3. The System of Licensing The Law includes fairly detailed rules relating to the licensing of press publications – defined as including periodicals, whether daily, weekly or less frequent, and electronic publications – with less stringent rules for specialised publications, news agencies and a host of other entities, described in Article 15(a). According to Article 15(a), “a printing press, a publishing house, a distributing house, a studies and research centre, a public opinion polling centre, a translation house, or a publicity and advertising agency” (hereafter Article 15(a) entities) must submit an application for a licence to the Minister, using the approved form, while Article 15(b) indicates that further details as to the procedure will be stipulated in regulations. According to Articles 17(b) and (c), the Minister will “take a decision” on such an application, provided it meets all of the requirements, within thirty days and the applicant will be notified within another 15 days. Any refusal to issue a licence must be justified. The director of a printing press must keep records of all periodicals printed along with the number of issues, as well as of the titles of all books printed, their authors and the number of copies. Two copies of each non-periodical document printed by the printing press must also be deposited with the PPD (now part of the MC) before being distributed publicly (Article 34). The latter rule is supplemented by Article 35(a), which requires the author or publisher of any book to deposit a copy with the PPD. Finally for Article 15(a) entities, according to Article 41, study and research centres and public opinion polling centres, as well as anyone working for them, may not receive or accept, in relation to their work, any funding from a Jordanian or non-Jordanian source without the approval of the Minister. Breach of the latter rules, in accordance with Article 46(a), shall be punished by a fine of not less than twice the amount received. Article 48 provides that, where an Article 15(a) entity operates without a licence, the Director may close it down and confiscate its products, while those responsible may be punished by a fine of between JD 1,000 and 5,000. According to Article 47(a), distributing material that has been banned may lead to a fine of between JD 500 and 2,000, while breach of any provision of the Law which does not have a specific penalty associated with it may lead to a fine of up to JD 500 (Article 47(b)). In addition to the problems noted above of it being questionable whether it is necessary to provide for special regulatory requirements for these entities at all and the problems with having politically linked actors overseeing such regulation, there are serious questions about the basic licensing system. Although, in practice, it is reportedly relatively easy to Jordan: Analysis of the Press and Publications Law, 1998, as Amended - 9