Techotic

The Global Voices reported that Iran’s parliament is considering a bill that could make some blogging punishable by death. You can listen to correspondent Cyrus Farivar on Friday’s edition of the PRI radio show The World.

Hamid Tehrani wrote on Global Voices:

On Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add, “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,” to the list of crimes punishable by death.

In recent years, some Iranian bloggers have been sent to jail and many have had their sites filtered. If the Iranian parliament approves this draft bill, bloggers fear they could be legally executed as criminals. No one has defined what it means to “disturb mental security in society”.

Such discussion concerning blogs has not been unique to Iran. It shows that many authorities do not only wish to filter blogs, but also to eliminate bloggers!

[via boingboing image from Balocuh]