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Blogs banned in Iran and China

Stop Censoring Us, a blog devoted to internet censorship in Iran, reported on June 14 that Iran was filtering the blogspot.com domain (where all the free Blogger blogs are hosted).

Earlier this year it was reported that China was filtering blog domains, including blogspot.com, typepad.com, and others. See this post at Glutter Blog, and this post at Pketh.

The problem for totalitarian governments in the internet age is that it’s hard to stop people from reading banned material without turning off the entire internet. People in Iran and China have been figuring out how to get around the filters using proxies and other methods.

Will the internet and blogs bring new freedoms to repressive regimes? I hope so, but it’s too soon to tell.

posted Tuesday, June 22, 2004