Internet in Danger in Iran

Q. Why the Weblog Festival in Iran is important?

A. Because it has a big government organization backing it which spends a big amount of money on these kind of events.

There are workshops, roundtables, and exhibitions planed for it and on their website they have interviewed the IT Minister and some other officials. I'm sure it attracts a lot of people and attention.

But the thing is that while the judiciary has started a wide-spread crack-down on many medium or small sized ISPs, and given their religious and political concerns, I guess the whole IT industry in Iran is in real danger in short-term. (I really don't know why the recent crack-down has been ignored by the western media)

The hardliners are very sensative to radical anti-religious and anti-government websites. Also the student protest anniversary is to come in July 9th and like every year, they are going to fully control or close every possible channel of incoming information to Iran again, say Satellite TVs, Internet access, VoIP phones, etc. They usually become paranoid at this time of the year.

So the blogging festival is important in that it helps correct the bad image that the computer-illiterate judiciary officials and other religious groups have about the Internet. (Internet in their eyes is nothing but sex + radical anti-religious activism + espionage)

Many, among IT professionals and journalists, are seriously worried about the fate of the Internet in Iran, especially since the hardliners are coming to power.