Thursday, December 7, 2006

Journalism 006


Reporters Without Borders, an international media rights organization, recently reported that internet servers in Iran have unblocked the New York Times' website, which was blocked for the past couple of days.

The Iranian government, as of yet, does not directly control access to the world wide web. But instead the government administers orders to the multitude of service providers in Iran, who then block or disallow users from accessing specific sites. Wikipedia (the Kurdish version) has been blocked for the past several months in Iran as it has (the Chinese version) in China for over a year. YouTube has also been blacklisted in Iran, perhaps in response to the posting of
"Iran, the most dangerous nation" video. Ironically enough, the technology that allows internet service providers in Iran, which has more than 70,000 blogs, to block "controversial" websites was built by companies in the US.

This follows the Iranian government decision in October to block high-speed web access (above 128 kilobits per second). According to The Guardian who quoted Iranian officials, the denial was taken to prevent the “undermining [of] Islamic culture among the younger generation”.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

undermining culture? Boy we ARE the culture. the pop culture and the counter pop culture, the chart toppers and the underground, we're the political up in comers who are for and against and the new weirdo's making montages of things we hate and things we love- we're the new vets too, making the new-vet set of crazy walks up and down our boardwalks. not that it's impossible to undermine ourselves, we love to do that too and the boomers are only to happy to ensconce us in comfort so that we stay baby soft, children don't fare well in war- but does 'father' know best? naw