We all know that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a bureaucratic organization, but reading this post from a (now former) member of the At Large Advisory Commitee (ALAC), the group charged with representing the interests of ordinary Internet users within ICANN, shows us just how complex it really is. John Levine writes:

I thought hard about what I might accomplish if I spent several more years on the ALAC. Maybe we could get retail domain name prices to be $10.50 rather than $11 [...] or get ICANN to fix the loophole that permits domain tasting. [...] Or we might not. In the big picture, how much effort is this all worth? Not much. Certainly not almost a month each year.

Personally, I think ICANN’s work is invaluable to the decentralized structure of the Internet. There have been much ado about that the UN should get more control over the organization, but I’ve been hesitant to agree considering that some countries, who would then have some control over the Internet, can be said to have a less-than-perfect track record when it comes to protecting openness and free speech. However, this post by John Levine worries me also. What happens if ICANN gets so complex and opaque that no - or very few - idealists get their hands dirty? If the representatives with the stamina to go on are all paid lobbyists, lawyers and trade mark representatives?

Recommended reading for anyone interested in a inside report on internet governance. Read the full post at John Levine’s blog (also published on Circle ID).

Using the site The Great Firewall of China, it is possible to check which sites are blocked or not by the Chinese Government. The flash application connects to a test server within the country, tries to access the site and return the status of the page. A great resource, if it weren’t for one thing:

The test methodology seems a bit flawed or there are discrepancies between various Chinese ISP’s, because according to the site, this blog is blocked from access within China, however I have had one report saying that it is indeed accessible - at least from within the network operated by China Telecom. Any more reports on this would be appreciated. (If this blog is indeed blocked, it would be ironic. My guess would have been that Iran, who is not blocking me, would have more reason to be upset than China?)

While the Iranian’s are trying their best to change the world’s perception of them as a breed of inhuman terrorists by posting heartwarming movies on the internet, depicting a completely different Iran than you would see on Fox News, popular culture in Israel is going another route.

The Eurovision Song Contest is a pretty big deal, and this year Israel’s entry in the competition is a political song, where the band Teapacks sing about the Iranian nuclear program and how Ahmadinejad is going to “Push the button” and destroy Israel. Tasteless? You be the judge:

Read the lyrics here, listen to the song here (windows media). Or see the performance on video here (windows media).

In an effort to start blogging regularly again (I’ve been so busy lately that all non-critical things have been sadly neglected) I just want to direct some attention to the new European office of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Even though Europe, compared to many other regions of the world, is a pretty good place to be in for journalists, bloggers and ordinary people, there are serious threats on the horizon. Threats that challenge the personal freedoms and the very basic fundamental rights that we have taken for granted for decades – if not centuries. In a time when the EU, and national governments, all across the European continent (among them, my own Swedish government) is busy drafting legislation that will, for example, permit extensive wiretapping of all electronic communication and give authority to representatives for the film and music industry to police the networks, we are in dire need of a unified civil liberties movement.

My hope is the EFF Europe, with their excellent track-record, can provide our part of the world with valuable resources in the struggle to ensure that the freedoms that have signified European countries since the enlightenment are not taken away from us. We need to talk about these things, debate them and really consider of the profound consequences before letting something like IPRED2 be turned into law.

Starting January 1st, Iranian bloggers are expected to register (link in Persian) their blogs with a governmental agency and receive a registration number to put on their websites, my Iranian sources tells me. Apparently, failure to comply within the two months deadline will result in filtering. This has also been reported here before, but there are still a lot of unclear issues.

I wonder how many will actually register, and if this apply also to Iranians outside Iran? Only if they write in Persian? Will they filter everything that is not approved, or did they invent this to have an excuse to censor arbitrarily?

Word from Iran has it that parts of Wikipedia are censored for access from within the country. The English language version of the user-edited encyclopedia was blocked for a few weeks but was recently re-opened, my sources tell me. The Kurdish version is still blocked however, and can not be accessed at all from within Iran.

Iran’s Kurdish minority is a constant worry for the Iranian central regime, when some of the people have refused to assimilate into the mainstream of national life and does, along with their fellow Kurds in adjacent regions of Iraq and Turkey, seek either regional autonomy or the outright establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the region.

It appears not only the Chinese are afraid of the power of wikis, although their movements are more closely monitored by the NGOs, the international press and the blogging digerati.

In this short essay I summarize a not-so-positive view on ICT diffusion and the impact it might have on developing countries in non-western contexts. I also, briefly, discuss the situation in the Middle East.

