Cyberfatwa: blogger death threats.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

BLOGGINO promises its more ambitious practitioners a chance to influence multitudes. For some there may even be a measure of renown. But as they begin to reach audiences comparable to those of traditional journalists, bloggers are also finding that they face some of traditional journalists' problems.

Repressive governments figured out fairly quickly that weblogs could be as threatening as the conventional press. In recent months, in addition to arresting several reporters, Iran's fundamentalist regime has blocked access to hundreds of dissident blogs and other political sites.

Now come threats of murder from equally repressive freelancers. An Iranian-Canadian blogger named Hossein Derakhshan wrote in November that the blog Islamic Army "has threaten [sic] a big list of Iranian blogger [sic] for their 'insults' to Allah, Prophet Mohammad and other Shia Imams." Derakhshan, who maintains blogs in...