'3rd phase' censorship in Iran and the blocked bloggers

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‘Third phase’ censorship in

Iran and the blocked

bloggers.

02 June 2014

Thesis: Master of Arts, Media Studies

New Media and Digital Culture

Graduate School of Humanities

University of Amsterdam

Supervisor: Dr. Richard Rogers

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Abstract

This paper introduces censorship in Iran and the intentions of the Iranian government to launch the ‘Halal’ internet, a national intranet that will control and monitor the

communication of its users. It is named the ‘third phase’ censorship and it is a very repressive legislation of internet censorship and surveillance. My aim is to examine whether ‘third phase’ censorship occurs in Iran, and how that relates to the supposing launching of the ‘Halal’ internet and subsequently the extend that the new regime of 2013 loosened up this version of censorship. I will analyse shortly the three versions of censorship, but I will focus my research to the ‘third phase’ censorship. Many researchers dealt with censorship and its consequences and the reasons that led governments such as Iran to using it. I will test a number of website URLs and blogs, found from a previous analysis, using Censorship Explorer- a tool from the Digital Methods Initiative website. My purpose is to check whether the URLs are blocked or available in Iran and in the Netherlands, by using Iranian proxies. According to those tests, I will be able to interpret the results and evaluate the situation in Iran. This paper provides a framework of the past and the present research based on internet censorship in Iran. There is no previous research considering the ‘third phase’ censorship, so my inquiry will be based on reports about the Iranian censorship and on empirical research.

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1. Introduction to the subject 4-8 2. Research Questions 8 3. Literature Review 8-16 4. Methodological approach 16-17 4.1 Interpreting the ‘Halal internet’ 17-22 4.2 The procedure of the proxy tests 22-26 5. Results 26-37 5.1 Interpreting the results 37-40 6. Conclusion 40-41 7. Appendices 42-59 8. References 60-65

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1.Introduction

The practice we are going to analyse and research here is current censorship in Iran. Censorship is the concealment of discourse or other open correspondence which may be recognized offensive, hurtful, delicate, politically wrong or not convenient as controlled by a legislature, media outlet or other regulating figure. It is answered in an assortment of

distinctive settings incorporating discourse, books, music, movies, other art forms, the press, radio, TV, and the Internet for a mixture of explanations incorporating national security, to control indecency, child pornography, hate speech, to ensure kids, to boost or confine political or religious perspectives, and to avert defamation and aspersion. It can be legal or illegal. Numerous countries grant protection against censorship by law, yet none of these protections are categorical and it is oftentimes important to adjust contradictory rights to define what can and cannot be censored. We will concentrate our research to the internet censorship in Iran.

“Iran has more than 150 Internet Service Providers or companies advertising

themselves as such. Many of these services have been privatized since 2009 but that does not mean they have become fully independent of the government. The leading ones are still linked to the government and all are accountable to it. This biggest one, DCI, is owned by the Revolutionary Guards. Novinnet, Shatel, Asretelecom, Pardis, Persian-net, Tehrandat, Neda, Askiran and Tavana are the other leading ISPs. Iran has been connected to the Internet since the mid-1990s. For economic and political

reasons, the authorities have developed the communications infrastructure to the point that Iran has the biggest number of Internet users in the region. Iran’s Internet

depends on the Mullah regime, which controls infrastructure, technology and regulatory bodies, and has imposed repressive legislation. While most Iranians get their news from television, the Internet plays a key role in circulating news and information thanks to dissidents and independent news providers. They report developments or views ignored by the traditional media, and cover government repression. The authorities often accuse social networks of being tools in the pay of western powers that are plotting against the government.” (Reporters without Borders, “Iranian internet-fact and fiction”).

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What kind of content gets censored in Iran? Why does it get censored? When do the users get more censored? What is the ‘third phase’ censorship? Research has already been done on this subject, therefore according to researchers that visited and searched the websites on Alexa's1 top 500 lists of websites (all categories), almost 250 out of the 500 most popular sites are censored in Iran. The most censored websites are pornographic ones - because of Iranians’ religious beliefs -, sites about art, news and society. Researchers Collin Anderson and Nima Nazeri, tested 800.000 Wikipedia articles in the Persian language while using proxy servers in Iran.

“Every blocked article was identified and blocked pages were divided into ten

categories to determine the type of content to which state censors are most adverse. In total, 963 blocked articles were found, covering a range of socio-political and sexual content including politics, journalism, the arts, religion, sex, sexuality, and human rights. Censors repeatedly targeted Wikipedia pages about government rivals, minority religious beliefs, and criticisms of the state, officials, and the police. Just under half of the blocked Wiki-pages are biographies, including pages about individuals the authorities have allegedly detained or killed.” (Iran Media Program, “Citation Filtered: Iran's Censorship of Wikipedia”).

It is common knowledge that Iran censors designated URLs that contain sexual references and content. If the URL keywords include some sexual or profane word, the URL is immediately blocked, which often causes the blockage of ‘innocent’ websites. Many

webpages have been confused as sexual, even though their content was completely irrelevant and definitely not offending towards the Iranian government laws. Except websites, recent research showed that 95% of the bloggers have been banned from forums and websites and any kind of social media that exist in the Iranian web. In 2001, Hossein Derakshan, the ‘Father of Iranian Blogging’, created one of the first language blogs. Today Persian-language is the fourth most popular in the world of blogging, but the Iranian government did not agree with this evolution. In 2003 governmental employees started blogging and

persecuting other bloggers for resistance against the regime.

1_{“Alexa, like other companies offering browser toolbars, collects user location data such as a postal code upon}

registration, and once the toolbar is installed, tracks websites visited by the user (see Figure 1). It thereby keeps records of the sites most visited by user location. Alexa furnishes a list of the top 500 sites visited by users in Iran.” (R. Rogers, “Mapping Iran online”, p.135)

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“The first official action against bloggers occurred when journalist and blogger Sina Motallebi was arrested in April 2003. Over the following years, numerous bloggers were arrested and imprisoned for their statements. In 2005, Tehran's Chief prosecutor ordered major ISPs to filter PersianBlog and other blogging service websites.”(New Media and Development Communication, “Blogospheres: Iran”).

What is worth noticing though is the fact that during national events (for example: elections, political events and national celebrations), the Iranian government blocks any website, forum and other webpages that correlate with political content; which is what ‘Third

Generation/phase Censorship’ means; surveillance. A paranoiac project, first mentioned in the past decade by the Iranian government, named ‘Our Own Internet’ (‘Halal’ internet) started to take shape. The government of 2012 speeded up the operation, trying to make users to switch to the ‘National Internet’, by blocking Gmail, Google and YouTube (since 2009) on the World Wide Web. Their strategy was to have these websites available in ‘Our Own Internet’ and blocked on the World Wide Web, so that users will use the new governmental internet, the ‘Halal Internet’. There is no clear image about whether the ‘Halal internet’ has been launched; what we know for sure is that the government employees are connected to the ‘National Internet’, although public users will be obligated to use it because the government is reducing the connection speed of the international internet and raising its price, so that users will soon be basically voluntary subscribed to the ‘National Internet’.

