DUBAI.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- forward his last visit to Iran, Canadian-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan was detained and interrogated, then forced to sign a epistle of apology for his blog writings before being allowed to leave the political division

Compared to others, Derakhshan is favored

Dozens of Iranian blogger have faced harassment by dint of the government, been arrested for voicing opposing views, and fl the rural parts in fear of prosecution through the past two years.

In the conservative Islamic Republic, where the rule has vast control over newspapers and the airwaves, weblogs are common of the only bastions of emancipated expression, where people can speak frankly about everything from sex to the nuclear discussion

however increasingly, they are coming subordinate to threat of censorship.

The Iranian blogging community, known as Weblogistan, is relatively modern It sprang to life in 2001 after hard-liners -- fighting back against a reformist president -- close up down more than 100 newspapers and magazines and detained writers. At the time, Derakhshan employmented instructions on the Internet in Farsi onward how to set up a weblog.

management CENSORS INTERNET

Since then, the community has grown dramatically. Although exact figures aren't known, adroits estimate there are between 70000 and 100000 active weblogs in Iran. The vast majority are in Farsi, on the contrary a few are in English.

Overall, the percentage of Iranians now blogging is "gigantic," said tart Hopkins, director of an online cluster called the Committee to secure Bloggers, who lives in Seattle.

"They are a talking folks very intellectual, social, and have a doom to say. And they are up against a small form into groups [in the government] that are trying to close up everyone up," said Hopkins.

To supporting cushion its campaign, the Iranian control has one of the greatest in quantity extensive and sophisticated operations to censor and filter Internet make contented of any country in the world -- inferior only to China, Hopkins said.

It also is common of a growing number of Mideast countries that rely in succession U.S. commercial software to do the filtering, according to a 2004 inquiry by a group called the OpenNet Initiative. The software that Iran uses braces both internationally hosted sites in English and local sites in Farsi, the cogitation found.

The filtering proces is backed by the agency of laws that force individuals who subscribe to Internet service providers to sign a promise not to access non-Islamic sites. The same laws also force the providers to install filtering mechanisms.

The filtering "is systematically getting worse," said Derakhshan, who was detained and questioned during a visit to Iran last spring, just before the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

however is the government threatened because the ten of thousands of Iranian blog are all throwing insults at it and calling for revolution? Not quite.

CULTURAL, SEXUAL ISSUES

The debates forward Iranian weblogs are rarely political. The mostly common issues are cultural, social and sexual. Blog also are a fit place to chat in a society where young men and women cannot plainly date. There are blogs that discuss women's issues, and undivideds that deal with art and photography.

if it were not that in Iran, activists say all debates are equally perceived as a threat from the authorities. Bloggers living in Iran understand that better than anyone otherwise

"I am same careful. Every blogger in Iran who writes in his/her name must be careful. I know the r lines and I not go beyond them," said Parastoo Dokouhaki, 25 who posts one of Iran's most popular blog "And these days, the r lines are getting tighter."

Dokouhaki doesn't directly write about politics. She sticks for the most part to social issues, but in Iran, that is also a taboo expose

"I write about the social inferences of government decisions and they don't like it, because they can't ascendency it," said Dokouhaki.

...