No skin for you!
In Iran, the government employs an army of people to crudely deface dresses and bikinis in foreign mags (via j|turn). It’s depressing how paternal this government philosophy is, and how juvenile and mundane the actual job of censorship must be. Iran even just capped consumer Net access at a pokey 128 kbps to keep the populace from being ‘corrupted’ by the West:
An Iranian Internet engineer, who asked not to be identified, said his firm had this week started reducing speeds provided to homes and Internet cafes, but not businesses… it appeared in line with what they see as a squeeze on the media by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who rails against the West…
Iran blocks some Web sites, including the BBC Persian-language site, which Iran says has an “anti-Iranian tendency”. Satellite dishes are banned because officials say they bring “corrupt” Western values into Iranian homes. [Link]
But in India, the largest democracy in the world, media is censored in a way that you never even see it, by blocking web sites and excising nudity in Hollywood flicks. You have to see movies here twice, once the way Smt. Prudini J. Wankar of the official censor board wants you to see it and once again on DVD the way the director intended. In practice, the allure of a two-second glimpse of a Hollyvixen’s bare bod isn’t sufficiently compelling to re-rent the DVD, so your media experience is degraded thanks to the same ayah state which once banned The Satanic Verses.
on Friday, October 20th, 2006, 3:26 am in Issues, Politics, Tech › 
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Why does the government have to take up this task ? Can’t they just have some guidelines and ban all magazines that don’t conform? It is juvenile. I have noticed on the website you linked that the authorities don’t have an issue with articles critical of their administration.
I think Iran should learn the art of political censorship and spin from the USA.
My favorite story of censorship Iranian style comes from Azhar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. Apparantly the supreme council appointed a film censor who was blind, and everything had to be described to him after which he would indicate what needed to be cut. Narrating salacious details? sounds kind of pornographic to me.
Malaysia does that black marker pen thing on magazines too (sometimes, whole pages are ripped out). But what’s more worrying is the censorship of literature.
These are some of the books which have been banned, withoout clear explanation, this year alone:
The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess
Immortality and Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
1001 Arabian Nights
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
all books by Khalil Gibran.
You may find the most complete details about iranian’s internet filtering system at http://www.no-filter.com. We also developed a comprehensive Guide to help people get rid of censorship. The PDF version of this Guide can be downloaded at pdf.no-filter.com. The site is in persian language, of course but the english translation will become available soon.
same thing happens in india… at least in the south - all skin is painted over, usually in a psuedo-bodysuit manner… i have pix… would be great to have an attach pic funtion…. like the comments on myspace…
hmm?
s
That Malaysian banned books list is chilling, Sharanya. I had no idea.
There’s more to update on that list :|
http://sharanyamanivannan.blogspot.com/2006/11/ohmygod.html