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Iranians face a decent amount of governmental censorship when they attempt to log into the Internet from their country. However, for even the most not-so-savvy of tech folk, receiving unfettered access to the Web at large is as easy as firing up a VPN application and tunneling your way past governmental blocks.

Or, at least, it was.

"Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked," said Iranian official Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard in an interview with Reuters. "Only legal and registered VPNs can from now on be used."

So, those looking to tap into Facebook, YouTube, various news sites and, yes, even Google's search engine itself (among other banned websites) will have to find different methods for doing so which do exist, according to an Iranian interviewed by Reuters who said he was using an unnamed software tool to bypass Iran's blocks.

Of course, it would be incorrect to say that Iran's banning VPNs in general. In actuality, the government is already supplying access to "official" and "legal" VPN services that Iranian businesses can tap into.

"We have started distributing official VPN services for Iranian users. Those need this service to open safe connections can apply in the program and we will review their cases one by one. If their request was approved, then we will introduce legal providers and licensed clients can buy their needed services," said Iran's Mehdi Akhavan Behabadi in February interview with the Tehran Chronicle.

Of course, such a move also allows government officials to more directly monitor that which users are attempting to access via said government-sanctioned VPNs.

"By launching this program, Iranian government can prosecute users who are violating state laws and Internet Filtering Committee will be able to take offenders to national courts under supervision of judiciary service," Behabadi said.

It remains to be seen just how Iran's latest crackdown on Internet access or in this case, the means by which the country's industrious citizens bypass Iran's filters for the Web will play a role in the country's upcoming presidential election in June. Protesters during the 2009 Iranian elections made good use of social networking services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to receive news, organize, and post up-to-the-minute information about that was happening during their various demonstrations.

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Iran Blocks VPNs to Prevent Circumventing Web Censorship

Say_No_To_Censorship
The video for KDU MPW 2013 presentation. Censorship

By: sexyrnr

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Say_No_To_Censorship - Video

At Issue #2511 "Book Censorship"
A discussion on the reasons why some people attempt to censor books, particularly those for children, and how libraries respond. An ISU English professor and a librarian will explain policies that address the issue. Guests: Jan Susina - Illinois State Univ. English Professor; Genna Buhr -- Fondulac District Library; and Roberta Koscielski - Peoria Public Library Associate Director

By: WTVP

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At Issue #2511 "Book Censorship" - Video

Jimmy Kimmel FCC Censorship
Check it out, funny stuff here.

By: cspe3133

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Jimmy Kimmel FCC Censorship - Video

If you wanted to learn more about Sina Weibo's censorship patterns, today is your lucky day. A group of computer scientists from Bowdoin College, Rice College, and the University of New Mexico have, along with an independent researcher, released the results of an academic study of Sina Weibo's censorship practices. The study, which we came across via MIT Technology Review, used "architecture [that could] detect post deletions within one minute of the deletion event," giving the researchers perhaps the most precise look yet into how quickly Sina's content team takes down sensitive Weibo posts. The results? Sina is pretty darn fast:

So Sina's censors are pretty fast. But what, exactly, are they deleting? Researchers used a variety of analytical tools to look at what content was most quickly deleted, and found that:

Researchers also found that, unsurprisingly, users with more total deleted posts tended to get their posts deleted more quickly than other users, suggesting that Sina's content team was watching their accounts more carefully. The following chart from the study shows the downward trend in post lifetime as a user's number of total deleted posts increases:

Of course, it's not all humans doing the deleting. In fact, by the study's estimations, for an all-human team to censor Weibo, 4,200 team members would be required, assuming each team member could read at the blazing rate of 50 posts per minute. The study points out that as a result of that, weibo's censorship system has become an incredibly complex system, employing both human and software censors, employing multiple blocked keyword lists that trigger different censorship responses, search filtration systems, and more. (Of course, none of that should come as much of a surprise to longtime weibo users, who have likely experienced many of the different types of censorship on Sina Weibo firsthand).

If you're really interested in Weibo censorship, the full paper is worth a read, and although it's a bit dry and quite technical in places, the good news is that it's only ten pages long.

(via MIT Technology Review)

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Censorship Alert! Academic Study Shows Sina Weibo's Human Censors Are Pretty Darn Fast