“The construction of this parallel Internet, with a high connection speed but fully monitored and censored, is supposed to be completed in the very near future. It is intended that all Iranian websites will be hosted on local servers. Applications and services such as email, search engines and social networks are to be developed under government control. This Intranet’s imminent nationwide launch is disturbing. It will allow large-scale surveillance and the systematic elimination of dissent.” (Reporters without Borders, “Iran: Halal Internet”)

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Table 1- Website categories that are blocked in Iran (The Washington Post, “Here’s how Iran

censors the Internet”, 15 August 2013)

“Traffic that the Iranian firewall does not recognize, is throttled even more dramatically, and gets cut off altogether after about 60 seconds. The initial

measurements were made in the weeks before the June 2013 elections, a time when the Iranian government was working to restrict the communications of the opposition. But after the election, they said, the throttling stopped, with all types of Internet traffic being transmitted at the same speed. Unfortunately, even unthrottled Internet access is extremely slow.”(The Washington Post, “Here’s how Iran censors the Internet”).

As mentioned in the title I will observe and research the ‘Third generation/phase’ censorship in Iran and the blockage of websites and bloggers. I will analyse the situation and record the results. My ultimate purpose is to prove that ‘Third phase’ censorship in Iran occurs, that the ‘Halal internet’ has been launched and that the Iranian government is controlling the internet through the ‘National network’ by firmly supervising every user’s move on the web.

Censorship in Iran is unnecessarily strict; it is caused by the religious regime that governs the country, which censors mostly pornographic websites. The idea of the ‘National Web’ is extremist and a way of the government to control everything and everyone in the cyberspace. My goal is to prove that ‘Third Generation Censorship’ incurs and is implemented in Iran by the government. John Palfrey presents in his paper “Four phases of Internet regulation”, the four versions of internet censorships; 1) ‘open internet’, 2) ‘access denied’, 3) ‘access controlled’-surveillance and 4) ‘access contested’- which we have been entering since 2010 according to Palfrey. I will also consult and review Richard Rogers’s and Erik Borra’s

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research “Mapping Iran online” on censorship from 2009 until 2011 in Iran and the role of the Islamic government. More specifically I will examine and consider the list of blocked websites and bloggers from the leading Iranian platforms Alexa and Likekhor. There is also existing research regarding the censorship in Iran, the change of regime in June 2013, the history and evolution of censorship in the Middle East, the legal and regulatory frames in Iran, the surveillance and more generally about the ‘National (Iranian) web’ and its purpose, the technical tools used for censorship, the tendency of the Iranian government to target the social media, the repressive legislation and the violation of freedom in any kind of way by the Iranian regime.

2. Research Questions

1. May the three phases of Internet censorship described by John Palfrey be read from the findings to date on Internet censorship in Iran?

2. That is, can we identify the ‘3rd phase/version’ in current censorship practices? 3. Has the regime change of June 2013 relaxed a particular ‘phase/version’ of

censorship?

3. Literature review

In his text, “Fine-Grained Censorship Mapping Information Sources, Legality and Ethics”, Joss Wright, examines the fact that nations around the globe participate in some form of internet filtering. Whilst filtering and censorship can, to an extent, be open and transparent, their nature tends towards secrecy. In order to understand the extent and nature of filtering around the world, we desire the ability to experience directly the limitations imposed on these internet connections.

“National-level filtering, however, is simply the crudest form of such mapping. Whilst many states have national filtering policies, there is some evidence that the specific implementation of these may vary from region to region, from ISP to ISP and even from computer to computer. In order to fully understand filtering and its role in the globally networked world, it is extremely useful to explore connectivity at a more geographically and organisationally fine-grained level.” (p.1).

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“The most well-known filter is almost certainly China’s ‘Golden Shield’ (Ñþå_, j¯ınd`un g¯ongch´eng), commonly known as the ‘Great Firewall of China’, which represents arguably the largest and most technologically advanced filtering mechanism in use today.” (p.1) Iran and China have similar internet censorship and are going through the same situation

regarding bloggers. “Iran has committed to adapting its filtering practices to changes in internet technology," says John Palfrey, a member of the OpenNet Initiative at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "Bloggers who write in Farsi in Iran have a much harder job today in trying to reach their audience than bloggers in most other parts of the world." ” (Quoted by Will Knight, “Iranian net censorship powered by US technology”, NewScientist.com)

In his book “Digital Methods: National Web Studies”, R. Rogers, refers to a certain case of censorship, this of Iran. He indicates that internet censorship in Iran was undertaken by the state.

“In library science, national webs are routinely constructed by national libraries and other national archiving projects, which also have considered how to define such a web. There are variously sized national web archives. Countries that have legal deposit legislation not only for books but for web content tend to have notably larger web archives than countries that do not” (p.129).

Moreover, in the introduction R. Rogers explains what a national web is, which is quite helpful to us in understanding what Iranian government is planning on doing with the ‘Halal internet’.

“The term national web, we feel, is useful for capturing a historical shift in the study of the Internet, and especially how the web’s location-awareness repositions the Internet as an object of study. A national web is one means of summing up the transi-tion of the Internet from ‘cyberspace’ which invokes a placeless space of email and packets, to the web of identifiable national domains (.de, .fr, .gr, etc.) as well as websites whose contents, advertisements and language are matched to one’s location.” (p. 125).

In the next section, “Blocked yet Blogging: The special case of Iran”, Rogers mentions that the angle that people see and experience the internet censorship in Iran is different when you observe it from the inside and when you observe it from the outside.

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“Many Iranians online, either site visitors or authors, whether inside or outside the country, need to cope with censorship. Inside the country, coping could mean being frustrated by it, and waiting for a friend or relative to bring news about a VPN or another means of getting around blockages. It could mean routinely circumventing censorship through VPNs, proxies, Google Reader and other means. Both inside and outside the country, coping may mean actively learning about (and consciously not using) banned words, and perhaps employing code words and misspellings instead. It could mean self-censorship.” (p.128).

The research report “National Web Studies: Mapping Iran Online” by Richard Rogers, Esther Weltevrede, Sabine Niederer and Erik Borra, examines the national web of Iran while it is censored and the carping opinions of civilians about the government.

“It also inquiries into the effects of censorship in Iran on (critical) content production, with the lead question being whether censorship kills content. We have found an Iranian web that is fresh and responsive, despite widespread blockage of key websites. Secondly, we have found indications of routine censorship circumvention by Iranian web users. Finally, for the period of study (2009-2011), language critical of the regime continues to be published online, and its incidence has risen over time.”(“Mapping Iran Online”).

This research report also contains data and graphics about Iranian censorship and it gives instructions to the reader on how to access the data; by creating an account on issue crawler. Menaka Ratnayake indicates “How censorship affects society” in her article on the website World Issues 360 in 2013.

