“The Internet crimes penal law has been sent to the head of Judiciary Office for the final approval,” said Reza Parvizi, the chair of Internet crimes committee. “This law has been modified to some extent, so that the ICPs alone will not be considered as the sole authority for filtering. Their responsibility will be relative,” he added.
According to Parvizi, the definition of the crimes is not modified and most of the modifications are related to the punishments. For instance, the punishment of the ICPs regarding filtering issues will be in accordance with the nature of the ICPs operations. Therefore, such punishment has been changed from imprisonment of the authorities of the ICPs to the cancellation of their permit, or their temporary closure. Also, the punishment of the authorities of hosting companies has been included in the modified version of this law as well.
Source: ISNA
Mehdi Derayatai, Hanif Mazrooie, Masoud Ghoreishi, and Asghar Vatanikhah were freed on bail last Thursday.
They were believed to be helping Rooydad, new websites close to the major reformist party, Iran Participation Front (Jebhe-ye Mosharekat). Mazrooie and Derayati's fathers are top members of the party and have been very active to negotiate for the release of their website's staff.
They spent up to three months in detention, much of it in solitary confinement in undisclosed location, according to Mostafa Derayati, father of Mehdi.
In an interview with ISNA, Alireza Manafi, manager of an Information Technology lab of a governmental research institute, said the new application finds the popular websites based on the number of their visitors, studies their content and updates the blacklist based on it.
Using URL recognition and content analysis techniques, the application takes 10 seconds to review each website, he added.
'Intelligent Filter' is going to be tested on Telecom Company of Iran and if successful, it will be used by all Iranian internet providers.
Source: ISNA
The charges for a number of recent detainees arrested in connection to Internet websites have been announced by the Iranian judiciary, while another female journalist, M. Abbasgholizadeh, has been arrested.
The judiciary spokesman said of those arrested, 15 have been detained for security reasons while another 8 are being held on moral grounds.
President Khatami, at the same time has expressed his dissatisfaction with these arrests but has made it clear he lacks the authority to end it.
Source: BBC
A ban on the reformist website Baztab has been removed by the Judiciary. The administrators of Baztab had argued they had not recieved the regulations of the natinoal security commitee [ which is an authority in web regulation ] and that they are now committed to following the rules.
Source: ISNA
Mahboobeh Abbasgholi-zadeh, an NGO activist and a journalist, has been arrested with a warrant said to be issued by the Tehran Airport judiciary branch. They've also taken her personal computer from herhome.
Source: ISNA
Iran's hardline judiciary ordered the conservative-run news website Baztab to close after receiving complaints that the site was "publishing false news," contrary to Iran's security guidelines, student news agency ISNA reported.
"Baztab was ordered to shut by the judiciary prosecution's inspector over complaints that the site was publishing false news contradicting the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) guidelines and contrary to the country's internal and external interests," ISNA said Monday, quoting a judiciary official.
Baztab is run by Mohsen Rezaie, former head of Revolutionary Guards, who is said to be a likely candidate in the upcoming presidential election in June 2005.
Many say that the decision may be related to Baztab's criticism of the way Iran has handled the problems surrounding its nuclear program.
Source: AFP