When Iran’s authorities started to block websites such as YouTube and Wikipedia in 2006, only a tenth of the population used the internet. Eight years later that figure has quadrupled. But to the religious conservatives who dominate the country’s courts the rise is nothing to celebrate — or even tolerate. Already upset by the recent rejection of their plans to restrict access to WhatsApp and Instagram, hugely popular social-messaging and picture-sharing smartphone applications, Iran’s legal establishment is stiffening its neck for a bigger confrontation, over curbing the giant filtering system that blocks access to thousands of websites. Once again, President Hassan Rohani’s government is on the more liberal side of the argument.In office for less than a year, Mr Rohani has in the past month dropped heavy hints about his intention to ease the restrictions that make criminals of many of the estimated 30m Iranians who go online. His case is simple: the world has moved on and technological progress means that Iran must move with it. Mr Rohani’s culture minister, Ali Jannati, has gone further, likening the current restrictions to the ban on fax machines, video recorders and video tapes that followed the Islamic revolution of 1979, an action he described in March as — in hindsight — “ridiculous”.
www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21607894-liberals-and-conservatives-argue-over-restrictions-internet-everyones-doing