Omani blogger Omar Almamari is reporting that an unspecified number of “internet activists” have been detained by government security services and forced to sign pledges of loyalty swearing that they will stop disseminating defamatory statements on blogs and online forums.  In the op-ed, which was originally published on the Arab Media Community’s website, Almamari criticizes the infamous Article 61 of Oman’s Telecommunications Act, which provides justification for censorship and harassment of journalists and forum moderators like Ali al-Zwaidi, who was prosecuted this spring.  That story and others like it are too sensitive to get printed in Oman: We only find out about them through foreign media reports, which the intrepid muckraker(s) over at Muscat Confidential have compiled here.

I wanted to find an English translation of Almamari’s article to publish here, but when I tried to access the English version of the Arab Media Community’s site, I was redirected to this friendly Omantel bulletin:

Avert your eyes: Omantel knows best

I’m pretty sure that the Arab Media Community is exactly what it sounds like: a group of freelance journalists who publish news analysis and commentary to an online forum.  But according to the Omantel bulletin, I just stumbled upon a cesspool of pornographic hackers.  I do appreciate Omantel’s chivalrous efforts to shield me from obscene material, but it’s obvious that the definition of objectionable content is absurdly overbroad.  Article 61 criminalizes all web content that could be construed as “contrary to public order and morality.” This is where I would normally launch into a civil libertarian diatribe, but I can’t get blacklisted by Omantel because my grandparents read this blog — and I’ll have to explain to them why the local telecom giant thinks my blog is a virus factory and/or porn site.

For now, I’ll just say that the internet is amazingly resistant to regulation — so punishing individual bloggers can only put a temporary damper on dissent.