Web Users Worldwide Help Iranians Thwart Censors

Expatriates, Pirate Bay work to get information on protests out of Iran
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 18, 2009 5:38 AM CDT
Web Users Worldwide Help Iranians Thwart Censors
The Pirate Bay, whose operators have been convicted of copyright violations, has offered tech assistance to Iranians seeking to bypass Internet censors. It's been temporarily redubbed The Persian Bay.   (The Pirate Bay)

Iranians are using every trick in the book to get information past the country's tight censorship of the Internet and to the outside world—and the outside world is doing its best to help, CNET reports. Sympathizers have set up a huge number of proxy servers to help disseminate information about the nation's protests, making life much harder for censors trying to block sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Large populations of Iranians living abroad are helping those at home bypass government filters, and notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has offered technical help. "Democracy is the supporting pillar of society. This is exactly what we think is so important about the Internet," said a spokesman for the site, which has temporarily changed its logo to "The Persian Bay."
(More Iran stories.)

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