“Censorship which is a hotly debated topic around the world. It has been discussed in relation to almost all modes of expression including speech, news, art, books, films, television programs, internet, radio programs and even plays. While governments in the name of protecting the societal integrity, security and harmony have carried out censorship, there are other types of censorship, which are being carried out by the authors or creators themselves or by certain organizations, which portray themselves as representative of the societal interest.” (Introduction).

Researchers and professors are concerned that the future generations of internet users will not recognize the differences between independence of thought and subservience, as mentioned

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in the article. The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences suggests that the repression of socio-politic reformation will convert the censorship to a revolution.

“Censorship itself has been viewed as a way of generating awareness and attention to publishable books and other types of creations, which may otherwise not attract such attention in the first place. In the same vein, it has also been pointed out that by releasing governments’ grip on censorship, it is possible to re-allocate funds spent on the same to resolving more substantive problems such as unburdening the legal systems and re-deploy the law enforcement agents to better confront the real dangers and the serious crimes.” (“How censorship affects society”).

R. Faris and N. Villeneuve “provide an overview of the data regarding Internet filtering that the OpenNet Initiative has gathered over the past year” (p. 5) in their text “Measuring Global Internet Filtering”. After a research in 2006, 26 out of 40 countries were detected to use technical blocking, but that doesn’t mean that the rest do not have censorship. What the authors expect from future studies is to find that there are other countries that filter internet, and that in the future more of them will block websites with inappropriate or illegal content. The first four categories that subjugate to Internet filtering between the countries that were studied during their research were: “Free expression and media freedom, Political

transformation and opposition parties, Political reform, legal reform, and governance and Militants, extremists, and separatists” (p. 7), which are mostly social, political or about security. “Hate speech and political satire are also the target of Internet filtering in some countries. Web sites that deny the Holocaust or promote Nazism are blocked in France and Germany.” (p. 12). Iran “not only intercede on a wide range of topics but also block a large amount of content relating to those topics” (p. 6) and it “stands out for its pervasive filtering of both political and social material.” (p. 9). “Iran uses a filtering proxy that displays a blockpage when a blocked Web site is requested. On some ISPs in Iran, such as Shatel and Datak, keywords in URL paths are blocked. This most often affects search queries in search engines.” (p.15). The variety of blocking among ISPs in Iran is worth mentioning and Faris and Villeneuve give some examples considering this variations. “For example, one ISP blocks considerably less political content than the other six ISPs tested. Only one ISP out of the five tested in Azerbaijan, AzNet, blocks access to a considerable amount of social content, most of which is pornographic, while the others block access to only a single IP address.” (p. 16).

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Derek E. Bambauer in his article “Censorship V3.1”, introduces us to the new resumption of censorship, that followed after censorship Version 1.0 and Version 2.0 which were

ineffective. The Version 3.1, includes omnipresent censorship by democratic and autocratic countries. This paper contends that the new censorship model includes four changes

mentioned in the abstract and along the paper. The latest version of censorship, this of V3.1, proposes a set of reactions to censorship that keep its grafts and push it towards more genuine systems, such as concentrating on governmental limitations, demanding naming censorship as censorship V3.1, upholding shared Internet administration, requiring a detection right of access to data, and addressing to corporate containment.

“Both in democratic and non-democratic states, on-line censorship is beginning to morph. It is characterized by four trends. First, states increasingly seek to offload the technical burdens and the political accountability for censorship onto private actors, including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), application providers, and users. Second, governments mix positive information strategies that paint their efforts in a beneficent light with suppression of dissent or difavored information. Third, censorship in this new era blends formal mandates with informal pressures on key actors. Finally, governments seek to frame censorship as something else entirely – as necessary efforts directed to other, less contentious ends.” (p. 6)

Based on OpenNet Initiative, in 2009, during the presidential elections in Iran, the political websites were blocked and that prodded the attention of the public to reconsider the situation. “Speech in the Islamic Republic of Iran is heavily regulated. The limits to freedom of

expression in Iran are grounded in the constitution and speech restrictions extend over a broad range of topics, including religion, immorality, social harmony and politics.” (“Internet in Iran”, p.1). “Efforts to control online speech by the Iranian government have relied

primarily on large-scale Internet filtering and the threat of targeted legal action.” (“Internet in Iran”, p. 2). The political and social censorship was penetrating, as well as the filtering of internet tools. Also, the security filtering was substantial and the transparency was medium but consistency was high.

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Table 2- “Iran: Results at a glance” (Open Net Initiative-Iran, 16 June 2009)

“Internet usage in Iran continues to increase at a sharp rate. Over the past eight years, the number of Internet users in Iran has grown at an average annual rate of

approximately 48 percent, increasing from under one million Internet users in 2000 to around 23 million in 2008. This rate of growth is higher than any other country in the Middle East.” (Open Net Initiative, “Internet in Iran”).

OpenNet Initiative has many reports about internet censorship in Iran; the most important and the one that correlates with my research is the report “After the Green Movement: Internet Controls in Iran, 2009-2012” by Irene Poetranto which “details Iran’s increasing Internet controls since 2009, when protests against the victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad rocked the country.” (Irene Poetranto, OpenNet Initiative).

Iran Media Program’s 2011-2012 report on media consumption in Iran by Magdalena Wojcieszak, Briar Smith, Mahmood Enayat is a network that helps readers/users increase their awareness about Iran’s media environment; how technology and media influence the society of Iran. Their purpose is to

“strengthen a global network of Iranian media scholars and practitioners and to contribute to Iran‘s civil society and the wider policy-making community by providing a more nuanced understanding of the role of media and the flow of

information in Iran.” (“Finding a way- How Iranians reach for news and information”, p.2).

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In their report we can find studies that they conducted in the past about the Iranian

censorship; these studies/ research includes “The media use among Iranians”, “What about new communication and information technologies?” and “Media use among Iranians- Youth survey”.

“When an election is over, new media habits remain. Elections have become sensitive moments in which student leaders, journalists, and civil society groups experiment with digital technologies. Even if their preferred candidates are not elected, the process of experimentation is important because, by using digital media, citizens construct an information infrastructure that is largely independent of the state. Digital media leave a lasting imprint on civil society, one that continues after elections. The Internet allows youth to learn, for instance, about life in countries where faith and freedom coexist (Quoted in “Finding a way”, p. 37 by Philip N. Howard, 2010).

“Following Howard (2010), one would hope that the events that unfolded after the election in Iran in 2009 would translate into continued reliance on new media for political information and social organizing. This is especially because the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 also seemed to suggest that Twitter,

Facebook, and mobile technologies have the potential to instigate, organize, or at least report on political organizing and socio-political change” (“Finding a way”, p. 37).

