Hidden Nook
"Because in Cyberspace, no one can hear you scream."
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Iran Filtering Out Blog Rolls
[Media Source*] (Cross Posted on Blogger News)
(Committee to Protect Bloggers) Shargh newspaper reports that Iran's Telecom company has ordered all ISPs to filter blogrolling.com
Blogrolling, owned by Canada-based Tucows, provides a popular free service for bloggers who want to track their favorites weblogs and automatically be informed when they get updated.
The service, which is widely popular among Iranian bloggers, effectively connects blogs and help form a community or a loose network of like-minded bloggers.
According to the Committee to Protect Bloggers, it looks as if the Iranian government is finally deciding to tighten the noose around the last expression of free thought throughout the Persian empire. Links to other bloggers have become a common theme throughout the blogosphere, allowing readers to find other "recommended" sites and perhaps gain a new perspective that their native media would probably not have displayed. Iranians have long used links to other blogs to circumvent their state television as well as spread news via links, messages and images.
But it looks like the Iranian government isn't merely satisfied with ending the "blog rolls" throughout the internet. They may intend to go after the entire blogosphere itself.
Many bloggers perceive this as an 'attack' to the Persian blogosphere. "I don't know what would happen next, but this is just the beginning," the writer of 'Persian Buddy' wrote in his blog.
"Soon they are going to filter blogger.com itself and we can do nothing about it," he wrote.
Before one thinks that censoring the entire blogosphere is an impossible feat, one only has to consider China to realize how successful a regime can be at controlling the gates of information for it's citizens. The Iranian government it seems is quickly learning from it's distant neighbor in the far east, and unless the international community begins to take notice as well as action, it all may be quite on the Iranian front.
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By Darnell Clayton ⢠12:19 AM ⢠Email Post ⢠â¢
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