For new and older bloggers wanting to avoid trouble, here are some points to bear in mind when writing your online journal (assuming you live in the UAE):
Things that should not be written:
1. Anything harmful to the internal security of the state
2. Any rumors which may be extremely damaging to the economy
3. False statements or insults made against the ruling families
If you come across an amazing, obviously negative rumour, but have no substantial proof, the best advice is to wait until you see it printed in a local media outlet (Gulf News, 7Days, Khaleej Times) then refer to that story with a link. Anything controversial published in the papers will have been past the eyes of professional editors and media lawyers, saving you the worry.
The worst that could happen if you post the above:
1. Your site will be blocked
2. Questioning by the police
3. A fine
4. A defamation action (by the authorities or a private individual)
You are unlikely to face jail unless the charges are terrorism-related, or a serious slander of the royal family. If common sense and fairness prevail in your blog, you should be quite safe.
20 August, 2005
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9 comments:
The issue of comments against individuals is obviously key. While most people believe that the legal system here is not sufficiently geared up to libel / defamation cases, there are still two outlets for complaints:
1. The police
2. An influential UAE national can always get the point made (I presume) through Immigration or other authorities.
The bottom line on all of this is everybody risks losing the right to work in the UAE, and without a work permit, there's no residency visa etc.
However, are bloggers all held liable for posts made on their site? Even if they are removed, but there has been a period of time where they remained 'live'?
Heh.. no, but I think that risk is borne by SD, the administrator of this blog.
The problem, SD, is that those guidelines are quite clear for the majority of people. Unfortunately, you get your occasional high school kid or freshman college student who do not appreciate the consequences of some of their actions.
Should anything happen, would you be held liable? Possibly, who knows? We are, after all, pushing the envelope here and testing the system and how far it can go. With that come obvious risks.
As you said though, keeping an open mind and writing objectively without resorting to slander and unfounded rumors will keep the blogger on the 'relative' safe side.
Mohamed: Well, anything inappropriate will get deleted instantly here by me or someone else with admin privileges. If you want to admin as well, do let me know. And also please let me know if anything dodgy gets posted or commented - though I get comments auto-emailed to me as well.
Thank you for your trust, but I am not sure I want to play the blogger-police role ;)
I will just be on the fence watching.
just don't be stupid and give anyone your email address/home address/telephone/PO BOX/IP address or anything personally identifiable.
even if you dont break the rules, and you provide suttle humour, you're still going to piss off some over conservative person.
also,
if you're going to be commenting on other peoples blogs, and you want to post a risque comment, use the anonymous feature.
if you're going to be commenting on other peoples blogs, and you want to post a risque comment, use the anonymous feature.
Assuming they're a fellow UAE or Middle Eastern blogger, that is unfair behaviour, because it just dumps on them. If you want to comment about a negative regional issue on an international site, that's ok, because they'll probably be running it from somewhere with free speech. But here, it just means someone is going to have to delete your comment if it's really risque.
thats true, i meant slightly risque though (shoud've said this), enough to offend someone, not to make them choke or have a heart attack.
But their is a big margin IMHO between risque and obscene, anyone with 3 brain cells, of course that leaves out the majority of the UAE, would be suttle enough so that it isnt blatantly obvious.
If someone is posting really really obscene comments, then the police/etisalat would try to find out who they were either by emailing blogger.com and asking for the users IP address, and their is about a 99.999% chance they'd tell the police to go and jump in a lake citing privacy concerns (and if they did get the IP, and this info got out on the web, privacy advocates would have a field day), or going through people's access records, both of these methods would take masses of manpower/money and probably never happen.
you also forgot to mention in the main article religious slander and insults to any govt. dept., the latter of the two is the most cause for concern.
bah, i spelt if wrong yet again, 3 months out of school and im making spelling mistakes.
subtle, not suttle.
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