The website Smallmedia.org.uk is “an action lab, aiming to promote free flow of information in closed societies, especially Iran. Our actions are informed by research. We analyse the flow of information and provide solutions to improve it. We work with partners. We help others to implement their ideas.” (Home, smallmedia.org.uk). The website contains projects about Iran censorship and political situation, for example the opinion of conservative bloggers about the nuclear negotiations, and the reactions of people on Twitter. The website separates the finished projects from the ongoing ones and also constantly publishes reports about Iran’s media ecology like the “Internet Infrastructure and Policy Report - January 2014” which is the continuation of an older project:

“In our previous report, we undertook an investigation of the Iranian government’s budget for the year ahead, and made a number of hypotheses about Iran’s future ICT policies. One of the projects that dominated in Iran’s ICT budget allocations for the year was the National Information Network (or, SHOMA), which is set to be rolled

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out in full by the end of 1394 (March 2016). The project is already behind schedule, however, with the previous target of 60% of Iranian families and businesses being able to access SHOMA by the end of March 2014 looking increasingly unattainable. The past month has, however, seen Iran take a few more tentative steps in the

direction of establishing SHOMA, in the form of new regulations and important infrastructure development projects that will be detailed later in this report. Despite all of its problems, SHOMA is seeing continued progress in large part because of the value attached to the project by the Supreme Leader’s own Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC), which has been very eager in its pursuit of a controlled ‘National Internet’.” (“Internet Infrastructure and Policy Report- January 2014”,

smallmedia.org.uk).

The article “Living as a Criminal: Iranian Internet censorship and user adaptation”, “explores how Iranians cope with and perceive the role of this system in their day-to-day lives. It draws from 20 semi-structured interviews with Iranian Internet users, mostly non-political bloggers, and from an online questionnaire, filled out by 165 Iranian bloggers.“ (Abstract). These bloggers use filtering tools to seek communicative activities; the most popular tool is Google Reader. This article explains the Iran censorship and also the self-censorship and the access and the filtering in the country. Part of this report includes quotes from the Freedom House website, which upholds the Iranian pro-democracy motion and the human rights supporters in their fight against the Iranian surveillance and suppression. One of the reports from this website about Iran mentions that

“Constitutional provisions and laws restrict what can be covered in the press and fail to provide protections for the media. The government regularly invokes vaguely worded laws to criminalize dissenting opinions. Article 24 of the constitution

guarantees freedom of the press, but with a broad exception for content that is deemed ‘detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam or the rights of the public’. In addition to the print media, blogs and news websites—particularly those in the

Persian language—were increasingly targeted for censorship during 2012. The regime imposes systematic controls on the internet and other digital technologies. The

government has targeted journalists’ associations and civil society organizations that support freedom of expression. The authorities also use official or loyalist media

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outlets to propagate false claims about activists. Foreign media are unable to operate freely in Iran and are forbidden from shooting film or photography within Iran. Of the 232 writers, editors, bloggers, and photojournalists imprisoned worldwide at the time of the report, 45 were in Iran, and 15 were put behind bars in 2012 alone. Prison sentences are often lengthy and accompanied by professional bans.” (Freedom of the press 2013, “Iran”).

4. Methodological approach

In order to provide a detailed research, I will use the Google search machine and Google Scholar. These will help me find the information I need about the subject of Iranian

censorship, the ‘third phase’ censorship, ‘Halal internet’ or else ‘National Intranet’, whether or not it appears like it has been launched and therefore I will subsequently get results that will determine the conclusion of my research. My research is going to be empirical, because I will observe, experience and generate the data and analyse them. I will try to explain

thoroughly the interaction of the Iranian government and the ‘third phase’ censorship after considering all the literature and the press reports about Iranian censorship. Moreover, I am going to test the claims of the websites and blogs that were given to me using proxies and specifically the tool Censorship explorer, by digitalmethods.net. Furthermore, I will use the Likekhor2 and Alexa3 list, provided by Richard Rogers’s and Erik Borra’s existing research “Mapping Iran Online”. I will choose 51 random URLs; more specifically 1 URL in every 50 working URLs, and I will test if those blogs from the Likekhor list are online from

Amsterdam in Iran while using multiple Iranian proxies in different cities of Iran to check if the URLs are nationally blocked. Considering the Alexa list, I will select the first 20 websites and repeat the procedure with the different proxies mentioned before. Moreover, in this section I will answer to the following questions: What is ‘third phase’ censorship? How many ‘phases’ of censorship are there and what do governments hide behind ‘third phase’

2_{“Likekhor is a website that provides categorised and ranked lists of Persian-language weblogs and blog posts}

according to the number of subscribers they have, the number of times they are ‘liked,’ and the number of times they are ‘shared’ in Google Reader. Likekhor gathers its data by ‘following’ the shared and liked items of 31,738 Persian-language Google Reader users, which it detected using its own robots, and by following the 2,570 blogs that are registered with it.”(Digital Methods Initiative, “Short History”)

3_{Alexa list is used by users that live in Iran, but anyone can use Google to find domain websites that are .ir.}

However, there is no Google.ir, because the US banned its use. “Alexa's traffic estimates are based on data from our global traffic panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions.”(Alexa website, “About us”)

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censorship? Why do they apply it, if they do apply it? I will also present and explain the methods and the results of my research.

There is no single body that studied the Iranian censorship continuously in the last 15 years. Therefore I had to gather information from different studies, reports and articles. I will justify why I chose to study bloggers and Iran in this section and I will explain and analyse my methodology and place my results.

4.1 Interpreting the ‘Halal internet’

“A national intranet is an Internet protocol-based walled garden network maintained by a nation state as a national substitute for the global Internet, with the aim of controlling and monitoring the communications of its inhabitants, as well as

restricting their access to outside media. Other names have been used, such as the use of the term "halal internet" in Islamic countries. (Wikipedia, “National Intranet”).

“It is a religiously acceptable internal network isolated from the World Wide Web and its purpose is to provide national cybersecurity and promote Islamic moral values.” (Sara Reardon, “First evidence for Iran’s parallel halal internet”). According to John Palfrey there are “Four phases of Internet regulation”: 1) ‘open internet’, 2) ‘access denied’, 3) ‘access controlled’-surveillance and 4) ‘access contested’- which we are entering since 2010. A combination of articles from Iranian and foreign journals, magazines and website articles ensure that ‘Halal internet’ is real but they do not make clear if it has been launched or not. On the other hand, Iran finally admitted the throttle of internet connection speed during the elections of June 2013 with the excuse being that it was to maintain a calm atmosphere. Starting with the existence of the national intranet, New Scientist Tech magazine published an article with the title “First evidence for Iran's parallel halal internet”, in 2010, proving that ‘Halal internet’ exists in Iran. Collin Anderson, an independent security researcher in

Washington DC, contacted some people inside Iran who helped him try to connect to computers inside the country. “Finally, the team found evidence that the routers that control internet traffic in and out of Iran are equipped to filter web pages” (Sara Reardon, “First evidence for Iran's parallel halal internet”). What Anderson argues about is that with the creation and use of this national intranet, the government can control the society (social control). Iranians will launch their own versions of Facebook. The government will slow

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down the connection speed and block websites; like they already did with Gmail and

YouTube, so that users will be forced to use the national internet, if they want to have access and high speed connectivity. At the end of this article Sara Reardon says that in her opinion the ‘Halal internet’ is unlikely to succeed. Another article from Ars technical

“Security researcher unearths plans for Iran’s halal Internet”, in 2012, mentions Collin Anderson who found an RFI (Request For Information) document which states that “Currently the matter of Internet cleanup is being done via filtering at the Internet gateways of our country, which has had its own set of problems” (Cyrus Farivar, “Security researcher unearths plans for Iran’s halal Internet”).

