So Motallebi has become a symbol–to the Iranian government as well as to his supporters–of the Internet-savvy Iranian youth growing in numbers, of their need for a space for self-expression, and of a repressive government crackdown on any structure that creates such a space. Fellow members of the blogosphere are concerned that Motallebi is only the first scapegoat in what might become a new government preoccupation. “This is not about Sina,” says Pedram Moallemian, an Iranian blogger living in California. “The government has noticed this new area where free speech can flourish, and they want us to know that they’re watching us. Sina’s arrest is supposed to send a message.” Moallemian has responded with a message of his own: a 2,000-signature petition he wrote and circulated both within the Persian blogosphere and beyond. Top American bloggers like Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis and the San Jose Mercury News’ Dan Gillmor, as well as Reporters Without Borders, have expressed support for Motallebi.

What’s striking about Motallebi is how uncontroversial he appears to be. A former film critic, he wrote about the arts for a reformist newspaper that was shut down in January. (The paper ran an American cartoon from 1937, in which the bushy eyebrows on the central figure resembled too closely those of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei). Motallebi’s weblog was accused by the government of containing interviews with foreign press, and he did post some of his already-published articles in their uncensored versions, but it seems that it all remained relatively benign, and his arrest was made on unspecified charges. One of the last entries in his now-dismantled blog was about Michael Jordan’s retirement, says his friend Hossein Derakhshan, a fellow blogger.

Derakhshan, an Iranian living in Canada who goes by the name of Hoder, has helped in the creation of many of the Persian blogs whose writers are now voicing support for Motallebi. Moallemian estimates that there are 50,000 blogs in Persian, an impressive number already, and more impressive when one takes into account the lack of Internet access for most Iranians. Technologically aware young Iranians lucky enough to have access have jumped at the opportunity to share their experiences, connect to other people, and communicate across cultures via the Web. People like Derakhshan and Moallemian have become instrumental in connecting Iranians with the rest of the world through sites that translate, explain, and link webpages. “Weblogging has opened a whole new window for self-expression,” says Derakhshan. But since the news of Motallebi’s arrest, some worried bloggers have already begun to self-censor, limiting their pages to personal, apolitical subjects. “This is disappointing, because it means that the government is winning,” says Moallemian. “The goal of the censors is to make people afraid to express themselves.”

In fact, Motallebi’s own family has been trying to quiet the rush of outrage that followed the popular blogger’s arrest. “We were concerned for a while that all the support could cause further problems for Sina during the interrogation,” says Derakhshan, who posts Motallebi’s updates on his blog and who warned his readers that their support could cause harm. Motallebi’s family, not the censors, were the ones to shut down his website, worried that criticism of the government posted there by supporters would be detrimental to his case. But attitudes changed when respected Iranian journalist Masoud Behnoud encouraged Motallebi’s supporters to raise their voices rather than play into the hands of the people who arrested him. When Behnoud himself was thrown in jail in Iran, he explains in his own blog, he and his family tried the “silence” tactic, which proved ineffective. “This was an important development for us,” says Derakhshan.

The clear message of the Iranian government is that they’re watching bloggers, and will crack down on anyone even suspected of “undermining national security through cultural activity,” according to Reporters Without Borders. For the past year and a half, says Derakhshan , increasing numbers of journalists have been arrested who have often never written anything political. “It’s just a bunch of young people they’re going after now,” he says. The censors appear to be arresting more and more people, and the government is getting more and more Internet-savvy, but even if they have teamed up with Internet service providers to obtain the personal information of those posting messages online, “they cannot filter every weblog,” says Derakhshan. “It’s just not possible. Until the press is free, weblogs will continue to flourish.” Moallemian agrees. “Do I think the censorship of blogs is going to succeed in the long term? Absolutely not. But in the short term, the government has just found another way of suppressing people.”