A New Regulatory Attempt Targets the Iranian Cyberspace
(Picture: Screenshot of Peyvandha.ir. Iranian users are redirected to this page when they try to access a banned webpage.)
By: Ali Attaran
On Monday, June 27, 2016, Secretary of Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC) announced that "individuals active in social media should soon prepare to obtain a license". Abolhassan Firouzabadi, speaker of Iran's most powerful regulatory and policy-making institute in Internet affairs, did not clarify on what he meant by the phrase "individuals active in social media". Nonetheless, he highlighted the social media's obligation to observe religious, ethical and legal conditions. "Domestic media, whether print or audiovisual, have so far proven commitment to these requirements," Firouzabadi said. He also complained that social media outside Iran are not bound to such obligations.
A bill recently passed by the council obliges messaging apps used by Iranian citizens to store data inside Iran SCC secretary reported. "All those [services] that intend to be active in Iran's social networks should demonstrate their adherence to Iran's rules and regulations by moving their data servers inside Iran," Firouzabadi said. He also pointed to negotiations held with the local private sector to encourage them run domestic social media. The move is viewed as a response to the immense popularity of social media and messenger apps such as Telegram and Instagram inside Iran.
The Reformist Arman Daily expressed skepticism towards the plan, welcoming Firouzabadi's remarks with the headline "Facebooking needs license!" A piece in the newspaper by Saba Hosseini argued that while the reference of the phrase "those active in social media" is not clear, it seems that all users of Facebook, Instagram etc. will be required to receive licenses for online activity. While there is an increasing tendency to reinforce surveillance of the cyberspace, Arman said, even SCC members have come to the conclusion that "withstand[ing] public demand and modern world realities", i.e. free flow of information, is hardly possible. Restriction, instead of obstruction, is the new policy of bodies in charge of regulating the Iranian cyberspace Arman added. The newspaper also quoted January 2016 figures, collected by ISNA news agency, that showed a 53 percent of Iranian citizens are members of at least one social media. Telegram is the most popular app among the Iranians with more than 20 million Iranian users Arman reported.
Jam-e Jam, official mouthpiece of Iran's state-run TV, was more welcoming towards Firouzabadi's remarks. "Cyberspace under the Aegis of Law" read the Jam-e Jam headline on Monday. Like many arguments of the Principlist media during the recent years, the piece invoked security and law to justify the decision. Pointing to the "murky waters" of the cyberspace and unchecked spread of rumors and false news, particularly in Telegram and Instagram, the newspaper expressed satisfaction with the SCC's decision to 'regulate' online activities. "Netizens' city cannot be lawless" Jam-e Jam, whose former managing editor Mohammad Sarafraz is a member of the Supreme Cyberspace Council, argued. "Regulating the cyberspace … is a way to block chaos and lawlessness … whose fallout affect the real world and jeopardize political and societal security of the country," Jam-e Jam concluded.
This is not the first attempt to bring the Iranian cyberspace under control. The regulation-averse nature of cyberspace, which recently earned it the title "scum" by powerful cleric Makarem Shirazi, has raised skepticism among Iranian officials, only to be aggravated by the emergence of powerful social media such as Facebook and Twitter. In 2006, during the heyday of blogging in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration made efforts to exert control over the Iranian blogosphere, by passing regulations that required bloggers to register their weblog. Throughout the recent years, few powerful platforms have managed to evade blockage inside Iran; be it Myspace, SoundCloud, Wordpress or Tumblr. Parallel to this obstruction-based approach, alternative platforms have been offered to Iranian users: Facename, the self-proclaimed "cultivated" social media, aspired to replace Facebook, while BisPhone was developed to replace Viber and later Telegram. Such initiatives have however failed for various reasons, from technological lag compared to powerful world-renowned rivals, to privacy concerns and limitations on publishable content. Against such an unsuccessful background, could the Cyberspace Council's new initiative make any achievements?