Mon, Jun 30, 2003 page7

• Iran puts new limitations on Internet access

  • TEHRAN
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  It is sometimes called Iranian porn.

  It appears on certain Web sites that specialize in mocking the Islamic Republic's puritanism, featuring women with hair tumbling out of their head scarves or exhibiting deep decolletage at family gatherings,

  Such sites have been officially labeled depraved recently, joining a host of other political, social and truly pornographic online destinations in Iran's first attempt to restrict Internet access.

  "After the limitations put on newspapers and other mass media, they understand that people are looking for news on the Internet," said Reza Parisa, the director of an association of Internet service providers. "So of course, the government wants to limit access to the Internet, too."

  But like much of the regulation in Iran, the line between what is acceptable and degenerate, legal and illegal, remains fluid, so the crackdown has prompted a cat-and-mouse game between the conservative hierarchy and Iran's younger generation, which is growing ever more technically proficient.

  Even those who support filtering Internet content suspect that the effort is doomed, like earlier bans on videotapes and satellite television. The government is bound to lose, they say, as the almost 50 million Iranians under age 30 seek to have more fun.

  "The intention is to filter or stop sites with immoral content or that contradict our social values," said Hussein Shariatmadari, the publisher of the newspaper Kayhan, which often reflects the views of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "In fact, these sites are readily available. It's like removing a ladder leaning against a building so a bird won't fly off the roof."

  The crackdown started this spring with the arrest of a popular Internet journalist, since released on bail, and the distribution to Iran's 300 or so Internet service providers of three lists of sites to be blocked.

  No service providers objected publicly to the first two lists, which contained more than 100,000 pornographic sites originating outside Iran, Internet specialists said. But the third list, of about 94 sites, caused a stir because it contained a number of sites from both inside and outside the country that criticize the government on political and social grounds.

  "To start with, they are focusing on pornography and Web sites that speak out against Islam and the mullahs," Parisa said. "The government is very sensitive about that."

  It is particularly sensitive at the moment because some officials in the Bush administration and in Congress have vowed to underwrite efforts to destabilize the government. The ruling clerics have a history of limiting any liberalization at times when they feel threatened.

  A sudden jump in Internet access over the last couple of years is believed to have made officials here more concerned about the Internet as a tool that could be used against them. Iran now has an estimated 3 million Internet users out of a population of around 65 million, Parisa said, most of whom use it solely for e-mail and chatting.

  Sites that mock the clergy -- they might refer to a leading ayatollah as "His Mullah Highness" -- are among the most popular here. One new site, set up outside the country by an exile political party, posts photographs contrasting the somewhat glamorous court of the late shah with the drab public face of the ruling theocracy.

  "Beggars and Servants," reads the caption of one picture of clerics before the revolution. "Rulers and Masters," says the caption underneath the current ruling pantheon.

  There has also been an explosion of Web logs. Service providers estimate that roughly 50,000 such personal diaries are published in Farsi, discussing topics ranging from art and movies to music, computers and everything else. Web specialists say that among the 10 most visited sites, at least six either feature nudity or offer links to other sites that do.

  One popular Web log, called Faheshe, or "whore" in Farsi, features the memoirs of a former prostitute detailing her downfall. The site also promotes links to interviews with other prostitutes, one saying that clerics tend to frequent the same women and that some give their patronage the patina of legality by reading the vows that Shiite Islam provides for short-term marriages.

  None of the Web logs have been blocked thus far.

  The political sites are perhaps more worrisome for the government than the online pornography. Many of the journalists who founded liberal, reformist newspapers that have been banned by the conservative-run judiciary have started Web sites that use much bolder language than the print media and have proved harder to shut down.

  This spring, 135 members of Parliament wrote an open letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, suggesting that it was time for Iran to reform and do more to reintegrate with the world.

  They cited an old line from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini about drinking a cup of poison at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, a suggestion that trying times require distasteful, drastic measures. Not a single newspaper published the letter -- it is unclear who ordered them to refrain -- but it was widely available on the Web.

  When protests erupted in Tehran and around the country in mid-June, the newspapers offered limited coverage. Eventually the Culture Ministry even barred journalists from attending the demonstrations. But student Web sites kept the country informed with nearly blow-by-blow accounts of events.

  Newspapers have reported on the rough guidelines on Internet use that the Justice Ministry plans to promulgate. A report in the newspaper Iran listed 20 kinds of online activity that would be considered possible violations, including publishing articles that insult Islamic values, Iran's leadership, top clerics or the ideas of Khomeini, the revolutionary patriarch.

  Sites that promote gambling, smoking or drug addiction will also be outlawed, the account said, and the judiciary will create a special department to investigate and prosecute Internet offenses.

  Service providers complain that they do not have the means to buy the expensive filtering equipment needed. Internet specialists believe that the government might have obtained some highly effective American equipment -- getting around the US ban by buying it through European subsidiaries.

  For reformist legislators in Parliament, the sudden interest by the ruling clergy in the Internet prompts concern that broader restrictions may lie ahead.

  "What is important is not to interfere with the free exchange of ideas in the society," said Elaheh Koulai, one of the outspoken women in Iran's Parliament.
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