Anderson declared that the Iranian government is not planning on cutting off the access on the World Wide Web and he also explained that

“The acquisition of a censorship system would not be necessary if Iran was trying to create a highly restricted whitelist or completely cut itself off from the Internet. This might suggest that the government has not been able to acquire the services of foreign companies for planning and optimizing an infrastructure. Other Iranian experts have suggested that this apparent ramping up of the halal Internet has come as a direct result of American efforts to pierce what President Barack Obama recently called an ‘electronic curtain’ over Iran. Since 2010, the State Department has been heavily involved in funding ‘Internet freedom’ efforts to bring unrestricted access to various parts of the world, including Iran.” (Cyrus Farivar, “Security researcher unearths plans for Iran’s halal Internet”).

An older article from Fast Company features the ‘Halal project’ which was supposed to be launched 18 months after the release of that article (18 April 2011).

“Mohammadi confirmed that the ‘Halal Internet’ will be extensively censored and monitored by Iranian authorities. Entertainment, ecommerce and egovernment services will all be available through the service, which is expected to have 10 million initial users. Iranians, Mohammadi stressed, will also continue to have access to the internet as a whole.” (Neal Ungerleider, “Iran cracking down online with ‘Halal Internet’”). In this next article by Neal Ungerleider, “Iran’s ‘Halal internet’ is really a ‘Filternet’”, published in Fast Company again, he argues that the Iranian government in the beginning of 2013, quietly launched ‘Halal internet’. Underleider claims and supports his claim with

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evidence that the Iranian national web was launched before the elections of June 2013, because the government throttled the connection speed for foreign websites during the elections. Neal says that the plans for the national intranet changed and “Instead of calling it the Halal Internet, wags are now calling it ‘the Filternet’, and are turning to Twitter to report workaround tips. Due to the censorship efforts, nearly a million Iranians used VPNGATE last week to access the outside world.” (Neal Underleider, “Iran’s ‘Halal internet’ is really a ‘Filternet’”). Saeed Kamali Dehghan in her article “Iran clamps down on internet use”, published from The Guardian in 2012, argues about how the Iranian government is preparing internet users for the launch of the national internet by applying extremely strict rules on internet cafes before the elections of March 2012. “The authorities have said for some years that Iran should have a parallel network which would conform to Islamic values and provide ‘appropriate’ services. In April, a senior official, Ali Agha-Mohammadi announced

government plans to launch ‘halal internet’.” (Saeed Kamali Dehghan, “Iran clamps down on internet use”). On the other hand, Jessica McKenzie in her article “Mixed messages from Iran on Internet Access” published in TechPresident website, discusses the mixed messages that Ali Agha-Mohammadi and Hassan Rouhani, the president-elect gave to the public about the online censorship. The Minister of Communication admitted the country slowed down the connection speed and the president-elect stated that he will reduce the online censorship. Collin Anderson that has been mentioned many times before in this paper, reported that the internet speed went back to normal a week after the end of the elections and he pointed out that the censorship now is not as aggressive as it used to be. In the article “Iran launches ‘Halal Internet’” by Doha Centre for Media Freedom, published in 2012, the author does not actually say that the ‘National Internet’ was launched but that the government is preparing users by blocking Gmail and Google- YouTube was already banned years before that. The government sent a message to all users that said: “Due to the repeated demands of the people, Google and Gmail will be filtered nationwide. They will remain filtered until further notice.” (Doha Centre for Media Freedom,“Iran launches ‘Halal Internet’”). A big percentage of the populations is finding ways using VPN software to access banned/blocked websites in Iran. “Iran is working on rolling out its national intranet that it says will be easier to rid of un-Islamic content. Officials claim it will be faster and more secure, even though users' data will be more easily subject to monitoring.” (Doha Centre for Media Freedom, “Iran launches ‘Halal Internet’”). Small media in one of the articles states that “May 5 2013 should therefore be marked as a seminal date in the development of state power in the Islamic Republic. It marks the point in time that the government made an unprecedented step towards full control

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over Iranian cyberspace”. (Small media, “Has Iran finally launched the Halal ‘net?”)

Consequently, the ‘Halal internet’ has been launched in 2013, before the elections of June, to prevent the online chaos that was created during the elections of 2009, to implement and ‘improve’ the cyber security and to control the web users. The government as mentioned before in this paper, throttled the internet connection speed even for the most common websites. On average, Iran blocks 1.500 websites per month, including Google, Gmail

recently and YouTube a while ago. The website International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, posted an article in December 2013, about the declaration of the Iranian Minister of Communication that he will be against rigorous internet blocking. Mahmout Vaezi talked to reporters and stated his opposition about the extreme control methods of the internet which the government has been applying for the last eight years and his strain to be able to unblock some websites so that Iranians will have access to them is continuing. In a previous

interview, from November, reporters asked him if the government would unblock Facebook and his answer was

“A decision about this subject will be made in a Committee formed by the Judiciary, and one of my deputies will serve as the representative from the Ministry of

Communications at this Committee. The cabinet’s opinions will be coordinated, but ultimately the decision will be made by the aforementioned Committee.”

(International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “Iran’s Minister of Communications Says He Will Oppose Stringent Internet Blocking”).

In an article from 9 April 2012 on International Business Times, Amrutha Goyathri, states that in the next 5 months from that day, Iranians would have no access to the World Wide Web because of the launch of the ‘National intranet’.

“Reza Taghipour, the Iranian minister for Information and Communications Technology, announced the setting up of a national Intranet and the effective blockage of services like Google, Gmail, Google Plus, Yahoo and Hotmail, in line with Iran's plan for a clean Internet. Internet censorship has been in place for quite a long time in Iran as the authorities fear an anti-government revolution like the Arab Spring that rocked countries such as Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain and Jordan. The Islamic regime of Iran has a bad track record with regard to Internet freedom as it has made several attempts in the past to temporarily deny access

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to the Internet.” (Amrutha Goyathri, “Iran to Shut Down Internet Permanently; 'Clean' National Intranet in Pipeline”).

At the end of the article Amrutha mentions that Iran is planning on selling the formula of the ‘National intranet’ to other countries all over the world, which could be considered very dangerous for our freedom. The last article by Daisy Carrigton for CNN, is a proof that the Iranian government is trying to turn internet users onto using the ‘Halal internet’ by throttling the connection to a minimum speed before important events, like the elections of June 2013, and by blocking websites and online services which are available on the ‘National intranet’, also by blocking VPNs so that Iranians cannot access foreign URL.

“The idea, says Bangi, is to push users to adopt the higher-speed national internet network, which some have dubbed the "halal internet" -- halal meaning permissible under Islamic law. It acts essentially as a giant intranet allowing the authorities more power to monitor web activity and restrict access to websites.” (Daisy Carrigton, “Iran tightens grip on cyberspace with 'halal internet'”).

