online magazine, challenged the amendments in court but lost its case recently and was ordered to pay JD 1,000.34 Furthermore, the rules go well beyond simply requiring websites to obtain a licence, since they must also bring themselves into compliance with all of the rules for press publications. This requires them, among other things, to appoint a responsible editor-in-chief who must be a journalist, have been a member of the JPA for at least four years, work fulltime as a journalist and not work in any other profession (Article 23; see commentary above). As noted above, these sorts of conditions on editors-in-chief are generally inconsistent with international law. However, they are particularly problematical for news websites, many of which operate in an entirely different manner than newspapers. The new rules also set out a number of conditions on content. According to Article 49(c), comments published on websites are considered to be “journalistic material”, thereby engaging the responsibility of the publication as well as its owner and editor-in-chief. At the same time, the author of the comment remains personally liable for it (Article 49(f)). Article 49(d) prohibits the publication of comments if they do not relate to the topic of the news piece, they have not been validated or they represent a breach of the Press and Publications Law or any other law. In accordance with Article 49(e), websites are required to keep records on comments for at least six months, including information about the comment and the individual who posted it. According to UNESCO’s Assessment of Media Development in Jordan: Based on UNESCO’s Media Development Indicators, as of July 2015 there were almost 30 ongoing cases relating to third party comments published on news websites. In addition, many news websites have simply disabled the commenting function to avoid the risk of being held accountable for third party comments.35 The rules on comments are very problematical. First, better practice is not to render websites liable for content posted by third parties. According to the 2011 Joint Declaration of the special mandates: No one who simply provides technical Internet services such as providing access, or searching for, or transmission or caching of information, should be liable for content generated by others, which is disseminated using those services, as long as they do not specifically intervene in that content or refuse to obey a court order to remove that content, where they have the capacity to do so (‘mere conduit principle’).36 expression/. 34 See Committee to Protect Journalists, 22 March 2016, “Mission Journal: Rise in journalist arrests tarnishes Jordan's image as reformist”. Available at: https://cpj.org/blog/2016/03/mission-journal-rise-in-journalistarrests-tarnish.php. 35 Note 7, p. 91. 36 Note 31, clause 2(a). Jordan: Analysis of the Press and Publications Law, 1998, as Amended - 23