Riyadh Abdul Aziz is a blogger interested in the relationship between the web and society who works as a legal researcher for the government of Oman. He is interested in technology, intellectual property, and law. You can e-mail Riyadh at riyadh.aziz@apexmedia.co.om

The future of programming is now at stake as the case of Oracle and Google over the infringing use of some aspects of Java in the Android platform goes through trial.

Some VoIP services have been finally unblocked in Oman, but we do not know why they got unblocked and whether or not the decision to unblock them is permanent.

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are listed as Enemies of the Internet in a recent report published by Reporters Without Borders. UAE on the other hand is listed as a country worthy of being under surveillance due to the deteriorating conditions of freedom on the Internet in the country. Oman is not mentioned at all in this report, but does this mean that our Internet is truly free and open?

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) issued new guidelines for providing public voice services through voice over IP (VoIP) last week. The release of these new guidelines was misunderstood by a number of people in Oman to mean that VoIP services, such as Skype, will finally be unblocked and allowed in Oman. This is unfortunately incorrect and Skype until this moment remains inaccessible.

The new Google privacy policy came into effect on the first of March 2012. This new privacy policy explains what kind of data Google collects from its users, what this data is used for, and the method by which users can remove this data from the Google servers if that data is removable.