Blogistan is the book of Annabelle Sreberny and Gholam Khiabany about the cyber culture in Iran, the 700.000 active bloggers, the blocked websites, Iranian politics considering the internet and in general and the fact that the internet and its blockade or its opening means social change. The authors pose some questions about the future of the Iranian internet such as:

“The Internet is often celebrated as an agent of social change in countries like Iran, but most literature on the subject has struggled to grasp what this new phenomenon actually means. How is it different from print culture? Is it really a new public sphere? Will the Iranian blogosphere create a culture of dissidence, which eventually overpowers the Islamist regime?” (“Blogistan”, Abstract).

The Iranian government always wanted to control expression in ‘new technology’

environment and to “orchestrate and manage the slow development of the private sector and the inhibitions placed on entrepreneurial ICT(information and communication technologies) activity in a field that has produced Net millionaires in other parts of the world (“Blogistan”, p.1-2). Maral Pourkazemi with her infographic “The Iranian Internet” explains

“The complexity of online censorship in Iran. Including information on the general Internet usage, Iran's national web project, namely the ‘Halal’ Internet and its evasion,

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the Iranian blogosphere, the cyber police, criminal hackers, and the systems of governance, the six panels decipher the Iranian Internet between freedom and isolation.” (Vevo, Maral Pourkamezi, “The Iranian Internet”).

In May 2014, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, was fretted due to one of his addresses in his freedom of speech being removed from the airwaves by his rival. He responded through social media with sincere and mocking posts towards the government considering their effort to control users’ access on the internet, social media and satellite television. As a

counteraction he joined the social messaging website CLOOB.com and the video sharing website Aparat.com. The reformist President indicated that internet censorship is damaging the Iranian economy and is pushing educated and wealthy people away from their country.

“Mr Rouhani added it was a right of all Iranians to access the internet and deal with government through electronic platforms. ‘This country will not progress or overcome its problems by slogans and rhetoric,’ (Rouhani qtd. in “Iran's president says internet controls must go”) he said in another swipe at the ideologues who oppose his reform agenda.” (The Telegraph, “Iran's president says internet controls must go”).

Javan Daily, a news website controlled by The Guards attacked the President claiming that his plan is to introduce Iran to the Western influences and the fall of the Islamic system.

4.2 The procedure of the proxy tests

Given the research questions, my research is going to be empirical. As mentioned before there is not existing research on ‘third phase’ censorship in Iran. Different organizations studied the changes of Iranian internet but not coherently. To test if the ‘third phase’ censorship exists, I searched for incidental reports, press reports about Iranian censorship, articles and papers on Iranian censorship. The results were satisfying, even though not a single body has done a continuous research about this subject over the last 15 years, there are many individuals, activists and organizations that are interested in the situation of the cyber culture in Iran. The websites and reports I based my research on are ‘Reporters without Boarders: Iran’, ‘OpenNet Initiative: Iran’, ‘Iran Media Program: Finding a Way’, ‘Iran Media Program: Internet Censorship in Iran’, ‘National Web Studies: Mapping Iran Online’, ‘Small media: Iran’ and papers such as ‘Living as a criminal’ and ‘Dimming the internet’. After carefully reading these reports and numerous newspaper articles about the ‘Halal

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internet’, the regime change in June 2013 and the strain of the Iranian government to control the cybersecurity of their internet, I collected my results which I will capture on the next section of this paper. Moreover, I collected data (websites and blogs) drawn from previous observations, specifically from the report “Mapping Iran Online” and analysed it by using qualitative data analysis methods. I used the URLs_per_web.csv list, from Richard Rogers’s and Erik Borra’s report on blocked Iranian websites and blogs and I tested if they are online from Amsterdam and in Iran, by using various Iranian proxies from different cities in Iran, to check if the websites and blogs are nationally blocked. I will fulfil those tests in two different ways that I will explain shortly. The list provided by R. Rogers and E. Borra research

contains thousands of URLs therefore I chose the first twenty websites, then I selected different proxy servers, currently updated, from different cities in Iran through Let us Hide4

and created three columns on Microsoft Excel; each column (F, J, N) is a proxy and in each column I listed the results (working, not working etc.) for every URL I checked using the specific proxy. I also used Info Sniper5 to locate the IP addresses for the three proxies, to make sure they are from different places inside Iran. I have posited the Excel table in the Appendix 2.

Column A- List of websites from “Mapping Iran online” (Alexa list).

Column F- IP address: 85.185.170.245, Port: 8080, N/A Iran, Provider: High Tech University.

Column J- IP address: 78.38.80.129. Port: 8080, Neka Iran, Provider: Azad University of Neka.

Column N- IP address: 188.136.208.1, Port: 8080, Gostar Iran, Provider: Araax New Network.

After that, I used Censorship Explorer a tool from ‘Digital Methods Initiative’ website to test again if I can access certain websites (from the Alexa list) from Amsterdam in Iran, using different proxies from different places in Iran. I checked the same first twenty websites using three different proxies that had just been updated on 22 April 2014 at 16.24 UTC+1. This tool, checked if the URLs I chose are censored in Iran by using Iranian proxies and also

4_{“Free proxy servers, fresh and checked. Hide your IP address, encrypt your data.”}

http://letushide.com/location/ir/list_of_free_Iran_Islamic_Republic_of_proxy_servers

5_{“InfoSNIPER offers free as well as commercial web API geolocation services. For a free demo simply fill in the}

IP address or domain name in the form below in order to get detailed geolocation information on your entry. Check out our other services as well. Thank you for visiting us.” http://www.infosniper.net/

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located them. The procedure is very simple: I placed the twenty URLs into the harvester and chose one proxy each time and then clicked ‘Get HTTP response codes′. The result of this search is a table with columns including

“The URL requested, Country of proxy, Type of proxy, Proxy, Request time-which was limited to 20seconds, Response time, 20seconds time out, the response code6_of the URL fetched through the proxy, as returned in the HTTP headers, Response code in NL, Response differs, RST (proxy)- whether the connection to the proxy was dropped by means of a reset package, RST (NL)- whether the connection from the Netherlands was dropped by means of a reset package, redirects (proxy)- the number of redirects the tool had to follow in order to get at the final URL, redirects (NL)- the number of redirects for our connection from the Netherlands, redirected to (proxy)- the final URL retrieved through the proxy, redirected to (NL)- the final URL retrieved from our connection from the Netherlands, HTML differs- whether the HTML returned by the proxy and our own server differ. This comparison is might be useful for static pages.”(Digital Methods Initiative, “Censorship Explorer7”).

I have placed the tables with the results below (Appendix 2); the results were limited to the column ‘Redirected to Proxy’, because there was no more space (width) in this document and I wanted the results to be as visible as possible.

The three proxies used in my first attempt to test the websites are the following:

 For table 1- IP address: 188.136.216.129, Port: 8080 (transparent), Gostar Iran, Provider: Araax New Network.

 For table 2- IP address: 78.38.114.221, Port: 8080 (anonymous), Zabol Iran, Provider Zabol University of Medical Sciences.

