Blue Chi’s

The American Bar Association is running a workshop on Cybercrime which I will be attending next week. The workshop will run for a whole week and shall cover, among other topics, online investigations, international implications on law enforcement, and pornography. Our DG is planning to have a group of legal researchers that specialise in technology related law, so hopefully I’ll be a candidate to be sent for all events related to computer and internet law in the future.

I’ll make sure I write some decent posts on the topics covered by this workshop. The workshop will run from the 2nd to the 6th of December and will be held at the Muscat Crown Plaza.

A new artist that I am really interested in is Megan Rochell. She is a new RnB singer signed to Def Jam Records, she has one official single out titled “The One You Need” produced by Rodney Jerkins and featuring Fabolous. Her debut album You, Me and the Radio is due sometime in January 2007 . Watch the video for “The One You Need” here (looks remind me of Brandy):

You can listen to four full songs from her upcoming album at Megan’s official MySpace page. I have heard a sample from her upcoming single “Let Go” and it sounds really hot – something to watch out for!

More info:
Official Website
Fan site

Oman’s most popular online discussion board, Sablat Al Arab (سبلة العرب), has been closed for the last three days while the administration team is being interrogated by the Public Prosecution (الإدعاء العام). The owner of the website, Saeed Al Rashdi, posted a message saying that he has been released from ‘the dark jail cell‘ and that investigations by the Public Prosecution are still taking place.

A new longer message on the main homepage of the Omania.net portal appeared today on a black background thanking all the supporters of the website and stating that the interrogations are still in progress. Saeed Al Rashdi put some links to other Omani forums available on the web and then ended his message saying that ‘Even if Sabla ever disappears one day, the Omani youth can always create another thousand Sablas‘.

Omania.net has always been Oman’s most popular website, new internet users in Oman learn about the Sabla before they get introduced to Google, Yahoo, or even Hotmail. Sablat Al Arab has become an integrated part of the Omani culture and is recognized by the majority of the nation as a significant medium for voicing public opinions and as source of latest happenings in the country. The closure of the Sablat Al Arab is a shock to many and it shall have a variable impact on the daily lives of a great number of people.

Nobody really knows why the administration team of the Sabla is being interrogated, there are no official comments regarding the actual subject of the interrogation as Saeed Al Rasdhi did not disclose those details on his announcements. The Sabla had always had a great amount of controversial topics very critical of high government officials, but nothing out of the ordinary was recently published to have caused the result we currently see.

However, it is rumoured that the action was taken upon the complaint of four (4) separate individuals for defamation in four different topics. [1][2] (A female school teacher, a newspaper CEO, a Wali, and a fourth unknown person).

Many people are just crying and shouting about freedom of speech and freedom of expression, people do not realise that freedom of speech does not mean that you can insult other people, make false accusations or infringe the rights of other people. Omania.net has given Omani people a place to express their sincere opinion to the outer world with no limits. The Sabla is the place to see how the real Omani person walking on the street thinks, how ignorant he is, how envious he is, how greedy, jealous, and racist he is. The Sabla was the trash bin of the Omani culture, no moderation, no regulation, you had to search among loads of crap, loads gossip and stupid nonsense to find a rare occasion of the decent jewel of intellect. I am constantly offended every time I check Omania, there is always this new random post insulting Balushi people and how we should be kicked out of this country, how Indian people are animals, how all believers of other religions are idiots.

I do not think that we will ever really know what happened to Omania.net, it is hard to believe that NOT A SINGLE newspaper in Oman has mentioned anything about Sabla’s closure, as if it just never existed.

It is so sad to realise how reasonable it is to feel insecure…

A joint venture is an agreement between two or more persons (legal or natural) to run a commercial business together under which the rights and obligations of the parties and the method at which profits and losses are to be distributed are governed by the terms of the joint venture. JVs in Oman are not subject to the registration requirements of companies as they do not create a separate legal personality for the group of parties involved the way a company does and other third parties cannot make claims against the joint venture as an single entity. JVs cannot issue transferable shares or bonds.

Joint ventures were never mentioned in the Company Law course I did at uni, and at the first instance, I thought that it was weird to see them mention in the Omani commercial companies law because JVs are not companies but mere contractual agreements between two separate parties to run a certain commercial venture, however, Article 54 of the CCL4/74 states that members of a joint venture shall be liable as if they were partners of a general partnership if a partner induces a third party to contract with one or more of the members of the joint venture by the disclosure of the existence of the joint venture.

A limited partnership is defined as a commercial company which contains at least one regular partner (مفوض) and one limited partner (موصى). The official translation describes the regular partner as a general partner and states that he shall be liable to the full extent of his property for the debts of the partnership. The limited partner on other hand has his liability obviously limited to the share of capital he contributed. A limited partnership needs to be registered at the Commercial Register and must have the suffix ‘Limited Partnership’ (توصية) at the end of its name. All the general rules for regular Partnership apply to Limited partnership except the ones mentioned below.

