Iran and the Google Blocking / Unblocking
Or, "It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder"
Iran blocked then unblocked Google, as I assume people have heard by now.
"Due to an error, the Google site was filtered on Sunday evening but the error was corrected and now Google and its different sites like Gmail can be used," said an official from the state-run communications company.
Well, what is there for me to say? I actually tend to believe them that it was an "error". If they were really going to shut-off search engines, they would have taken out Yahoo and MSN too. And I don't think they'd want to shut off Gmail short of a war or a coup d'etat. They apparently blacklisted a pattern like "*.google.com", which, just speculation, might have been a typo for some sort of typosquatting, or a misfire from some sort of link-spamming.
I could harp again on how this shows how fragile a free Internet is, how with censorware widely deployed, vast amounts of information can be censored quite arbitrarily. But I've been saying that for more than a decade, so I doubt saying it once more is going to help anything (or help me in any way).
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in censorware | on September 17, 2007 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink)