The American president Ronald Reagan was, in the years following his presidency, convinced that the spread of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) were going to help bring down the Soviet Union, and prophesied “the Goliath of the totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip” (Kalathil and Boas 2003). Optimists take for granted that the introduction of communication technology leads to increased exchange of ideas and that mediation itself is constructive (Bohman 2004:47).

While the information revolution rapidly unfolds, governments around the world are affected by the profound changes that come with it. The advancement of technologies in general and of ICTs in particular, has been discussed in political circles for decades as a means to change the outset for political evolution. Often, a very optimistic view is heard from world-leaders and journalists, who believe that the internet will lead to salvation for the democracy-starved third world. Others mean that this view is simplistic, too positive and that there is no empirical evidence to support the claims.

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The operating system for the OLPC is now available as a virtual appliance that can be used together with the (free) VMWare Player. Instructions are available here at Tom Hoffman’s site.

The $100 Laptop is coming along nicely, and although I’m sure Mr Negroponte would have liked to have a few more units ordered to secure the projects success, it’s starting to look more and more like a finished product.

I have set up a mirror of the appliance to help with the bandwidth (it was very slow when i downloaded it). Download the OLPC from my mirror (In Sweden). Or from other servers here or here. The file is 135 Mb in size.

I realized that most days, on this blog, all I talk talk about is the bad stuff that is happening in Iran: an endless stream of posts about filtering, imprisonment and repression. In this post I would like to show you the other side. I’m not a photographer (and I will not quit my day job) but please take a look at this attempt to a photo essay.

Iran is so much more than what you hear on the news and, quite honestly, the country took me by storm. A endlessly rich culture and tolerant and curious people, living closer to us than Fox News would have us believe. It’s the home of millions of people and carries with it an ancient culture that is both beautiful and profound. The real Iran!

Unfortunately, due to the harsh realities of the Iranian society, the most important thing is missing from the pictures: the wonderful people I met and spent time with, people whose hospitality and warmth towards me as a stranger was incomprehensible then and even more surreal now. For their protection, they cannot be associated with me – and it hurts me not to be able to give them proper credit.

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The government in Tehran seems to be changing their use of filtering software, or at least there is an increased diversity. According to older data from stop.censoring.us and Opennet Initiative, the Iranian authorities use SmartFilter - a commercial filtering solution from an American company - to control the citizens’ access to certain websites. My sources suggest that there seem to be other solutions as well, even though SmartFilter may well still exist. Rumors are floating around however, about German solutions, and about more sophisticated Chinese tracking systems. What’s clear is that there seem to be a plethora of solutions used, without any coherent strategy or use of a single point of exit, such is the case in other countries. This should, in theory, mean that the block lists also differ slightly between ISPs?

Below are five screenshots sent to me from within Iran. The sixth and last screenshot was taken by me in May 2006 and is shown for reference.

The images show different block pages, some clearly identifiable as output from other filtering packages than SmartFilter, but since I don’t have access to the source code for these pages, I cannot examine code nor headers. Chances are that it would reveal more information.

(The images have been altered slightly to avoid exposing my sources.)

Block page from Datak (Tehran) Datak is an ISP offering dial-up, ADSL and Wifi/Wimax internet access in Tehran and some of other provinces. Flicker is blocked, as can be seen in the example. Unknown filtering software.

Block page from Parsonline (From blockpage.com) When this screen shot was taken, ParsOnline used Websense to filter websites, as disclosed by the page title.

Block page from Sepanta (Tehran) Sepanta is an ISP – not sure about their size or location - and this is their block page. Not sure which filtering software is being used here. (The page you get redirected to is also accessible from outside Iran.)

Block page from Shatel (Tehran) ISP offering dial-up and high-speed access in Tehran, Karaj and Tabriz. Seem to be using the Separ system for filtering. Separ is an Iranian hardware-based product. Switching to this solution was apparently not hassle free for the users, I’ve heard, with hours of downtime.

Block page from a university in southern Iran This block page looks identical to what is reportedly used by the Telecommunications Company of Iran. Said to be based on SmartFilter.

Block page from Internet café in Tehran, May 2006 This was the block page I saw most often when I was in Iran. (Here is another version of the page, taken in the same café taken just the other day – still the same.) The Internet Café’s IP resolves to ParsOnline and it’s reasonable to suspect that this is their block page. Why this is different is from the one at blockpage is unclear to me. One is probably newer than the other. Anyone knows?

