It seems Iranian authorities are trying to frustrate Iranian bloggers by blocking and tampering international blogging platforms so they migrate to internal providers like BlogFa.com and PersianBlog.ir, where it is easier to exert more control. By  law, blogging providers are responsible for any content appears on their platforms and they have to remove any “unlawful” content immediately. This way the Iran censors can take a backseat in running the censorship machine, while the “private sector” will do the job, in order to hold on their permits and not end up in jail (the owners of both BlogFa and PersianBlog were arrested after the election).

A similar policy was executed briefly on emails by filtering Gmail and announcing a ‘National Email Platform’. However, the policy failed as the national email platform never made it into reality and Gmail was unblokced after a while.  But the policy of “Frustrate Bloggers to use Internal Providers” stands a better chance as there are good internal alternatives and they are popular.