A general partner has all the properties and powers of a partner of a regular partnership, while a limited partner is not to be involved in the management of the partnership. The liability of a limited partner may be extend to the full extent of his property if he does get involved in the management of the partnership, the decision to do this will depend on important and frequency of his acts and whether any third party relied on his acts in good faith. The law states that mere giving advice or opinion is not to be considered as participation in the management of the partnership.

A point that I currently do not understand is that a general partner, and the same goes for partners of a regular partnership, gets the status of a ‘merchant’ (تاجر) while a limited partner does not. The only implication stated in the law in regard to this says is that a general partner is to be deemed bankrupt upon the bankruptcy of the partnership, while a limited partner does not. [Update: I asked about this, the status of a merchant simply indicates that the person is in a position to run the business, while the other person, that does not have this status, does no managerial work]

The death, ineligibility, bankruptcy of a limited partner does not lead to the dissolution of the partnership unless the memorandum of association says so.

[Limited Partnerships are governed by Part III of the Commercial Companies Law 4/1974]

I recently started reading Omani company law, the forms for carrying business are quite different than those in the UK, I have not read the whole thing yet, but I’ll be writing stuff down as I go through it. Something that I find quite irritating here is that all the Arabic names for all the different vehicles for carrying out business are called ‘something-company’ when in the UK there was a clear distinction between forms that feature a separation of management and ownership (a.k.a. A COMPANY) and forms that do not feature that sort of separation (Partnership). The fact that it is all in Arabic makes it more confusing as I do not see the difference between the meaning of the titles of different company types, eg محاصة and مساهمة, or at other times when I really do not understand the legal meaning of the word, e.g. تضامنية.

Company law in Oman is governed by The Commercial Companies Law 74/4 as amended. I am reading a printed copy published by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and it does not state what amended this law anywhere in the booklet. Our database here shows a small note saying that it has been amended by Law 75/54.

The first type of companies described by the Law is the General Partnerships, which is called in Arabic a شركة تضامنية, and this is a commercial company formed by two or more natural or juristic persons and which aims at practicing business under a certain trade name. The partners of a general partnership shall be jointly and severally liable for the general partnership’s debts to the full extent of their property. (Exact text from the official translation) The words jointly and severally translate into بالتكافل والتضامن and I think that this is where the name of this form of business vehicle comes from to indicate that each partner will be personally liable for the debts of the company severally in addition to their joint liability. This resembles the English form of Partnership, the partnership has been be registered in the Commercial Register, a person can only transfer his share in the partnership if allowed by the memorandum of association and the withdrawal of a partner means the dissolution of the partnership.

Google released yesterday a cool mobile application for accessing all the Gmail features on the go. Gmail has always been accessible directly on mobile phones, it was very quick to load and a bit too simple, lacking access to label folders, archives, etc. The new mobile application brings the whole of Gmail to the mobile platform, there are versions for many different platforms including Nokia. You can view the list of supported models via this link. You can download it directly using your phone from this url, gmail.com/app.

I tried installed it on my Nokia 6230i and it got installed and everything, but IT REFUSED TO CONNECT. I am not sure what the problem is, it triggered the GPRS connection, but it kept on telling to “Subscribe to GPRS first”. I made my GPRS connection permenantly on and made sure that the application is authorised to make an internet connection, but it still did not work.

I then tried it on my Nokia 9500 communicator and it worked perfectly on WiFi, I did not try using GPRS with that one.

Anybody else here uses his phone to check Gmail?

Final Fantasy XII finally got released in the US yesterday. The game scored 9/10 at GameSpot, 9.5/10 at IGN, and 9.5/10 at 1UP.com. You can view other review scores at this link.

Diddy is not my usual cup of tea, I only decided to give his album a shot after seeing the many names of the artists featured on his new album, those include Timbaland, Twista, Nas, Big Boi, Christina Aguilera, Brandy, Keyshia Cole, Nicole, Keri, Avant, Jamie Foxx etc. The album turned out to be nice, I can’t get enough of the track featuring Brandy titled ‘Thought You Said‘ and the one featuring Keri Hilson titled ‘After Love‘.

Brandy’s track reminds of an remix for her classic “Top of the World” of the remixes of her class On Top of the World, a new track by her has recently leaked as well, it looks like Brandy is going to make a come back soon.

The other track I really liked is the song with Keri Hilson, she is originally a songwriter that previously wrote songs for Toni Braxton, Mary J Blige, etc, she is now signed to Timbaland’s new label Mosley Music Group. An awesome track titled “Love Ya” leaked on the web some months ago, but there are no official details on when her debut album or single are coming out.

Back to Press Play, here is the tracklist:

1. Testimonial (Intro)
2. We Gon’ Make It
3. I Am (Interlude)
4. The Future
5. Hold Up
6. Come To Me
7. Tell Me – Featuring Christina Aguilera
8. Wanna Move
9. Diddy Rock
10. Claim My Place (Interlude)
11. Everything I Love
12. Special Feeling
13. Crazy Thang (Interlude)
14. After Love
15. Through The Pain (She Told Me)
16. Thought You Said
17. Last Night
18. Making It Hard
19. Partners For Life

3.5/5