Iran: No more download of music A new ban on high-speed internet will bar Iranians from downloading music to their computers and iPods
In a blow to the country's estimated five million internet users, service providers have been told by Iran's Islamic government to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages, writes The Guardian. Banning high-speed internet makes it more difficult to download foreign music which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. According to the newspaper a petition branding the high-speed ban as "backward and unprincipled" bearing more than 1,000 signatures is to be sent to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran filters more websites than any other country apart from China. Also satellite dishes are banned because they are said to bring "corrupt Western values" into the Iranian homes.
Iranian journalist and poet Sepideh Jodeyri compares the life and music of imprisoned musician Arya Aramnejad with Chile's revolutionary singer, Victor Jara.
On 8 November 2011 singer Arya Armnejad was arrested when his home was raided by intelligent agents. Arya Armnejad was beaten and taken to the solitary confinement in the Intelligence Ministry’s detention center in Sari.
Mohammad Mirzamani, the General Director of the Music Office in the Ministry of Culture in Tehran, told that a new music censorship law is being prepared by the ministry
On the occassion of two new albums with music of Kourosh and Googoosh, Jessica Hundley wrote an article for Los Angeles Times about music in Iran before the revolution
The 70-year-old singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian’s beloved Ramadan song ‘Rabbana’ is banned by the Iranian authorities, reported BBC's Karen Zarindast from Iran
During the Persian New Year, posters advertising concerts by banned Iranian musicians can be seen all over Yerevan, capital of the ex-Soviet republic Armenia
'Degenerate music' was a term used by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s to describe certain forms of music. The same term is increasingly adapted by Iranian authorities
On 1 October 2010, an online petition in support of Iranian singer Arya Aramnejad was started. He was imprisoned for singing his famous song ‘Ali Barkhir’ (‘O Ali raise up’)
