Article 1 of the Saudi Publications Law

This is the definitions article, and it is the key to understanding the rest of the Law, because the meanings given here apply wherever these terms appear in the Law. The most important ones are:

• Circulation: making a printed material available to a number of people in any way, such as distributing it free of charge, offering it for sale, posting it on walls, displaying it in shop windows, on illuminated boards or on road signs, or otherwise. Free distribution therefore also counts as circulation.
• Printed material: any means of expression printed for circulation, whether a word, a drawing, a picture or a sound; a printed material is not limited to paper.
• Press: the profession of editing or publishing press publications, and a journalist is anyone who has taken press editing as a profession, whether primary or secondary.
• Newspaper: any printed material with a fixed title issued periodically or on occasions, at regular or irregular intervals, such as newspapers, magazines and bulletins.
• A printing press is an establishment equipped to print words, sounds, drawings or pictures for the purpose of circulating them, and the printer is the person responsible for it, whether its owner or someone acting in his place.
• Library: a place set up to display books, newspapers or the like for sale or rent.
• An author is a person who prepares scientific, cultural or artistic material for the purpose of circulating it, a publisher is a person who undertakes to issue any scientific, cultural or artistic work for circulation, and a distributor is the intermediary, an individual or a company, between the author or publisher, the distribution points and the beneficiary.
• The Ministry is the Ministry of Media, and the Minister is the Minister of Media.

These definitions are used directly in Article 2, which lists the activities covered by the Law.