provisions of this Law or any other law, including because they have not obtained a licence if they are required to do so. Pursuant to Article 48, if a news website operates without being registered, the Director may close it down and it may be fined between JD 1,000 and 5,000. As noted above, licensing rules for the print media are not legitimate and even technical registration systems are often problematical. Imposing such rules on websites, or even websites which carry news – which, according to the definition in the Law is a very wide range of websites – is simply not legitimate and this is not practised in democracies. As the special international mandates on freedom of expression stated in their 2011 Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet: Approaches to regulation developed for other means of communication – such as telephony or broadcasting – cannot simply be transferred to the Internet but, rather, need to be specifically designed for it.31 The Media Commission’s proposals for amending the Law include several provisions relating to electronic publications, including that mandatory membership in the JPA should not be required for electronic and news websites, replacing the notion of licensing with registration and limiting to some extent liability of the publication for comments (see below). The special mandates also made it clear that blocking of websites is an extreme measure which should only be applied in very rare cases: Mandatory blocking of entire websites, IP addresses, ports, network protocols or types of uses (such as social networking) is an extreme measure – analogous to banning a newspaper or broadcaster – which can only be justified in accordance with international standards, for example where necessary to protect children against sexual abuse.32 Blocking a website simply for failing to register clearly does not meet these conditions. This is particularly problematical given that blocking is done at the behest of a government official (i.e. rather than a court order). Hundreds of unregistered news websites were blocked in June 2013, and hundreds remain blocked today, alongside nearly 200 that have registered as news websites (and a similar number that have registered as specialised websites which do not need an editor-in-chief). The action to block websites in June attracted international criticism.33 7iber, a Jordanian 31 Adopted 1 June 2011, clause 1(c), note 9. 32 Ibid., clause 3(a). See, for example, Human Rights Watch, note 6 and Centre for Law and Democracy, note 6. See also Centre for Law and Democracy, 7 June 2013, “Jordan: Internet Blocking Orders Violate Freedom of Expression”, available at: http://www.law-democracy.org/live/jordan-internet-blocking-orders-violate-freedom-of- 33 Jordan: Analysis of the Press and Publications Law, 1998, as Amended - 22