need a license because it has Saudi readers and commenters? Will those commenters require a license?

I’m not about to write a panegyric on the merits of websites, Saudi or other. Some websites can be excellent resources for news and information as well as for personal expression. These are all subjects that should be out of the purview of government license. The concepts of Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Press are understood—if sometimes poorly—in the Kingdom. It has been noted throughout Islamic history that the spirit does not thrive when only government-approved thoughts are permitted. The Islamic world has a history full of tyrants and the bodies of those who sought to thwart them.

Websites can also be very real dangers, though. Jihadi websites, whether used to recruit new ‘martyrs’ or to raise funds for terrorist operations, should not be given free rein by their targets. That’s simply suicidal. The Internet is full, too, of coarse, crude, and demeaning material, from pornography and scenes of obscene violence to games and articles that defame people, ethnicities, and religions.

Licensing websites will not decrease the number of rogue websites, it will only add a layer of bureaucratic red tape and grief to Saudis who want to run websites. The targets of the proposed legislation are already outlaws in that the activities they are promoting are prohibited by existing laws. Is there any reason to believe that one who is willing to violate laws against murder and other terrorist acts is going to stop simply because there’s a new law? The punishments for the proscribe behavior are already sufficiently harsh that ‘operating without a license’ will hardly be much of a deterrent.

Coping with the ugly and morally suspect, however, is not the same issue. Nor is political opposition that steers wide of violence. They are not best controlled by the sledge-hammer this law would represent.

I’m hoping that the Minister floated this idea in response to pressure he is receiving from other quarters. It is not unknown in the world of politics for politicians to propose ‘feel good laws’ that show the politician to be on top of things and reacting to public concerns. That the laws might themselves be objectionable on other grounds, that those laws might be practically unenforceable don’t enter into the discussion much as politics is the real issue.

I’m hoping, too, that the Minister realizes that the negative consequences of the proposed regulation far outweigh the potential positives and lets this issue drift off into some corner, never to be seen again.

Saudi Arabia to Regulate Kingdom-Based Websites
Khaled al Oweigan

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Minister of Culture and Information, Dr. Abdulaziz Khoja revealed Saudi Arabia’s intention to enact laws, regulation, and legislation for newspapers and internet websites. The most important of the proposed legislation is for websites to require official licenses to be granted by a special agency under the purview of the Ministry of Information.

Saudi Arabia will hold its first International Media Conference in Riyadh under the Patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.. During a press conference Dr. Khoja confirmed the need for clear regulation and legislation with regards to websites and online journals as such controls will ensure that everything is run in the correct way. Khoja said “We hope to deter any dangerous [writing] that may be published in these newspapers and websites via this regulation. These issues have forced us to think seriously about enacting laws to regulate publishing and the media in this way.”

The Minster did not hide his concern at some of the things published under aliases or by organizations whose writers have found a fertile ground to writer whatever they wish due to the lack of strict and deterrent regulation and legislation.
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