Patience

We didn't "Free Arash and Mojtaba."

From the BBC:

An Iranian weblogger has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries.

Arash Sigarchi was arrested last month after using his blog to criticise the arrest of other online journalists.

Mr Sigarchi, who also edits a newspaper in northern Iran, was sentenced by a revolutionary court in the Gilan area.

His sentence, criticised by human rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, comes a day after an online "day of action" to secure his release.

Iranian authorities have recently clamped down on the growing popularity of weblogs, restricting access to major blogging sites from within Iran.

A second Iranian blogger, Motjaba Saminejad, who also used his website to report on bloggers' arrests, is still being held.

On the surface this feels like a loss.

But consider two points:

1. This is just round one.
2. Although the imprisonment of anyone for speaking freely is a shame and a disgrace, if this proves to be a rallying point for future collective action by bloggers, then a larger victory can be won than simply the freedom of two bloggers. This could go down as the moment the blogosphere began to know its own strength. (For a rough historical analogy, see what the Hetch Hetchy fight did for environmentalism almost a century ago.)

Have a good weekend. I'm off to the woods again. Yay, me!