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New Attempts by Government to Control Internet
By IHRV | September 25, 2008
The Ministry of Guidance is making another attempt at controlling internet sites, which failed in a previous attempt two years ago. In this regard, Mohammad-Hosein Safar-Harandi, the Minister of Guidance, recently spoke about approval of another guideline.
According to government papers in Iran, the Minister of Guidance pointed out “the guidelines have been drafted”. He said the new guidelines are separate from the existing laws mandated by the cultural revolution in regard to internet sites, and said: “before the drafting of these guidelines, there were rules and laws governing the operation of internet sites”.
The most important law of Mr. Safar-Harandi’s was the formation of a “committee to assess and qualify”. According to this law, a committee is formed with representatives from the Ministry of Intelligence, Ministry of Guidance and the Ministry of Communications, and they are permitted to determine the legality of internet sites and web logs. The qualifying committee, in the past four years, has ordered filtering of thousands of web sites, Persian and non-Persian web logs, issuing legal suit against a number of internet sites and citing tens of web publishers for legal transgressions.
The Minister of Guidance in his recent interview did not cover the details behind the new changes in the guidelines on internet sites, however he claimed: “after approval of the guidelines on internet sites, gathering official statistics from the sites will become simpler”. He pointed out that there are no statistics on the internet sites and Persian web logs and said: “considering the unending ocean in the realm of internet, space where every minute a new entry is added, generating new activities, we can not discuss the subject of statistics”.
Mr. Safar-Harandi also in a statement that indicated he is perhaps assuming that a web log is like a page that cannot be ordered by date, and the functioning of web logs is like functioning of the web sites, said; “currently, some of the web logs work just like a web site and act in similar way, they can be ordered by day”.
The Minister of Islamic Guidance also confirmed: “with whatever we have available to us, all we could do is to ask the sites to be registered. If the sites are registered and follow the government guidelines on web site, it is considered a progress”.
Source: Rooz
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