{"id":28676,"date":"2013-06-05T11:13:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T07:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=28676"},"modified":"2013-06-05T11:13:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T07:13:37","slug":"banned-sites-jordans-new-legislation-takes-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/technology-in-the-middle-east\/banned-sites-jordans-new-legislation-takes-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned Sites: Jordan’s New Legislation Takes Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jordan_flag_website_ban\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And so it begins:\u00a0a ban on Jordanian news websites that have not registered and\/or been licensed by the government\u2019s\u00a0Press and Publications Department:<\/i><\/p>\n

The banning, which went into effect on June 2, came after an Internet-regulation law that passed on August 30 of last year. The law says that sites must register with the Press and Publications Department or risk being banned. Many Jordanian websites held a blackout<\/a>\u00a0last year in protest of the law.<\/p>\n

Now the law has gone into effect.<\/p>\n

In an official memo, published on 7iber<\/a>, the head of Jordan\u2019s Press and Publications Department \u00a0issued orders to the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) to block a list of several hundred websites. According to 7iber: \u201cIn turn, the TRC commissioner has sent the list to the country\u2019s various Internet Service Providers, demanding the blocking be implemented by the end of day, Sunday, June 2nd.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to requiring registration, the new law also holds\u00a0online news sites accountable for the comments left by their readers, prohibiting them from publishing comments that are deemed \u201cirrelevant\u201d or \u201cunrelated\u201d to the article.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly, according to\u00a0Ammon News<\/i><\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>the law \u201conly targets electronic news websites, and will not affect social networking sites or international websites. The government stressed that the law is aimed to organize the sector and provide legal guarantees against slander and unlawful material.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, as the\u00a0Jordan Open Source Association president\u00a0\u00a0Issa Mahasneh noted in a statement<\/a>, \u201cThere are many ways to circumvent the censorship, and we have seen citizens already employing these tools, not to mention that the websites themselves have began using social media to disseminate their news. Decision makers have to realise that Internet censorship is simply unfeasible, and all attempts to do so in other countries have failed.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read the full list of banned sites on 7iber<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: As of June 2nd a published list of news websites have been formally banned in Jordan. What next? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":28679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,148,483,482,63,9],"tags":[1209,16629,105,17392,17393,17394,16,9829,18305,17395,117,16806],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28676"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28682,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28676\/revisions\/28682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}