Internet Dictatorship; Iranian Solution?

The critical media often consider Internet and the Internet freedom as one of the examples of violations of freedom of speech in Iran. The fact is that Internet in Iran like many other countries is restricted in the form of “blacklist sites” and in critical conditions such as elections period, internet speed slows down.

Two points about the limitations of the Internet has never been covered by the world media which maybe considered as propaganda.

• The first point is that if a website has been placed in blacklist mistakenly, the user can simply record it on a special web form and after review, the website is removed from the blacklist.
• Secondly, internet in Iran is not solely restricted by Internal restrictions but the west powers also have been involved in limiting internet usage in Iran. For example, though NVIDIA Corporation is selling many of its products to Iran, but it does not allow Iranian users to update their drivers. Or although “Google Code” has an open source license for all, but has deprived Iranian users of its features. Or Samsung selling many tablets and cellphones in Iran but restricted Samsung Apps for Iranian Users. Google Market place is banned, Nokia Ovi and updates are either.  Also, many scientific journals do not allow Iranian universities to use their articles like Proquest, while Iran stands as the 17^th producer of science in world by rank.

Limiting Internet? Why?

Followed by western propaganda against Iran and the rise of social networks and communication tools, intelligence and non-intelligence agencies within U.S state department and military are working, under the cover of public diplomacy, to provoke the Iranians against their regime. The U.S interference in 2009 Iranian election and the protests is an example to which U.S former state department, Hillary Clinton, has acknowledged (using Facebook).

American social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are either linked to America’s intelligence agencies (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg known to be Facebook agent nicknamed Overlord) or according to the CISPA (U.S. Act), required to report to government agencies.

To preserve its independence and security, Iran not only has a right but a duty to protect Iranians’ online privacy and social information analysis against misuse.

As regards no more than propaganda is published in the restricted websites, it is the duty of any system to protect its country and what is practiced in Iran seems to be fairer than Smith–Mundt Act in U.S.

Is this a violation of free speech? Is there any alternative instead of well-known social networks and blogs, in Iran?

Many countries have their own social networking sites like MySpace in America, Baidu in China and V.K in Russia which are used locally because of their local language.

Iranian corporations (often private sector) also have designed and implemented many famous and popular alternatives such as:

Weblog services: persianblog.com, blogsky.com, Javanblog.com

Mail services: mihanmail.com, chmail.ir, mail.post.ir

Portal services: iran.ir, tebya.net

Social networks: cloob.ir, netiran.net, 702.ir

Search engines: parseek.com, rismoon.com

Video sharing: 3eke.ir, resanehha.com, sepehrv.com

For many other topics, there are also websites in Iran from which Iranians use to publish and share their own contents, suggesting a symbol of freedom of expression on the Internet.

Conclusion

As in regulatory systems and laws in many countries such as Smith–Mundt Act (in U.S), Iran also as a modern country with a high Internet penetration rate employs the same rules. With regard to internal alternative websites in Iran, there is no longer any excuse for claimers of freedom of expression on the Internet in Iran.

The Internet Dictatorship belongs to American corporates and, although not the best solution, but Iranian way of control on Internet  seems to be fair due to the situation of the country. I personally suggest other countries to defend their sovereignty of information while the world is moving to a multilateral global governance rather than American unilateral one.

From a political view, other countries like China are using much stricter features such as “whitelist websites restriction” without any critics in level of International protest. It seems that western media pressures on the limitations of internet in Iran are not more than propaganda and aimed for political purposes only.

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