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1860_8 | Foundation of IWF
Facilitated by the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), discussions were held between certain ISPs, the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office, and a body called the "Safety Net Foundation" (formed by the Dawe Charitable Trust). This resulted in the "R3 Safety Net Agreement", where "R3" referred to the triple approach of rating, reporting, and responsibility. In September 1996, this agreement was made between the ISPA, LINX, and the Safety Net Foundation, which was subsequently renamed the Internet Watch Foundation. The agreement set requirements for associated ISPs regarding identifiability and traceability of Internet users; ISPs had to cooperate with the IWF to identify providers of illegal content and facilitate easier traceability. |
1860_9 | Demon Internet was a driving force behind the IWF's creation, and one of its employees, Clive Feather, became the IWF's first chair of the Funding Board and solicitor Mark Stephens the First Chair of the IWF's Policy Board. The Policy Board developed codes, guidance, operational oversight and a hotline for reporting content.
The Funding Board, made up of industry representatives and Chair of Policy Board, provided the wherewithal for the IWF's day to day activities as set down and required by the Policy Board.
After 3 years of operation, the IWF was reviewed for the DTI and the Home Office by consultants KPMG and Denton Hall. Their report was delivered in October 1999 and resulted in a number of changes being made to the role and structure of the organisation, and it was relaunched in early 2000, endorsed by the government and the DTI, which played a "facilitating role in its creation", according to a DTI spokesman. |
1860_10 | At the time, Patricia Hewitt, then Minister for E-Commerce, said: "The Internet Watch Foundation plays a vital role in combating criminal material on the Net." To counter accusations that the IWF was biased in favour of the ISPs, a new independent chairman was appointed, Roger Darlington, former head of research at the Communication Workers Union. |
1860_11 | The website
The IWF's website offers a web-based government-endorsed method for reporting suspect online content and remains the only such operation in the United Kingdom. It acts as a Relevant Authority in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) concerning Section 46 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (meaning that its analysts will not be prosecuted for looking at illegal content in the course of their duties). Reports can be submitted anonymously. According to the IWF MOU "If potentially illegal content is hosted in the UK the IWF will work with the relevant service provider and British police agency to have the content 'taken down' and assist as necessary to
have the offender(s) responsible for distributing the offending content detected." Potentially illegal content includes: |
1860_12 | Indecent images of children under 18 hosted anywhere in the world;
The following area was removed from the IWF's remit in 2017: Criminally obscene content hosted in the UK, or anywhere in the world if uploaded by someone in the UK (under the Obscene Publications Acts);
However, almost the whole of the IWF site is concerned with suspected images of child sexual abuse with little mention of other criminally obscene material, also within their remit. Images judged by the IWF using UK law to be images of child sexual abuse are blocked. |
1860_13 | The Government said that the IWF would also be handling images of adult "extreme pornography", which became illegal for people in the UK to possess on 26 January 2009. This has not been part of IWF's remit since 2017. The IWF includes "extreme pornography" as an example under "criminally obscene content", meaning that they will report material hosted in the UK, or uploaded by someone in the UK, but regarding blocking sites "with those categories, our remit will only go so far as to refer sites hosted in the UK to the appropriate authorities."
The IWF states that it works in partnership with UK Government departments such as the Home Office and the DCMS to influence initiatives and programmes developed to combat online abuse. |
1860_14 | They are funded by the European Union and the online industry. This includes Internet service providers, mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, telecommunications and filtering companies, search providers and the financial sector as well as blue-chip and other organisations who support the IWF for corporate social responsibility reasons.
Through their "Hotline" reporting system, the organisation helps ISPs to combat abuse of their services through a "notice and take down" service by alerting them to any potentially illegal content within their remit on their systems and simultaneously invites the police to investigate the publisher.
The IWF has connections with the Virtual Global Taskforce, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
Management
Susie Hargreaves was appointed CEO in September 2011
Andrew Puddephatt was appointed Chair in January 2018.
