Talk about freedom of speech. The Saudi Arabians should be sulking by now. Blogging has been bombarded since few years ago, and now every Tom, Dick, Jane, Lee, Park, and Minami blogs about every ant they see and every bun that they ate. But things aren’t going to be great anymore for citizens of Saudi Arabia. Blogging is going to be like running a business, because you’ll need a license to blog. Ha! The announcement was made by Abdul Rahman Al-Hazaa on behalf of the Saudi Information and Culture Ministry.

The new law will affect all web publishers and is extended to also web blogs and forums. According to Al-Hazaa, the purpose of this rule is not to suppress the media and the right to free speech, but instead, the law is being introduced to reduce the number of libel and defamation charges that are being brought up. Fair enough. Haters’ gonna hate, but the government might be able to do something about that.

Looks like the government really cares about the internet, seeing that they have tried to control VoIP services, and censor some Twitter pages and bloggers that seemed to ‘go against’ the government. Internet is serious business these days. Bold move by the government, as this is the first attempt at regulating online media as a whole.

Of course this has gotten many bloggers upset, and people have taken to Twitter to protest, with the hashtag #haza3 which refers to the Ministry official’s last name. Public protesting is illegal in Saudi Arabia. The regulation has not yet gone into effect and this story is still developing so stay close for updates.

SOURCE via techcrunch