Saudi Arabia: Licence to Blog! · Global Voices
Haifa Alrasheed

The latest announcement from the spokesperson of the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information Abdulrahman Al Hazzaa has created a storm of reactions on social media websites and blogs. The announcement stated that all Saudi Arabian web publishers and online media, including blogs and forums, will need to be officially registered with the government. Both Saudis and non Saudis protested the new law. On Twitter, the protest ran under the hashtag #haza3 – which refers to the ministry official’s last name.
Below are some of the reactions.
In his blog, Crossroads Arabia John Burgess describes the decision as controlling:
Once upon a time, the Saudi Ministry of Culture & Information was able to control what people said and heard through the media. It basically owned it all, if not literally, then through a tight hand on the controls. Newer media has made that level of control impossible, much as that disappoints some.
From Twitter iamsoos felt sorry for her blog:
Others decided to be sarcastic about the whole issue. kabdu says:
and Fouad Alfarhan adds:
and Abdulaziz Fagih suggests a new law:
Moreover, the announcement has gotten many bloggers upset. In her blog, Saudi Women questions Saudi citizen's freedom of speech:
Aren’t our freedoms curbed enough? Am I going to need written permission from my guardian to maintain this blog? Do I need a paper from work too? Do I have to run everything by the ministry before posting? How about if instead of blogging, bloggers wrote the exact same stuff in consecutive Tweets and on Facebook notes, what are they going to do about that? Are we supposed to register our Facebook and Twitter accounts too?
Likewise, Sultan Aljumairy express his disturbance in a very angry blog post:
As a result of the huge storm of reactions, the next day Al-Hazzaa denied that there will be any form of registration required from bloggers and forum owners. He added that the new regulation will only be applied to electronic newspapers.  The ministry claims that the spokesperson Al Hazzaa was misunderstood.
The denial has sparked reactions on new media and its effectiveness on the officials.
Fawaz Saad points how Twitter is now a powerful tool:
While some wondered why the denial came from foreign Press.
Samar Almoossa says:
Finally, Alfarhan suggests a loophole for electronic newspapers: