Playing cat and mouse on the internet

Hardline conservatives -- with the cover of Judiciary, but actually related to unofficial security organization which is run by the Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei -- have started a terrible cat and mouse game with two reformist news websites: Emrooz and Rouydad.

First, about two weeks ago, they stormed the building where they thought the websites were being maintained and apparently arrested anyone who was there. Then they found people who had bought their domain names or had been hosting their WebPages on their servers and arrested them as well.

But none of the news sites have stopped operating; they are now transferred to free hosting services such as blogSpot etc. (Fortunately, they can't arrest Evan Williams and other Google/Blogger guys)

The great thing about these services, especially blogspot, is that you can constantly change your address (URL) so as soon as they filter your current address, you'll move it to another one instantly. Unless they block the whole blogger.com and blogspot.com which is not good for their international image, therefore they see it as final solutions.

Apparently, among the eight people who are still being kept in an undisclosed location and haven't been able to contact outside, is the son of Alireza Alavaitabar, a prominent reformist politician and journalist and one of the key members of Jebhe-ye Mosharekat (Participation Front)

I had met him in their office in Summer 2002 when he was working for the not-yet-banned Emrooz. He was a cool guy with a prominent mustache which had given him a sort of charisma. (I'm not still 100% sure that he is the one arrested.)

It strikes me that the stupid hardline security officials who are ordered to shut down the voices of these websites (and probably any other one which is not repeating their own bullshit soon) are unable to understand the difference between a website and a newspaper. So they think by shutting down offices, or servers, they can stop a decentralized network of unknown journalists and activists from raising their voices through the internet.

Although in this case, I'm sure they know who are writing for these news websites, but for any reason they can't arrest him now. I mean they know that prominent reformists (possibly Alavitabar himself, or Tajzadeh and Armin) are behind these sites, but they don't dare arresting them at the moment. Maybe they are trying to collect more evidence about their involvement and act against them soon.

By the way, I really wonder why not a single news source is reporting about these arrests? Aren't these newsworthy enough?