The Washington Post (byline Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post Foreign Service) reports that several authoritarian governments, including those of China, Cuba and Myanmar (Burma) are censoring in whole or in part, news of the strife that has followed the Iranian elections. Probably for fear that people living under the control of their regimes will get the message and understand that modern viral (social) media have the potential to spread dissent much farther than it ever might have gotten before, in eras when media publication could be held tightly in check.

Of course this is a fundamental human tendency – to do things we’ve seen done elsewhere. In criminology it’s called “copycat crimes.” And certainly these regimes consider those who do this kind of thing to be criminals.