Iran Cracks Down on Bloggers

Wired News is reporting that dozens of Iranian Bloggers have been met with harassment by the government and some have even been arrested for voicing dissenting views in recent history. The article takes a look at some of the bloggers who are fighting for their rights and how. From the article: "The Iranian blogging community, known as Weblogistan, is relatively new. It sprang to life in 2001 after hard-liners -- fighting back against a reformist president -- shut down more than 100 newspapers and magazines, and detained writers. At the time, Derakhshan posted instructions on the internet in Farsi on how to set up a weblog."

Comments

Re:Sad but true

[AviLazar]

They are not supporting these governments, they are trying to do business in a foreign country and to do so they must obey their laws. Just like someone who wants to do business in the United States must obey our laws...the only catch is...an American company doing business in a foreign country must obey American laws and that countries laws...it becomes a problem when the laws are in conflict....For example - many countries require a little bit of bribing to get in a meeting with someone...it is not against the law, and if you want the meeting you better do it....however, in the USA, this is strictly illegal and punishable by law. Now let us say you are an American company trying to get the business of someone in Russia and you are competing with someone from Brazil. The person from Brazil may not have the anti-bribing laws - so before your foot gets in the door you are at a disadvantage.

basically, the gist of my of thing - there are proper ways of fighting injustice and breaking the laws is not one of them. If you want to make the best changes, work within the system. If google gets it's foot in the door of Iran then they can slowly change the system by (gradually) bringing in idea's of capitalism, freedom of speech, etc...but these things take time.