Iranian Programmer Sentenced to Death

Even with SOPA/PIPA, we forget how good we have it. An Iranian citizen has been sentenced to death for developing a piece of software that ended up running on a porn site. His crime? Insulting the sanctity of Islam. The worst part? He didn’t even know that the porn site was using his software.

Iranian programmer Saeed Malekpour is a Canadian resident. In 2008, he went back to Iran to visit his sick grandfather. The Iranian government took the opportunity to seize him on the crime of developing porn sites. As per usual, the tortured him until he was willing to confess crimes:

“They asked me to falsely confess to purchasing software from the UK and then posting it on my website for sale. I was forced to add that when somebody visited my website, the software would be, without his/her knowledge, installed on their computer and would take control of their webcam, even when their webcam is turned off. Although I told them that what they were suggesting was impossible from a technological point of view, they responded that I should not concern myself with such things.”

And they weren’t willing to let things such as innocence stand in the way of their confession:

“A large portion of my confession was extracted under pressure, physical and psychological torture, threats to myself and my family, and false promises of immediate release upon giving a false confession to whatever the interrogators dictated.”

The extracted confessions were played on national TV, and he was sentenced to death. The case ended up under review, but yesterday the sentence was upheld. That means that he could be executed at any time.

Malekpour didn’t develop porn sites. He had coded a piece of software for uploading pictures to websites, a la Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket or a dozen others. The piece of software ended up being used by one porn site for photo uploading, but that was without his knowledge of permission.

Canada hasn’t had the strongest response to this situation. John Ballard, the Foreign Minister, issued a statement from his office in which he said:

“Canada condemns Iran’s reported decision to execute Mr. Malekpour. Sadly, his case is far from the only example of Iran’s utter disregard for human life. The regime in Tehran frequently ignores principles like due process for its citizens domestically, and international human rights obligations generally.”

But that is the extent of Canada’s response. Then again, the US hasn’t had an overwhelmingly strong response to the death sentence on one of its citizens, either.

This is a reminder that we in America really do have it pretty easy. Our internet is still completely open, whereas Iran wants to build its own internet. Internet-based companies were able to demonstrate their disdain for SOPA/PIPA by a blackout while if that happened in China, the government probably would have thrown the owners in jail. We can only hope that things stay so good for us.

Reuters