Western Companies Chasing Profit?
Looking at the Iranian software market, the first thing that strikes you is that everything is pirated. Everything! The concept buying software is completely and utterly non-existent. Or rather, software is might well be bought, but it’s not the real thing - even though it has the glossy CD-sleeves and plastic wrapping. In any computer store, there is the ubiquitous software shelf with pirated CDs en masse.

This makes me question the outbursts of morality that companies such as SmartFilter receives, when mentioned as the suppliers of filtering software to Iran. Even if they use software from western companies, I sincerely doubt the Iranian regime is paying license fees for them. (And, if producing filtering software is immoral to begin with is another question – but also an entirely different discussion.)

It’s been a couple of weeks since the Iranian authorities put a 128 kbps speed limit on ADSL-connections, and the Iranians have started to organize in protest of the decision. A friend of mine in Iran sent me two links to sites that protest against the decision: here and here.

My friend, however, doesn’t dare to sign the petition himself, since he’s afraid that the protest will get noticed by the government – and that it could potentially get the signers in trouble. He writes:

I didn’t sign the petition nor joined the sites sponsors simply because I don’t want to act politically. Maybe you say it’s not political, but believe me, here every thing can be turned to political protest.

I really don’t blame him for thinking like that. I would probably do the same, I think. That said, this question on what issues that are considered as being a political act is really interesting, from my point of view.

Reports have been coming, in the recent days, that the Iranian regime has capped all privately owned Internet connections to the ridiculously slow 128 kbps. Most of the reports - at least the ones that I have read - focus entirely on the fact that it’s a virtual ban of broadband content such as videos from YouTube and music downloads. I agree that this is a problem, but I would also like to add another structural problem that I feel is potentially worse than missing out on the latest viral advertisements - however funny they may be. I do not believe the only reason for this ban is to stop the influx of western culture. I think it is also (another) way of shortening the leash for freedom of speech inside Iran.

The Internet is a wonderful medium, and one I personally believe is excellent for the promotion of democracy, simply because it is inherently symmetrical. What I mean by that is that those who can receive can also transmit. This argument is well known though the debate of Net Neutrality in the United States (not so much in Europe). Anyone can set up a server and make just about anything available to a global audience. The Iranian imposed limit, however, effectively removes the opportunity to do so. You cannot run much of a web server on 128 kbps ADSL. Not if your intention is to get read. Also, you can’t set up TOR-nodes to hide behind with only that amount of bandwidth to spend.

The regime probably knows that this ban force people to use one of its authorized servers if they want to publish a blog or a forum. And these servers are so much easier to control.

My point is that democracy builds on participation. If you can’t, for example, organize a strike or discuss political issues with your extended network, there will be no democracy. Regardless whether or not you can download the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in less than a minute. And I think it is imperative that the decentralized structure of the Internet is allowed to shape the future too. Even in Iran.

In an effort to bridge the digital divide and with hopes of becoming the perfect supplement to the US$100 OLPC, the Green WiFi project has designed a solar powered WiFi relay station. The basic idea is that a grid of relaying stations can provide an entire area with internet access without being dependent on a reliable external source of power. Using standard off-the-shelves components and open source software the network should ultimately become a self sustaining, self healing, network solution that is cost effective and easy to deploy.

[The] software operate without extensive planning or central management, automatically figures out the fastest way to reach from point A to point B and continuously monitors the network paths [...].

Without doubt, necessity and creativity will develop and refine the technology even further – and from where I stand the project is more interesting as a proof-of-concept than as a packaged product. What I want to know is: How do I build one myself?

I wrote about a book a couple of months back that attempted to be a DIY manual for cheap wireless networking. The logic is that people in rural areas - in developing countries - can operate and maintain their own network, if given the proper knowledge how these things work. In every village, there are people who can fix and build just about anything - from microwave ovens to combustion engines - so why not computer networks? If this was to be deployed in real life situations there are a lot of hacks that can be done to enhance the range and reception of these devices.

Relying on local knowledge like that is to me a great strength, so the question is if it’s possible to integrate it into Green WiFi’s plans.

One thing that I was asked about in Iran a few times was how to blog anonymously. And about better ways to get around the filter. I tried my best to explain what I knew about the subject, but I think I lost most people pretty quickly. And besides, it can be somewhat complicated and these things are so much easier to understand when they’re written down. Now Ethan Zucherman, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has compiled a step-by-step guide to explain the necessary procedures in great detail.

