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Photo credits: “Explore Bahrain” by Maryam Abdulghaffar – CC BY 2.0
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Treaty Membership
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Photo credits: “Qatar’s National Day (4) – Explored” by Mohammed Almousawi – CC BY 2.0
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Photo credits: “Antonia Yemen 2001” by lelebella – CC BY 2.0
Privacy on the Internet is more important to us than ever now that all of our photographs, phone numbers and the location of our every single move are all recorded and shared by many web services.Privacy is not considered as a fundamental right in Oman for which each individual has an entitlement to, unlike the freedom of expression, the freedom to practice religion, and many of the other freedoms provided for in the Basic Statute of the State.
There are a few instances where a limited right of privacy is protected by the Omani law such as the guarantee to maintain the confidentiality of communications, the protection of the sanctity of family life from violation by technological means such as camera equipped mobile phones, and the protection against misuse of personal data by institutions regulated by the electronic transactions law.
These limited instances of the protection of privacy are not a substitute for the protection of privacy as a wider concept, which can be violated through electronic and traditional means and without necessarily disclosing that information to the public.
Private information is now extremely valuable to companies as their knowledge of our habits and personal details can help them target potential consumers. Many companies now try to collect as much personal information about us as they can, and this puts us at a risk when they collect this information without our knowledge or when they do not handle this information with care while dealing with extremely sensitive information about us such as our health and medical conditions, family life, and business transactions.
Attempting to draw a clear scope for the right of privacy is not as easy as it sounds due to the fact that this right needs to be balanced against the security interests of the state in acquiring information in order to avert crimes. These interests are legitimate, but they are not always applied reasonably. For example, the telecommunication law in Oman prohibits the use of any encryption method without acquiring the prior permission of the minister for that use. This provision is unrealistic and has no practical value because we use encryption on the Internet to do many simple daily tasks such as checking our online banking account, paying our bills, and even sending messages using Gmail.
There are some legislative issues in the area of privacy in Oman, but there is little that local legislation here can do to mitigate the risks of the violation of privacy on the Internet due to the fact that the majority of web businesses do not have any presence in Oman and therefore will not be bound by the laws of this country.
We as individuals must take precaution when giving out our information on the Internet. We need to familiarise ourselves with the privacy aspects of the services that we use and must be aware of how much information we are sharing because it is impossible to retract information we share publicly once it gets on the Internet.
The UK government has announced its plans to widen the scope of copyright exceptions in its law, to allow the public to copy more works without the need to acquire the permission of the author.The copyright law is not meant to provide authors with an absolute right over their creations, but it aims to provide them with sufficient rights so they have an incentive to create new works, and have these rights balanced against society’s right for fair access to these works.
A lot of people around the world believe that copyright law has lost touch with the reality of how the public consumes copyright works. However, due to the influence major corporations have over many of the legislative systems around the world, the copyright law has continued attempting to impose more and more restrictions on how copyright works can be used by the public, even if these rights are rarely respected.
In a move uncommon nowadays, the UK government has announced that it plans to issue a new legislation that will reduce the scope of protection of copyright law. This will provide users with more rights for using some copyright works, without the need to acquire the prior permission of the owner of the copyright.
The UK copyright law already has some exceptions to copyright protection, such as those that allow users to copy some works for criticism and review, and those that allow copying for the purpose of private non-commercial research.
The new copyright exceptions to be introduced by the UK will allow copying for a number of different purposes. One of these exceptions will allow the owner of a legitimate copy of copyright work to make additional copies of that work, to be able to use the work on a different device.
Another exception will allow copying a work to create a parody or caricature. Some of the new exceptions will expand the scope of existing rights such as the exception for private study and research and the exception for reporting news and current events.
Some of the ‘soon to be legal’ acts emphasise how ridiculous the copyright law currently is in some instances, such as the fact that an explicit exception has to be included in the law to allow a user to rip off music from a CD he legally bought, to play that music on a portable music player. Creating such a copy without permission from the author is technically an infringement of the current copyright law, even though nobody ever got prosecuted for it.
