Saturday, February 12, 2011

Bahman 22nd. 32nd Anniversary of Iranian Revolution


Dear Gerard. Hi.

Today is bahman 22nd. 32nd Anniversary of Iranian Revolution. It's usual. Blogspot is censored The government temporarily blocked all SMS, and Internet access last year after the 2009 Iranian election protests(yup. here, this article is censored too). So the censorship might be temporary.

I'm not interested in politics, but it affects us. I can't read your blog. I was wondering if you could create an alternative means for reading your new blog posts. like a mirror, copy,download, newsletter mail, ... I'm asking this because "blog" is about "news" and if blogfa re-opens late, there is neither time for nor benefit in reading so many posts

Since I  don't know whether this is hard to do or not, I only expect your help if this is "very easy"

thanks, Ruhollah

At Fosdem, the ability of governments to throw the switch on the Internet and to censor was a theme in many presentations. The most prominent presentation was by Eben Moglen who introduced the freedom box and spoke at length about the need for mesh networks and the decentralisation of social software.

Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot and even Wikipedia are easy targets for those regimes who do not abide by the freedom of speech. If my blog was somewhere on a server, Ruhollah would still be reading my blog while he now needs a way to bypass the censor.

The freedom of speech has its value when it is accompanied by an ability to participate. The value of social media to its users is in the ease of reaching out and communicating to friends and "friends". Some legislations have freedom of speech enshrined in law. It is time to enshrine the freedom to communicate in the software itself. Software that is resilient and has no kill switch.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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