Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 1
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran's culture ministry has announced that will take serious measures against the websites operating without a license.
In Iran, according to the local media laws, all websites should be registered by the Culture Ministry. If the website passes the registration, it is given a licence for funcitioning online.
Hossein Entezami, deputy culture minister for media affairs said that over 5,000 websites in Iran are operating without licenses, the official IRIB news agency reported Oct. 1.
Speaking of news websites, he said that over 6,800 in Iran have already received their licences, adding that some of the mentioned websites are currently inactive.
Entezami underlined many of the unregistered websites are publishing "immoral content" and "violating privacy."
The official also said that the culture ministry has decided to filter eight websites in the next several days, without giving more details.
He added that 350 websites have applied for licenses, noting that the ministry will issue the licenses after studying the cases.
Early in September the culture ministry said that it will shut down news websites operating without a license.
It should be noted that several of world's most popular social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran, while users are still able to access them via proxies. A proxy allows bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.
A survey by Iranian Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports indicates that 69.3 percent of the country's young generation use proxy servers to by-pass the filters and access banned Internet websites.
About four million Iranians are using Facebook, according to the culture minister, Ali Jannati who is himself a user of the website.