Iran: You can have Gmail, but YouTube’s still a no no

Iran has lifted its restrictions on Gmail less than a week after implementing them but reportedly to place even stricter curbs on YouTube.

AFP reports that Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, the secretary of an official group tasked with detecting internet content deemed illegal, had said in a message last week that “Google and Gmail will be filtered nationwide… until further notice.”

According to Reza Miri, a member of the telecommunications ministry committee tasked with filtering the internet in Iran, however, the outage was as a consequence of the country’s government trying to up its censorship of YouTube:

“Unfortunately, we do not yet have enough technical know how to differentiate between these two services. We wanted to block YouTube and Gmail was also blocked, which was involuntary,” he said.

“We absolutely do not want YouTube to be accessible. That is why the telecommunications ministry is seeking a solution to fix the problem to block YouTube under the HTTPS protocol while leaving Gmail accessible. That will soon happen.”

The video-sharing service was first blocked in Iran following demonstrations in the wake of the country’s 2009 elections, which some claim were rigged. It has supposedly been blocked since then. Given that the state managed to accidentally knock out Gmail and the HTTPS version of Google search while tinkering with its YouTube blocks however, it seems unlikely that it’s been entirely blocked.

As is the case in China, people can also access Western and anti-government sites using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).