 For table 3- IP address: 78.38.80.129, Port: 8080 (transparent), Neka Iran, Provider Azad University of Neka.

“Following a crackdown on Iranian media beginning in 2000 many Iranians turned to weblogging (blogging) to provide and find political news. The first Persian

language blog is thought to have been created by Hossein Derakhshan, (in Canada), in 2001. Derakhshan also provided readers with a simple instruction manual in Persian on

6_{Wikipedia, “List of HTTP status coded”, last modified 23 April 2014.}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

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how to start a blog. In 2004, a census of blogs around the world by the NITLE found 64,000 Persian language blogs. In that year the Islamic government also began to arrest and charge bloggers as political dissidents and by 2005 dozens of bloggers had been arrested.” (Wikipedia, “Blogging in Iran”).

Likekhor list includes categorized and ranked Persian-language weblogs and blog posts. Something similar is Google display planner which shows users which websites are been used mostly from Iranians in Persian-language, so that advertisers know where to post their commercials. But there is also a directory of Iranians’ English blogs and websites, which is provided by the website ‘Iranians’ blogs’.

To test whether the Iranian government is censoring blogs, I selected 51 random blog URLs from the Likekhor list, the list of top blogs in Iran, which was provided to me by R. Rogers and E. Borra, and used Censorship Explorer again to test if I can access those blogs from Amsterdam in Iran, using four different proxies from different cities in Iran. The list of the proxies is listed below and subsequently the content tables from Censorship Explorer are placed. The results were limited to the column ‘Redirects NL’, because there was no more space (width) in this document and I wanted the results to be as visible as possible (Appendix 3).

 For Table 1- IP address: 188.136.216.129, Port: 8080 (transparent), ISP: Ariana Gostar Spanada, Organisations: Araax New Network, City: Gostar.

 For Table 2- IP address: 217.219.190.129, Port: 8080 (transparent), ISP: Information Technology Company (ITC), Organisation: ITC, City: Tehran.

 For Table 3- IP address: 78.38.114.221, Port: 8080 (anonymous), ISP: Information Technology Company (ITC), Organisation: ZaBOL University of Medical Science, City: Sadb.

 For Table 4- IP address: 78.38.80.129, Port: 8080 (transparent), ISP: Information Technology Company (ITC), Organisation: Azad University of Neka, City: Neka. Finally, I will repeat the tests for the first and the second proxies for the 51 URLs, on the 12th of June 2014, which is a significant date as it is the anniversary of the disputed elections of 2009 in Iran. By running the tests on that specific I am seeking to interpret if the ‘third phase’ censorship implies or not. The tables from the Censorship Explorer tool are placed in the Appendix 4.

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The results are aggregated into these tables (Appendix 3) and will be analysed and

commented in the next section of this paper, ‘Results’ and ‘Interpreting the results’. In the following section we will observe if the results answer the research questions and if we can draw conclusions from them.

5.Results

In this section I will analyse the results given to me by the two different methods I applied. I chose the first twenty websites, then I selected different proxy servers, currently updated, from different cities in Iran through ‘Let us Hide’ website and created three columns on Microsoft Excel; each column (F, J, N) is a proxy and in each column I listed the results (working, not working etc.) for every URL I checked using the specific proxy; I used Info Sniper to locate the IP addresses for the three proxies, to make sure they are from different places inside Iran. The other method I used was the Censorship Explorer tool from ‘Digital Methods Initiative’ website where I tested the URLs to check if I can access certain websites (from the Alexa list) from Amsterdam in Iran, using different proxies from different places in Iran. I checked the same first twenty websites, as in the Excel table, using three different proxies that had just been updated in 22 April 2014 at 16.24 UTC+1. This tool, checked if the URLs I chose are censored in Iran by using Iranian proxies and also located them. Also, to test whether the Iranian government is censoring blogs, I selected 51 random blog URLs from the Likekhor list and used Censorship Explorer again to test if I can access those blogs from Amsterdam in Iran and is they are censored in Iran, using four different proxies from different cities inside Iran. This last part is what interests me more, considering my research is based on blocked bloggers. I will include below (Appendix 1) the instructions given from the Censorship Explorer tool that correlate to the interpretation of the results.

So based on the first three tables from Censorship Explorer, we are able to interpret the results for the websites as following. After using the proxy 188.136.216.129:8080 and based on the information given in the ‘instructions’ part (Appendix 1), the website

http://92.42.51.201 works in Iran but the HTTP status code in the Netherlands is not valid,

http://bahar-20.commobile.ir and http://bp.blogspot.com were not found in Iran and the status code in the Netherlands is not valid, http://fixfun.co.cc is forbidden in Iran and there was a gateway timeout for the Netherlands, http://lxl.iruploadfa.com was not found in Iran and the response code for the Netherlands is 0 so it is not valid, http://www.120iran.net is forbidden

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is forbidden in Iran but works in the Netherlands, http://www.1pars.com works in both countries, such as http://www.1pezeshk.com, http://www.2day.com, http://www.3eke.ir,

http://www.3jokes.com , http://www.3nasl.com. The website http://www.3sotfilesharing.com

was not found in Iran and the status code in the Netherlands is not valid,

http://www.40sotoon.net had internal server error in both Iran and the Netherlands. The next six websites http://www.466.ir, http://www.4downloads.ir, http://www.4shared.com,

http://www.7gardoon.com , http://www.7rang.ir , http://www.98fun.com work properly in both Iran and the Netherlands.

The usage of the proxy 78.38.114.221:8080 gave me different results compared to the first one. The website http://92.42.51.201 is not valid because the proxy returned to a 0 response code in both countries and the field ‘20sec time out’ said ‘Yes’, which makes it erroneous,

http://bahar-20.commobile.ir was not found in Iran and the response code 0 is not valid from the Netherlands, and http://bp.blogspot.com was not valid like the first URL,

http://fixfun.co.cc is forbidden in Iran and there is a gateway timeout when trying to access it in the Netherlands. Moreover, http://lxl.iruploadfa.com was not found in Iran and is there is an undefined error (response code 0) when someone tries to access it from the Netherlands,

http://www.120iran.net is forbidden in Iran abut works in the Netherlands. The next two

websites http://www.1pars.com , http://www.1pezeshk.com work in both countries, but

http://www.2day.com doesn’t work in Iran but does work in the Netherlands. Also

http://www.3eke.ir works in both countries, but on the other hand http://www.3jokes.com ,

http://www.3nasl.com are not valid in Iran because the response code returns as 0 and because the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘Yes’ and they work in the Netherlands. The website

http://www.3sotfilesharing.com was not found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands, there is an internal server error in both countries for http://www.40sotoon.net and the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘Yes’. Finally, the next six URLs http://www.466.ir works, but

http://www.4downloads.ir, http://www.4shared.com , http://www.7gardoon.com ,

http://www.7rang.ir , http://www.98fun.com work in both countries but the last five ones are not trustworthy, because the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘Yes’.

