As probably obvious by the title, I’m currently somewhat confused and you could even call it somewhat ticked off. Last night a Persian speaker friend of mine sent me a link to an article in a Persian weblog that he found amusing. Well honestly the article itself didn’t take as much of my attention as the little banner on the corner of the page did. Yes, it’s similar to the one I’ve posted here. I had a feeling that I had seen the same banner before on possibly another Persian weblog. I clicked on the banner and was directed to THIS website, where I got a bit of an explanation as to what’s cooking, and I also found the link to THIS OTHER website, where I got the complete and full version story.
So, as far as my understanding is, this is what’s going on. The 2nd website is the homepage for an Iranian government organization who’s name translates to something in lines of “The Iranian Website Classification Organization”. To make the long story short, this organization’s soul purpose is to classify and register all the websites or weblogs owned by Iranians, so that [obviously] they can take their nasty acts of censorship and harassment of the Iranian internet users to it’s next, simpler step. The organization’s expectation is for every single Iranian domain owner to go ahead and hand them all information about their websites, weblogs and whatever other sort of online identity that they have, which in turn will make it a lot simpler for the Iranian government to either annihilate whatever online content they don’t find to their liking, or make them inaccessible from Iran. How bloody bizarre is that? I wonder who’s unholy idea this is, to take away the smallest peace of freedom of speech that may be left through the internet, using this new, enhanced and completely idiotic tactic? And I really do mean idiotic: what on earth makes them fancy that people will just go through with this? Hence the first website I mentioned, and the banner…. that’s the big “NO” for the answer. Thank you very much!
But you know what bakes my noodles even more? Just out of pure curiosity I had a look around the organization’s website and came across their website registration form. And guess what. It’s applicable to Iranians everywhere, not just in Iran [you can select whatever country you’re in]. Yeah. Bloody right. I wonder how far they think they’re going to get with that one….