The guide is in only English as of now, and it would be so much more useful if it was available in other languages as well, I think. It would be great to have it in Persian to send to my friends. Is there anyone out there who would be willing to do the world a huge favor and translate it? If the author permits it, that is?

Rosemary Bechler, contributing editor to openDemocracy, recently released her book “Unbounded Freedom” that is an excellent overview of the debate on different sorts of intellectual property. Through telling the history of copyright law she is able to explain and paint a vivid image of why the current trends turn are so challenging for the creative industries.

User-led innovation is reshaping cultural production so that it is trans-national, more egalitarian, less deferential, much more diverse and above all, self-authored. [...] Bechler argues that Creative Commons thinking enables cultural organisations to embark on mutual relationships of trust with huge new publics. Describing the transformative potential of new attitudes, she offers us a vision of the future in which “unbounded freedom” is not simply a romantic notion.

It’s an interesting read for anyone who’s interested in the current debate on anything from file-sharing to cheap AIDS-vaccines in Africa. She also discusses the possible implications of the Creative Commons for Developing Nations License and how it can allow western content creators to contribute to less fortunate areas, without the risk of losing revenue at home. (An idea that sounds good, but that I’m not sure would work in practice. More on that someday.)

The whole book is, of course, Creative Commons licensed and can be downloaded here.

I brought some magazines with me when I went back to Sweden from Iran. The thing was that I was very surprised to begin with when I found copies of The Economist in the window of a newsstand near the Tehran University in Enqelab Square.

Since hotel rooms are boring, I picked up a couple of magazines – they even carried older issues. Went back and started reading. It was not until the second time I saw one of the black slabs of ink that I realized that the magazines were indeed censored! This sparked my interest, and I went back several times in the following days, and basically cleared out the store of foreign magazines. (It turned out that the shop owner had some uncensored issues of fashion magazines under the counter - which he very subtly offered me to purchase - and when I said that I’d rather buy the censored ones his jaw fell to the floor.)

I bought three diffent magazines, just one of some and many of others: The Economist, National Geographic and Wallpaper. I guess they were chosen primarily since I normally buy them.

Anyway, I posted one of the pictures here a couple of month ago, and I’ve finally found time (ehh, not really, but I did it anyway) to do it right. One thing I can’t do, it to provide you with the originals for comparison, and some things – particularly the cartoons - are hard to say anything about. If you have the uncensored issues of the magazines below, and feel like helping out, take a picture of them (or scan them) and mail them to me and I’ll post them.

Please note that the images can be clicked if you want a higher res image. (To get a copy of the original images: mail me.)

The Economist, May 13 2006, pp6-7. This is a cartoon of George Bush and some unmentionable person. My guess is Ahmadinejad or Khamenei, since it apparently was so important to cover it up. They used both ink and a white sticker.

The Economist, Apr 23 2005, pp30-31. Advertisement for Portugal. Apparently featuring a woman in swimwear.

The Economist, Jul 16 2005, Survey of America pp8-9. This girl shows too much skin, and her shoulders were covered.

The Economist, May 6 2006, pp62-63. The Economist reports that Indonesia is creating new laws to get tough on pornography. Here, the word Playboy has been censored, as well as the backs of the magazine read by the people in the background.

The Economist, May 6 2006, Cover. The cover of the magazine that also had the previous picture in it. This cover is not censored, but included here to point out that the entire magazine is full of articles that are extremely critical to the regime. Leaders and op-ed’s that say that the Iranian regime is outright dangerous. Yet, that is not censored. Not one word of it. It’s all there. But the word “Playboy” is a no-go.

The Economist, Apr 16 2005, pp24-25. “Damn those Portuguese! They should know how to cover themselves up. Let’s do it for them!”

The Economist, Apr 16 2005, pp78-79. Two censored images in the Books and Arts section. One of Billie Holiday’s shoulders and the other is some kind of drawing. I’m very curious as to what lies beneath here. It must be of considerable danger, considering the dual use of ink and sticker.

The Economist, Apr 29 2006, pp42-43. Article about the shopping mall Debenhams, illustrated with a scantly clad woman.

The Economist, Apr 15 2006, Cover. This is an issue focusing on the conflict in Israel. Nothing censored on the cover - I just wanted to frame the coming three spreads.

The Economist, Apr 15 2006, pp8-9. A cartoon again: probably Ahmadinejad.

The Economist, Apr 15 2006, pp26-27. Advertisement for LG. The woman is wearing a jogging dress.

