Saudi Arabia has enacted stringent new regulations forcing some bloggers to obtain government licenses and to strongarm 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. The registration and religion requirements are also being coupled with strict restrictions on what topics Saudi bloggers can write on–a development which will essentially give Saudi authorities the right to shut down blogs at their discretion.

The new regulations went into effect on

January 1, 2011. Fast Company previously

reported on the law’s announcement this past autumn, but the

actual reforms enacted were far more punitive than we were earlier led to

believe. The exact specifics of the new regulations were not

previously announced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

What

the new regulations center around is a legal redefinition of almost

all online content created in Saudi Arabia. Blogs are now legally

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. All Saudi Arabia-based news blogs,

internet news sites, “internet sites containing video and audio

materials” and Saudi Area-created mobile phone/smartphone content

will fall under the newspaper rubric as well.

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.

At

least 31% of Saudi Arabia residents do

not possess citizenship; these range from South Asian migrants

living in poor conditions to well-off Western oil workers. All of

them will find their internet rights sharply curtailed as a result of

the new regulations.

The

most telling–and dangerous– 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.

Non-citizens

will still be allowed to blog on non-news topics. However, all Saudi Arabian bloggers–both citizens and non-citizens–are “recommended” to register

with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information. In

addition, blogs are now defined as falling under the Saudi Press and

Publications Law.