Iran filtered weblogs, update

Two new pieces about Persian weblog: first one was WSJ's editorial abuot the political aspects of weblogs in Iran in terms of freedom of speech (Sorry, I don't have a link since it requires subscription UPDATE: Jeff provided the link. However I've added the piece's full text at the bottom of this post. Hope WSJ lawyers don't mind!); and the second one is by CNN which mainly deals with the new wave of censorship on weblogs in Iran, including my own Persian weblog.

Now as people inside Iran write to me, persianblog.com is unblocked, but blogspot and my domain (hoder.com) are still blocked my most of the ISPs. As I wrote in the Persian weblog, I'm trying to take these steps to unblock my blog: first, I try to contact Pars Online, the big ISP that has blocked them to see if it has received any verbal or written order to block them; then I will write an open letter to the Minister of cummunications and ask him why they've ordered it; and finally I will start an internatinal campaign to protest Iranian government about blocking them.

The Blog Shall Make You Free

Wall Street Journal, Editorial
July 18, 2003

The story of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi, who Iran has finally admitted died from brain injuries sustained when Iranian secret police beat her, made international news this week. More surprising is that Westerners are hearing about Iranian journalist Sina Motallebi, arrested for the crime of blogging.

Technology has played a huge role in modern democracy movements, whether it was faxes during the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, or e-mail during the Russian overthrow of its dictators. Iran, for its part, has discovered blogs. In less than two years an estimated 10,000 blogs have popped up under the very noses of mullahs, mostly written in Persian, and all of them giving Iranians a new free-speech outlet.
Thanks to these blogs, Iranians are gabbing fairly freely about everything from entertainment and poetry to technology and personal diaries. Iranian women (who can take different names online) use blogs to talk about dating, sex and other taboo subjects. And, of course, the blogs are playing a real role in Iran's democracy movement. Bloggers provide firsthand accounts of student protests, political criticism and even attract politicians -- who comment on postings.

Iran's mullahs might be slow but they're catching on. They have started blocking sites they deem subversive (including Voice of America's Persian-language site) and have occasionally shut down student sites and blog-hosting services like persianblog.com. They also decided to make an example of Mr. Motallebi. A journalist for a paper that was shut down by the government, Mr. Motallebi began a blog. His site, while rarely political, was very popular. In April he was arrested on undisclosed charges, and is now awaiting trial.

That Westerners know about Mr. Motallebi is largely the result of another blogging phenomenon: Iranians who run English-language blogs outside of Iran. Pedram Moallemian, born in Iran but now living in California, runs a blog (www.eyeranian.net) and started an online petition to protest Mr. Motallebi's arrest. Hossein Derakhshan, who runs a Iran-focused blog (www.hoder.com) in Canada, helped bring the story to the attention of well-known blogs like InstaPundit and Buzz Machine, which means a lot of Americans now know the story. Mr. Derakhshan has also provided Iranians back home with the technical information to set up blogs.

The Internet won't bring down Iran's dictators. But the blogging phenomenon shows that human freedom and expression will not be denied, and that technology will only continue to make the job of dictators that much harder.