Iran's Latest Website "Mehr"

Iran has launched its acknowledge video-sharing website to emulate against Google's popular YouTube whose content is deemed inappropriate by the Islamic regime, the country television reported on Sunday.

The website called 'Mehr', meaning imagination in Farsi, aims to attract Persian-speaking users and also promote Iranian refinement, according to its About Us page.    "From now on, condition can upload their brief films on the website and access (IRIB) produced material," said IRIB deputy preponderant Lotfollah Siahkali.    A Facebook page dedicated to Mehr is providing links to some of its content, including music clips produced in Iran. 

  Iran has consistently censored YouTube since mid-2009, in the wake of the disputed elections that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.    It has besides been trying to aim its population accessing a number of foreign websites authorities mark as undermining the Islamic regime, including popular social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, as hale as the online pages of many Western media outlets, blogs, and pornographic hubs.    

The United States accuses Iran of seeking to utensil an "electronic curtain" to cut its citizens off from the world. It has imposed sanctions on the regime involved in the censorship.    

The announcement came amid first steps by the Islamic republic to establish a walled-off national intranet lonely from the worldwide Internet.    Iran is working upon rolling out its national intranet that it says will be neat of un-Islamic content. Authorities allegation the "National Internet" would not cut access to the Internet.    

Many web users in Iran -- half of whose 75-million stalwart population is connected -- are used to getting around the censorship through the usage of software known as a Virtual Private Network (VPN), whose sale is illegal in Iran.