New Internet Policy a Match for Iranians

By Kourosh Ziabari

“Due to the legal policies of Islamic Republic of Iran, access to this website is denied…”

For Persian internet users, whose numbers are growing every day, this critical message is very well known and familiar.

Though the high managers and authorities of the Iranian ICT ministry claim that the number of filtered sites is less than one can count on his fingers, access to news portals and agencies is restricted in most of cities by the Ministry of Justice's new legal powers.

Now access to news agencies and global media such as BBC, CNN, international newspapers and also most domestic websites is restricted and Iranian users are still believing that the state’s goal to build the national internet network service up is being realized.

At times, use of anti-filter proxies among Persian users was widespread. But now after the proxies being filtered themselves via tracing software used by the ICT ministry of Iran, at last the helpless users surrendered to the government.

The state of Tehran is alleging roughly that only the pornographic and immoral websites are filtered till now but it is not so hard to discover that is a great lie! Most journalist’s personal blogs, news agencies and global media websites are unavailable due to the political theories of Islamic Republic government and it seems that there is no way to fight and battle against it.

Also recently, the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance announced a new project for the ordering and arranging of personal weblogs and websites. In the project, all website moderators and bloggers are required to register their site information in addition to personal info such as home telephone number, their political experiences and the other private data. Otherwise, at the end of the process, all unregistered websites would be filtered.

To not leave such hostile activities without reply, most Persian bloggers placed a large logo at the top of their pages with the slogan, “I will not REGISTER my web!”

Also most famous Persian bloggers such as Hussein Derakhshan who is named to be the father of Persian blogging or the other reputed journalist and political bloggers, registered numerous subdomains and alternative addresses for their main index pages to find a way for their readers to access the blogs easily. Also using the Bloglet.com services to send the daily updates as the content of mailing newsletters to registered users and readers is the other way that is being used widely by bloggers.

At the moment, we can say there is not a single way to stop censoring websites and blogs in Iran and the mutual struggle between Persian cyberspace as an independent tribune and the government as the hateful side is being continued.

In other words, we can say easily that the government of Tehran converted about 200,000 bloggers to its potential enemy with such faults—making them like a time bomb ready to explode at any moment if motivated.

About the Author

Kourosh Ziabari is a young journalist in Iran, whose own website at one point was filtered by some Iranian internet service providers.

About Letters

Letters from abroad is a new idea at the Independent and an effort to remind our readers that the world at large is very different from our own.