The introduction of these new exceptions is a positive move for the development of copyright law in the UK, but it will not solve many of the other more serious problems with the copyright law. These include the fact that protection is granted automatically to all works created by anyone, regardless of whether or not the author desires to have that protection, the fact that the protection lasts for an unreasonable amount of time, and the unnecessary and ineffective protection of technological protection measures applied to copyright works.
It is also worth noting that legislative changes to the UK copyright law will still not provide the UK with a general copyright exception similar to the fair use principle found in the US. The US fair use exception is a general exception that allows the judge to look at the nature of the copying instance and then decide, based on its facts, whether or not the usage is fair. The UK exceptions will not allow the judge to excuse an instance of copying, even if it is fair, if that specific use is not explicitly mentioned in the law.
Even with all the limitations of the soon to be introduced exceptions in the UK, the fact that copyright law is being changed to become less restrictive is a good development for copyright law. Unfortunately, the law in Oman is similar to the UK in its restrictive nature and does not, in fact, still allow for many of these exceptions proposed by the UK government. It would be helpful if we can learn from their experience when we consider updating the law here.
Eight months have passed since the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) has decided to unblock many of the Voice over IP (VoIP) services widely available on the Internet, but Skype still remains blocked with no official statement clarifying the current status of VoIP in Oman.
VoIP is not technically a banned service in Oman, but the TRA requires any company that wishes to provide such a service in the country to apply for a licence from the TRA and abide by all the rules and regulations of the telecom law. There are some companies which are licensed by the TRA to provide VoIP service in Oman, such as Nawras, which provides a number of dial-in services for making VoIP calls to certain countries.
The TRA had traditionally blocked all forms of VoIP services from being accessed by users of the Internet in Oman. The most famous of these services is Skype. The TRA argues that it will not allow Skype to operate without acquiring a license in Oman to protect many public interests such as the protection of consumers, the support of the employment of Omanis, the collection of tax and the enforcement of the state security requirements.
These justifications cannot be taken seriously because the same arguments can be made against all other forms of online businesses and communication tools, such as Amazon or Gmail, but nothing other than VoIP had been categorically blocked. It is widely believed that the decision to block Skype has been made to protect the financial interests of local ISPs who make a lot of profits by charging their users for international phone calls.
Earlier this year, the TRA ordered telecom companies to unblock certain VoIP services such as Viber, Google Talk, FaceTime, and others, but not Skype. There was no legal change in the regulation of VoIP in Oman, and the TRA has not made any official statement as to why it has chosen to unblock these specific services.
Rumour has it that the TRA is considering removing the technical restrictions for blocking access to VoIP operated by foreign companies and that it is testing the impact of the allowed services before unlocking everything else. However, more than half a year has passed now and an official statement is yet to be seen.
The topic of VoIP regulation has recently come back to the forefront as Microsoft has decided to discontinue its Live Messenger and integrate the chat functionality of it in Skype. Live Messenger is a popular application in Oman and the inability of people to communicate with their work partners, family and friends using Messenger could be an issue to these people.
The TRA needs to make up its mind on the VoIP matter. Many parents now rely on Viber to communicate with their children who are studying abroad. It is also not unlikely for some small and medium enterprises to consider using the currently available VoIP services to facilitate their business operations. Having these services blocked again can easily devastate many.
UAE passed a new cybercrime law that has been criticised for its apparent attempt to restrict freedom of expression, but this law also happens to introduce a new mechanism to limit the liability of webmasters for content published by third parties.
The first cybercrime law in UAE was passed in 2006 which criminalised a lot of acts on the Internet relating to fraud and the misuse of technology. The new law that was passed early this month introduced many new offences that relate to the use of technology to organise unauthorised protests, receive unauthorised donations, attempt to overthrow the government, and mock the rulers of UAE. The new law also provides for many other general offences such as those relating to terrorism, violation of privacy, and the trafficking of drugs or persons.
