Saudi Arabia has enacted stringent new regulations forcing some bloggers to obtain government licenses and to strong-arm others into registering. In addition, all Saudi news blogs and electronic news sites will now be strictly licensed, required to “include the call to the religion of Islam” and to strictly abide by Islamic sharia law. Effective January 1st 2011 Blogs are classified as “electronic publishing” and news blogs (the term is not explicitly defined in the Saudi law) are now subject to the same legal regulations as newspapers.
The law specifies that under the regulations, any operators of news blogs, mobile phone content creators or operators of news sites in Saudi Arabia have to be Saudi citizens, at least 20 years old and possess a high school degree. That’s not all, detail in the new Saudi regulations is a provision requiring all news bloggers to provide the Saudi Arabian government with detailed information on their hosting company. This could easily allow the Saudi Arabian government to block access to a particular website across domains or to even force hosting companies to take dissidents' websites offline. Source: Fast Compay
This is a ridiculous case of oppression, in an effort to control everything they are now even reaching out to control the internet, that one free means exchange ideas of any one from any background could use to express their thoughts. Is now regulated and no longer free just a tool to push religion.
The scariest part of this is if can be done here it can be done anywhere. Even here in the US there is Senate bill 3480 the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 the bill will allow the president to order internet service providers to disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from another foreign country. Source: Popular Science Feb. 2011 issue.
Does any one have any idea how hard it would be to turn the internet back on? Some financial networks could be out of service for awhile, a long while. That should help us all feel more safe and secure. I know I do.
The internet is not something to be toyed with it’s our one last true breath of freedom we as people have no matter where we come from. It should always be free. Never a tool used by any government for using citizens as your kingdom’s personal P.R. program or making people call to your religion against their will.
Some of you are still upset that the internet was unleashed to the masses. I think it was one of the most significant events in all of history. It has furthered education and communication into a realm some never would have though possible. Sure it has caused its fair amount of trouble but for those of us that respect it and understand how to use it, it has done far more good than bad. It’s a wonderful tool for furthering out own education and understanding of this world. It needs to remain the free world that it was intended to be.
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