January 6, 2005
No blogging, no social networking
Friends in Iran, journalists and technicians, are saying that judiciary officials have ordered all major ISP to filter all blogging services including PersianBlog, BlogSpot, Blogger, BlogSky, and even BlogRolling.
They have also ordered to filter Orkut, Yahoo Personals and some other popular dating and social networking websites.
For ISPs this means a big loss, since much of their recent sales have been because of people writing and reading blogs and surfing Orkut. So the government is effectively eliminating small and private ISPs by bankrupting them, whiteout paying a political price for it.
As I had said before, I think we can adopt a three-level strategy for fighting Net censorship in Iran:
- Technical: using proxies, email, P2P applications, etc.
- Civil: creating consumer associations for internet users and organizing effective campaigns through them against the censorship.
- Legal: filing local or even international lawsuits against the government and related organizations or officials for violating the constitution of Iran and international law.
While still relevant and potentially effective, I believe they are not enough now.
The EU and the US must seriously consider demanding for an end to the Internet censorship during their negotiations with the Iranian government.
We also have to look for ways to beam Internet direcly to Iranian users in Tehran and other big cities via cheap satellite connections.
I call this "open access" and it's actually one of the projects a few friends and I are working on: to use millions of satellite dishes in Iranian houses to access the net, without interference of local ISPs.
UPDATES
- As usual, ParsOnline has been the first ISP to obey Telecom, followed by Datak, based on comments in Sobhaneh.
- Joi wonders about Typepad and LiveJournal. Actually, they have almost no user in Iran. Typepad for it requires credit card -- which doesn't exist in Iran -- and LiveJournal maybe because it's not localized yet.
- Mortazavi ordered recent filtering (from stop.censoring.us)
Posted by hoder at January 6, 2005 2:45 PMComments
As someone in Iran who has to deal with the government restrictions on free speech, their arbitrary justice, the propoganda that goes by the name of news, I will never be so naive to say that the EU and US should stop censoring themselves first. No matter what you might think, the level of free speech and diversity of opinion is so rich and wonderful in both the US and the EU. While no society will ever be perfect, remember that journalists and bloggers in the US and EU don't have to worry that some seemingly innocuous comment will land them in prison and tortured. (And yes, I know that journalists in the US have been imprisoned for refusing to name their sources...)
- By: Someone in Iran on January 13, 2005
- By: Someone in Iran on January 13, 2005
---------
"First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then
they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi. Looks like persian bloggers are definitely at the third stage by now.
- By: Seb on January 12, 2005
- By: Seb on January 12, 2005
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None of my friends in Iran had hear of this.
In fact, if you use an Irani proxy like:
80.191.154.80:8080
(from http://www.stayinvisible.com/index.pl/proxy_list)
1) Entering a site with GeoIP, like http://www.maxmind.com
RESULT: "Iran, Islamic Republic of". Ok, the proxy is working
2)
www.orkut.com -> no problem
www.persianblog.com -> no problem
www.blogsky.com -> no problem
www.blogger.com -> no problem
...
So, what are you talking about? Stop spreading USA FUD (Fear, Uncernainty, Doubt).
- By: origen on January 12, 2005
- By: origen on January 12, 2005
---------
The idea of using satellites to facilitate internet connections in Iran has occurred to me too. However, this would require a satellite dish that could receive as well as transmit. It would also require a system of satellites to be in place for this purpose. I know that there are satellites in orbit that provide global telephone service (and perhaps internet service also), but, as far as I know, the use of this system requires an expensive subscription, as well as, expensive equipment. It seems to me that the Iranian government could easily ban the importation of this sort of equipment, so that even wealthy Iranians would be denied the use of the existing satellite system. I would like to invite anyone who is knowledgeable about this sort of technology to comment further, as I would really like to know more.
- By: David on January 11, 2005
- By: David on January 11, 2005
---------
I agree with Phil; hypocrisy has long been a hallmark of American dealings.
My article explaining thoughts on block-circumvention (cited earlier but not linked) is at http://www.transforum.net/m.cgi?num=304
- By: Toby on January 10, 2005
- By: Toby on January 10, 2005
---------
The EU and the US must seriously consider demanding for an end to the Internet censorship during their negotiations with the Iranian government.
Perhaps the EU and US should stop censoring it themselves first.
- By: Phil Hunt on January 10, 2005
- By: Phil Hunt on January 10, 2005
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My friend from Dubai is now unable to reach Myspace.com from there, when I asked her why, she replied:"Myspace isn't consistent with the ethical, political, moral, or cultural values of the UAE" .... proxys are the way to go ... I wonder who these countries have, if anyone, monitoring web traffic ...
- By: Repo on January 10, 2005
- By: Repo on January 10, 2005
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Oh yes, people from other countries (China, S. Korea, Cuba, and possibly the US in the near future) must also have access to this network, and thus a list of restricted sites should be build for every country.
- By: Bert on January 9, 2005
- By: Bert on January 9, 2005
---------
So, Mary, yo have an example of goverment censorships and the only thing you say is that the same can happens in a free country if goverment is reduced. People like you are the ones that makes Iran and other countries like it possible.
- By: Daniel RodrÃguez Herrera on January 9, 2005
- By: Daniel RodrÃguez Herrera on January 9, 2005
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I strongly suggest encryption if any proxy is used. One can assume, if blocking is in place, that monitoring is not far behind. See my article.
- By: Toby on January 8, 2005
- By: Toby on January 8, 2005
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Tor for Iran! http://tor.eff.org/
Send them a mini DVD-R http://peertech.org/privacy-knoppix/
I wonder how quickly they would block tor dirservers...
- By: anonymous hero worship on January 8, 2005
- By: anonymous hero worship on January 8, 2005
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I can't believe you haven't gotten a ton of comments here. This same scenario could happen in the US or any "free" country. As long as corporations hold sway over all areas of government, then those same corporations can shut down anything they want.
- By: Mary on January 8, 2005
- By: Mary on January 8, 2005
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Slashdotted!
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/07/2252220&from=rss
- By: R on January 8, 2005
- By: R on January 8, 2005
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How to use proxy servers?
Please HELP!
- By: Mitra on January 8, 2005
- By: Mitra on January 8, 2005
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[root@alana tmp]# cat fuckIran.sh
#!/bin/bash
while true
do
wget http://www.parsonline.com/polfarsi/index.htm
wget http://www.datak.net/index.htm
rm *htm*
done
- By: Brock Noland on January 8, 2005
- By: Brock Noland on January 8, 2005
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Given the above solution is attemtepted: The solution for the iranian government is quite simple, ban this site...
- By: Jack Nguy on January 7, 2005
- By: Jack Nguy on January 7, 2005
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Proxies are oldschool, but the darn most effective way of bypassing censors thru a browser. A good proxy would also list friend proxies to use as well, in case that one gets banned by the Great Firewall of Iran (erm... not as funny) and people still wanna get their SlashDot.
- By: KirbyMeister on January 7, 2005
- By: KirbyMeister on January 7, 2005
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i think writing a software that gives a random list of public proxies updated from a p2p backbone can be an option.
- By: deerparkwater on January 7, 2005
- By: deerparkwater on January 7, 2005
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Am I being simplistic in proposing people redirect their Internet traffic through public proxy servers?
Some site (such as this) known to Iranians should provide an updated list (or link to a list) of proxy servers. Then as the Iranian govt bans each one, others can be used to replace them.
Perhaps I'm missing something crucial in my understanding of the problem but I fail to understand how without denying all access except authorised sites such censorship can be effective.
- By: Seyed Razavi on January 7, 2005
- By: Seyed Razavi on January 7, 2005
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