Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Registering Iranian Blogs

It's a little old, but I was struck by this article that I happened across recently. The government's actions are perfectly in line with their other attempts to censor the net, but trying to get 100,000+ active bloggers to register? How are they planning on doing that I ask? It would have been much simpler to start off with a registering system, but of course that is part of the systemic problem with Internet censorship in Iran. Like satellite tv before it, the regime has been slow to pick up on the dangers of the Internet, and without a comprehensive strategy for dealing with it, their uncoordinated tactics seem sloppy. Of course part of that has to do with the necessary impression of democratic legitimacy that the regime must feign. Still, I think the underlying problem is one of disunity. Of course, this doesn't mean that their actions are impotent. Iranian bloggers still have to deal with the consequences.

Oh, and the article mentions Ahmadinejad's own blog as well. Pretty funny stuff.

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