The Economist, Apr 15 2006, pp40-41. Cartoon of Uncle Sam with a sword. My best guess is that his opponent in this picture is Khamenei - probably also equipped with a sword.

The Economist, Jan 15 2005, pp94-95. Samsung advertisement, with the woman wearing a tank top.

The Economist, Oct 9 2004, pp88-89. Marilyn Monroe is in the photo behind Richard Avedon. The article is an obituary for the famous portrait photographer.

The Economist, Apr 22 2006, pp44-45. Advertisement for LG. The woman is wearing a jogging dress running clothes.

National Geographic, Feb 2006, Cover. This issue of NG is about this phenomenon called love. The cover is a photo of a couple in embrace, not really kissing, but almost. On the uncensored cover, that is.

National Geographic, Feb 2006, Editor’s section. Under the image, the text says “Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable on the set of The Misfits.” Apparently they were up to no good.

National Geographic, Feb 2006, pp32-33. The same picture that was on the cover - only slightly larger.

National Geographic, Feb 2006, pp36-37. Another spread in the feature article about love. The woman - probably wearing a bikini - is censored, but the guys are not.

National Geographic, Feb 2006, pp108-109. These images are part of a story on life in the Alps, where the NG photographers attend a teen charity fashion show.

National Geographic, Feb 2006, pp120-121. A girl in Florida wearing too little. Tank top? Bikini?

National Geographic, Feb 2006, pp122-123. Continuing the love-story, a knee is casually exposed. And swiftly removed.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Louis Vitton advertisement. They redesigned the dress. The black is not supposed to be there.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Dior advertisement.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Tretorn advertisement.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Versace advertisement.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Tod’s advertisement. Mind the knee.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. René Lezard advertisement.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. This one is interesting, because it seems to be a slipup. This bathing suit should have been censored, I would think?

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Technogym advertisement.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Fashion piece. Considering the publication, the woman in the tub, might be naked. Ironically, the setting is the Middle-East, thus the women in chador in the background.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Fashion piece cont’d. Look at the women on the right.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Another fashion piece.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Another fashion piece cont’d.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. This girl had a tank top that was too revealing it seems.

Wallpaper, Sept 2005. Hospes Hotels advertisement.

This is part of the wrapping that the magazines came in. Nashravaran Journalistic Institute is the organization (agency?) that handles that censorship. They also stamp all magazines with a stamp upon inspection. It’s mind-boggling to think of the people whose work it is to sit there with a giant felt-tip pen and cover up skin all day long.

Practices of Iranian Censorship
One of the more interesting things with all this, I think, is how words are left uncensored, but images are not. The only word that was explicitly censored was “Playboy”, in spite of the articles being full of things that must be considered western propaganda.

From a westerner’s point-of-view, the censorship can be described in terms of political and/or sexual. The political censorship is the cartoons of the religious and worldly leaders, and the sexual being primarily the female body and some of its attributes. It’s important, however, to remember that women are not censored to the standard that is expected in the real world: in the Iranian society the hair is supposed to be veiled from a strangers gaze – in these images its left untouched and visible. Thus, it can be argued that there is a degree of tolerance that goes beyond what is normally considered acceptable and that censors target the Iranian equivalent of hard-core pornography.

The Iranian censorship is better than other forms of censorship, in that it’s done in the open. The black ink is there for all to see. No pages that “disappeared”, but the evidence of interference is there. That way, Iranians at least know that they’re missing out and can act accordingly.

Iranian Censorship in Relation to the West
The images of censorship above should be considered both in relation to other repressive regimes, but also on the practices in western newspapers. It’s tempting to just come to the conclusion that they are not free – while “we” are.

I’d like to question this, just for the fun of it. For example, National Geographic often shows dual standards in the way it portrays women from different cultures. While they would never print a full-page picture of a topless 19 year-old Californian girl, they have no problems doing to with a native African woman. This practice has been called colonial and is, in a way, also censorship – although not made with black ink.

My point is not to defend Iranian censorship in any way. But we, as westerners, should also be aware that to some extent all societies censor to defend what they consider being the outer limits of decency. Another example is my own country. Sweden is no different – here politicians are often arguing that measures should be taken to “reduce the sexualization of the public sphere”, meaning that laws should be passed to put clothes on women in advertisements. I ask myself, how is that different?

UPDATE (OCT 21):
On a Brazilian site someone has been so helpful as to find the originals for some of the advertisements and present them side-by-side in a nice flip-book kind of way.