After using the proxy 78.38.80.129:8080, the results were that the website http://92.42.51.201

works in Iran but the response code for the Netherlands is not valid, http://bahar-20.commobile.ir was not found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands and

http://bp.blogspot.com is forbidden in Iran and not valid in the Netherlands which is similar to http://fixfun.co.cc which is forbidden in Iran and had a gateway timeout in the

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Netherlands. The website http://lxl.iruploadfa.com is not found in Iran and has an undefined error in the Netherlands, http://www.120iran.net is forbidden in Iran but works normally in the Netherlands, http://www.1pars.com , http://www.1pezeshk.com, http://www.2day.com, http://www.3eke.ir , http://www.3jokes.com , http://www.3nasl.com work properly in both countries, but http://www.3sotfilesharing.com was not found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands. The website http://www.40sotoon.net has internal server error in both countries, and http://www.466.ir works in both countries , but http://www.4downloads.ir is not valid in Iran and the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘Yes’, although it works in the Netherlands. Also

http://www.4shared.com , http://www.7gardoon.com , http://www.7rang.ir , http://www.98fun.com work in both countries.

According to the results from the first proxy 188.136.216.129:8080, http://alireza.rafiee.info

is not found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands, http://www.1farakav.wordpress.com

is blocked in Iran but available in the Netherlands , both http://www.2taman.persianblog.ir

and http://www.aaraamesh.blogfa.com work in Iran and the Netherlands. On the other hand

http://www.aidinburgh.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands. The URL http://www.amirmehdi.com works in both countries, but

http://www.asemani369.blogfa.com cannot be found in neither,

http://www.azingoft.blogspot.com is forbidden in Iran but works in the Netherlands,

http://www.basijisiasi.parsiblog.com works is Iran but is not valid in the Netherlands. The next blog http://www.biparva.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands,

http://www.booneha.blogfa.com is available in both countries, but

http://www.chapkook.blogspot.com is forbidden in Iran and works in the Netherlands. The blog http://www.daghdaghehh.parsiblog.com is working in Iran but is not valid in the

Netherlands because the response code is 0, http://www.deldardsardard.blogfa.com cannot be found in either country and http://www.dpers.co.cc has a gateway timeout in both countries. The next two URLs http://www.enkratic.persianblog.ir and http://www.farnet.ir are working in both Iran and the Netherlands, http://www.fullnet.ir cannot be found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands, http://www.gijali.com is blocked in Iran but works properly in the Netherlands. Furthermore http://www.haafezz.blogfa.com works in both countries, but

http://www.havakesh14.persianblog.ir is blocked in Iran and works in the Netherlands. Next

http://www.hosseinsanapour.blogfa.com works in both countries, http://www.iranstart.com

cannot be found in Iran and the HTTP status code is not valid in the Netherlands,

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Netherlands. In addition, the next three URLs http://www.khaliljavadi.blogfa.com,

http://www.l-liss.blogsky.com and http://www.lo7e.persianblog.ir work in both countries, conversely http://www.mamlekate-daran.blogspot.com and

http://www.masoomphoto.wordpress.com are blocked in Iran but work in the Netherlands,

http://www.meysamrashidi.blogfa.com works in both countries,

http://www.mirzaghashamsham.wordpress.com is forbidden in Iran but works in the Netherlands. Moreover http://www.mortin.persianblog.ir and http://www.namaz-pray.blogsky.com are working in both countries. On the contrary

http://www.niaak.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands and

http://www.oddnormal.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran and cannot be found in the Netherlands. The blog http://www.pagard.ayene.com is available in both countries, but

http://www.persian.anarkhanoom.com is forbidden in Iran and available in the Netherlands,

http://www.pooyaroohi.mihanblog.com cannot be found in either country, in contrast

http://www.rainofmercy.blogfa.com and http://www.robaii.blogfa.com are available in both countries. Next come http://www.safari-abas.blogspot.com,

http://www.sasasose.wordpress.com and http://www.shadibaqi.blogspot.com, which are blocked in Iran and available in the Netherlands, on the contrary http://www.shokolat-7.blogfa.com and http://www.socialmedia.ir are available in both countries. Then

http://www.tabrizname.blogspot.com is forbidden in Iran and cannot be found in the Netherlands, http://www.tcmaster.blogfa.com works in both countries. This blog

http://www.toutak.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands, next comes

http://www.vaxi.blogfa.com which cannot be found in either country. Finally,

http://www.writeweb.ir and http://www.zamanesokot.blogfa.com are working in both countries.

Based on the results from the second proxy 217.219.190.209:8080, http://alireza.rafiee.info is not found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands, http://www.1farakav.wordpress.com is blocked in Iran but available in the Netherlands , both http://www.2taman.persianblog.ir and

http://www.aaraamesh.blogfa.com work in Iran and the Netherlands, although the first one might be untrustworthy considering that the field ‘20s time out’ has ‘yes’. On the other hand

http://www.aidinburgh.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands. The URL http://www.amirmehdi.com works in both countries, but

http://www.asemani369.blogfa.com cannot be found in neither,

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http://www.basijisiasi.parsiblog.com works is Iran but is not valid in the Netherlands and is might untrustworthy because the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘yes’. The next blog

http://www.biparva.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands,

http://www.booneha.blogfa.com is available in both countries, but

http://www.chapkook.blogspot.com is forbidden in Iran and works in the Netherlands. The blog http://www.daghdaghehh.parsiblog.com is working in Iran but is not valid in the Netherlands because the response code is 0 and it cannot be trustworthy because the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘yes’, http://www.deldardsardard.blogfa.com cannot be found in either country and http://www.dpers.co.cc has a gateway timeout in both countries. The next URL

http://www.enkratic.persianblog.ir is working in both Iran and the Netherlands but the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘yes’, so it cannot be considered trustworthy. Also http://www.farnet.ir

has been removed permanently in Iran but works in the Netherlands. Next is

http://www.fullnet.ir which cannot be found in Iran and is not valid in the Netherlands,

http://www.gijali.com is blocked in Iran but works properly in the Netherlands. Furthermore

http://www.haafezz.blogfa.com works in both countries, but

http://www.havakesh14.persianblog.ir is blocked in Iran and works in the Netherlands. Next

http://www.hosseinsanapour.blogfa.com works in both countries but is cannot be trusted because the field ‘20s time out’ said ‘yes’, http://www.iranstart.com cannot be found in Iran and the HTTP status code is not valid in the Netherlands,

http://www.jomelatetalaii.parsiblog.com is working in Iran but is not valid in the Netherlands and also the ‘20s time out’ field said ‘yes’. In addition, the next three URLs

http://www.khaliljavadi.blogfa.com, http://www.l-liss.blogsky.com and

http://www.lo7e.persianblog.ir work in both countries, conversely http://www.mamlekate-daran.blogspot.com is blocked in Iran but works in the Netherlands and

http://www.masoomphoto.wordpress.com is not valid in Iran but works in the Netherlands, but the ‘20s time out’ field said ‘yes’ so it cannot be trusted. The URL