The reaction to the new law has been mostly negative as many see it as an attempt to restrict the freedom of expression in the UAE to a new level. I believe that these claims are exaggerated because the new law did not in reality add any new offences in relation to freedom of expression that did not already exist in a general form in other legislations in UAE. For example, attempting to overthrow the government has always been an offence in UAE whether technology was used in that attempt or not. The new law is merely a confirmation of existing principles.
On the other hand, a new interesting feature of the new UAE law which has not yet been highlighted is a provision specifying that a webmaster will be liable for any illegal content that he is aware of on his website. However, if the webmaster is not aware of such content, he would be liable for it only if he does not remove that content upon receiving a notification from the authorities informing him of the illegality of that content.
This is a good step for providing webmasters, such as owners of forums and bloggers, with some comfort that they will not be held responsible for the comments published by users of their website. The authorities previously had an expectation that a webmaster should be held liable for every single comment posted on his website, whether or not made by him, as he is the owner of the website and is in a position to moderate these comments.
This was an unrealistic approach because moderators of popular websites cannot practically pre-approve every single comment published on their website and it is unreasonable to expect a webmaster to be able to make a legal assessment of the content published by others on his website to decide whether or not that content violates any law.
The fact that a webmaster will not be held liable for content he is not aware of will of course not change his liability for any content that he publishes himself regardless of whether or not he knows that this content was illegal. The provision also does not change the position of the liability of the person who posts illegal content on the website of another person. The webmaster of a website will also be reasonably expected to assist the authorities in identifying the offending person upon receiving such an order from a competent authority.
This new provision is a great improvement for webmasters, but it is still far from perfect as the authorities can abuse this system to order a webmaster to remove any content from his website which may not necessarily be illegal, and the webmaster is likely to abide by their notice to escape any potential liability.
Even with the opportunity of abuse, this new addition is better than the current position in many other Gulf countries, including Oman, where the law seems to suggest that a webmaster is strictly liable for all content on his website whether or not he was aware of it.
Innocence of Muslims is a ridiculous film that is probably made with no objective other than offending Muslims worldwide. However, blocking its access in Oman serves no purpose at all. The film has caused riots in many countries as it mocked Prophet Mohammed and portrayed him in a manner that offended Muslims all around the world.
Violent riots took place in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and the American Ambassador to Libya was killed in attacks made by fanatics angered by the film. There is no doubt that the controversial film is offensive, but there is still no justification for the violence or the death of innocent diplomats as a response to the film. A number of Muslim countries, including Oman, decided to attempt blocking access to the YouTube video showing the film from within each of these countries.
I do not understand what the purpose is behind blocking this video. It cannot logically be an attempt to make sure that the people in Oman do not see the video and therefore not get offended and take violent actions in response. It is impossible to stop the public from watching the video because it has been uploaded to a million websites already and there is no way to block each individual link to the video. People have already downloaded the video and are sharing it on Whatsapp, Facebook, and many other services for sharing content. People are not going out of their way to watch the video because they want to be offended.
They are doing this because they want to know what the fuss is all about and they want to be able to make the decision for themselves on whether or not the video is in fact offensive. Blocking access to the video in Oman does not achieve anything, instead it mistakenly portrays Oman as a backward, volatile country that cannot tolerate a lame video made by a hateful person.
The irritating part about this story is that the video in question is a mediocre production that could be mistaken for a homemade video by a high school student and should not be worth the time we spend discussing it. Blocking access to such a video could be a start of a new trend where ISPs would feel that they have to block any video made by any person making fun of Islam or the Prophet.
Protecting the sanctity of religion is important, but freedom of expression is an important pillar of society as well. We should teach our people that we can be tolerant instead of ‘protecting’ them from the opinions of other people. We need to learn that it is okay for others to have different points of view, and we must have the right to access information and make our own judgements as to what is appropriate and what is not, because censorship surely is not the answer.