June 19, 2004



Regulations led to ISPs closure


Based on the report by Student News Agency, many of the ISPs have been shut down according to a set of regulations that a cultural council passed about two years ago. However many critics say that the council doesn't have the constitutional authority to legilate in any way.

The following is the 6th part of it which deals with Internet as a publishing medium:

  1. Publishing any material that denies or is against Islam
  2. Disrespect towards Islamic religion or its respected legendaries
  3. Publishing materials that are against country’s constitution or anything that threatens national unity and independence
  4. Disrespecting supreme leader or any of the established high-ranking clerics
  5. Humiliation of respected religious facts and established orders, treasures of Islamic revolution and bases of political ideologies of founder of the Islamic revolution (late ayatollah Khomeini)
  6. Disrupting national unity
  7. To make negative allegation and to cause doubts and disappointment among people on eligibility and effectiveness of the government
  8. Advertising and distributing ideas of forbidden social and political groups
  9. Publishing classified documents
  10. Publishing content against moral beliefs of the society (such as pornography)
  11. Encouraging the use of drugs
  12. Publishing content that comprise baseless attack to government individuals or any other fellow countrymen
  13. Revealing private relations of people and dishonoring their personal information
  14. Distributing passwords or secrete codes of databases, software packages, e-mail accounts or introducing ways or cracking them
  15. Illegal commercial and financial activities via internet including faking, gamble, etc.
  16. Trading items via Internet that are illegal by law
  17. Any activity towards hacking private networks in order to shutdown or decrease their level of service
  18. Spying over the web and trying to illegally trace information passing through
  19. Making any radio and/or TV station without authorization and control of Islamic Republic Broadcasting (IRIB)

Although few of the items can be considered good for IT community but the majority of them are virtually aiming for more limitation of free speech online. Using such words like "disrespecting the roots of Islamic revolution" has become a custom in judiciary system to limit those who are not thinking like them. These taboos are so general in meaning that even among high rankings of the government they are matters of dispute.

Posted at June 19, 2004 06:48 PM | TrackBack


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