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01 19th, 2010| 
Not sure if it’s nostalgia to the 80’s and early 90’s era before there was mobile communications, satellite news channels and internet open to the rest of the world, or someone heard the news that Google is pulling out of China due to censorship and thought it would be a good idea if it happened here, but what happened is (which by now everybody should be knowing about it) that the court of cessation in Jordan has come to a decision that “electronic forms of publishing” will be liable under the press and publication law. Yes, the same infamous law that the mainstream journalists are trying to get read of, which will result that the last resort of freedom will be shut down, and people (theoretically) will have no way to express them selves freely.
Will, what happened.. and why. No body knows for sure what are the reasons of such court ruling, one can only speculate, there are two things that happened in online journalism that could be referred to as the main reasons for why such ruling came at this time, aside from the parliamentary void that we have now, which I don’t really think (knowing our beloved parliament) would have made much of a difference:
1. Many news sites came to exist recently, some were objective and what you can describe as an honest reporting, and others, well, were not.. in every sense of the world.
2. On the other hand, online news sites started to report on many issues (e.g. increase of violence, Jordan foreign police) in details, that usually mainstream media don’t get in to, which obviously is a headache the government could do without. Sure there will always be other source of information that people can get their news from (such as satellite channels and foreign press), but it won’t be as much focused on Jordan as Jordanian news sites would.
Regardless of what the reasons may be, the implications of such law if implemented would be sever on Jordan on many levels, when people first heard of this, many immediately started thinking of immigration, to a place where there’s more respect to freedom, you simply can’t take freedom away from the people after they got used to it for so long, it just won’t work, people will either find a way.. or they’ll just simply leave. Strangely, this thing seems to go beyond Jordan, less than a week ago, 20 bloggers were arrested in Egypt on their way pay condolences to victims of sectarian violence, which one incidents of many that happens every now and then in the Arab world, and now seems Kuwait is taking Jordan’s lead and trying to pass a law to monitor blogs. Are we really interested of development in this region or we just don’t get it, people will find a way, work with them, not against them.
So.. let’s be practical:
If the government needs a good way to turn this to something good that would be in the best benefit of Jordan (and the same may go for other countries for the same problem), two things needed to be done:
1. There should be a law handling inaccurate reporting (only! not a vague concepts such as anti-defamation) and copy rights issues (period), either online, offline, or any other form of media that may come in the future.. and other than that, leave it to the people to debate and filter what they like from what they don’t like, there will always be tabloid journalism as in every country, but censorship and a knows-it-all government is not the way. There’s no need of a “press and publication law” or any other forms of law to handle it, only such simple law would be more than enough to regulate freedom of expression with the minimum amount of people rights being violated.
2. There should be a cyber law to handle the technical issues, such as spamming and hacking and things of the sort.
If the government is really looking for what’s in the best interest of the country, then this is the way. Other than that is just a BS that has no place in this age or time. Not only that this law will effect the level of freedom and violate people’s rights, it will also have it’s sever effects in all aspects of life; business, creativity, and even the image of Jordan! due to that fact that when this happens, people will try to get their news from sites publishing from a board, or people with anonymous names that will be nearly impossible to trace, which is no telling what kind of news that may be. And ironically enough, the decision came in a time when the online industry started to flourish. Even Samih Toukan the former CEO of Maktoob (that has been acquired by Yahoo recently) said commenting on a news piece on this issue in the NY Times:
“Jordan to censor websites in NY times what a step backward after we convinced Yahoo to invest in Jordan”.
I mean seriously, I don’t want to be that guy who is always critical of the government, but wasn’t that so much obvious when they drafted this ruling! Most of the new Jordanian online businesses are based on user generated content, not applications, think of the implication of such law on the thing that Jordan should be proud and highly protective of. Well, thank god we still have our oil industry and tourism-friendly culture, if it wasn’t for those two.. wow, who knows what could happen!
Related links:
Press and publication law (Arabic)
Jordan to Censor Websites - NY Times