The Senior Leadership Team at IWF comprises: |
1860_15 | Heidi Kempster, Deputy CEO & Chief Operating Officer;
Emma Hardy, Communications Director;
Chris Hughes, Hotline Director
Dan Sexton, Chief Technology Officer
Cross-border aspects
The IWF passes notifications of suspected child sexual abuse images and videos through the INHOPE network of hotlines across the world, whenever the content is traced to an INHOPE country. Where there is no INHOPE hotline, IWF works with the relevant police body in that country.
Previously, the IWF passed on notifications of suspected child pornography hosted on non-UK servers to the UK National Criminal Intelligence Service which in turn forwards it to Interpol or the relevant foreign police authority. It now works with the Serious Organised Crime Agency instead. The IWF does not, however, pass on notifications of other types of potentially illegal content hosted outside the UK.
Blacklist of web pages |
1860_16 | The IWF compiles and maintains a list of URLs for individual webpages with child sexual abuse content called the IWF URL List (previously referred to as the child abuse image content list or CAIC list). A whole website will only be included on the list if that whole domain is dedicated to the distribution of child sexual abuse images. It says "every URL on the list depicts indecent images of children, advertisements for or links to such content, on a publicly available website. The list typically contains 500 – 800 URLs at any one time and is updated twice a day to ensure all entries are still live". Since IWF began proactively searching for child sexual abuse imagery, and since the introduction of crawler technology, the list typically contains between 5,000 and 12,000 URLs every day with a daily 'churn' of content being added to the list and removed from the list as appropriate. Offending UK URLs are not listed as they are taken down very quickly; URLs elsewhere are listed only |
1860_17 | until they are removed. The list is applied by the ISPs of 95% of commercial Internet customers in the UK. According to the IWF website, blocking applies only to potentially criminal URLs related to child sexual abuse content on publicly available websites; the distribution of images through other channels such as peer-to-peer is a matter for "our police partners", and IWF has no plans to extend the type of content included on the list. |
1860_18 | A staff of 13 trained analysts are responsible for this work, and the IWF's 2018 Annual Report says that on average, 376 new URLs were added to the list daily.
Between 2004 and 2006, BT Group introduced its Cleanfeed technology which was then used by 80% of internet service providers. BT spokesman Jon Carter described Cleanfeed's function as "to block access to illegal Web sites that are listed by the Internet Watch Foundation", and described it as essentially a server hosting a filter that checked requested URLs for Web sites on the IWF list, and returning an error message of "Web site not found" for positive matches. |
1860_19 | In 2006, Home Office minister Alan Campbell pledged that all ISPs would block access to child abuse websites by the end of 2007. By the middle of 2006 the government reported that 90% of domestic broadband connections were either currently blocking or had plans to by the end of the year. The target for 100% coverage was set for the end of 2007, however in the middle of 2008 it stood at 95%. In February 2009, the Government said that it is looking at ways to cover the final 5%. In an interview in March 2009, a Home Office spokesperson mistakenly thought that the IWF deleted illegal content, and didn't look at the content they rate. |
1860_20 | Although the IWF's blacklist causes content to be censored even if the content has not been found to be illegal by a court of law, IWF Director of Communications Sarah Robertson claimed, on 8 December 2008, that the IWF is opposed to the censorship of legal content. In the case of the IWF's blacklisting of cover art hosted on Wikipedia just a few days prior, she claimed that "The IWF found the image to be illegal", despite the body not having any legal jurisdiction to do so.
In March 2009 a Home Office spokesperson said that ISPs were being pressured to sign up to the IWF's blacklist in order to block child pornography websites and said that there was no alternative to using the IWF's blacklist. Zen Internet previously refused to use the IWF's blacklist citing "concerns over its effectiveness." However it quietly joined the foundation in September 2009 while still maintaining its concerns. |
1860_21 | As of 2009, the blacklist was said to contain about 450 URLs. A 2009 study by researcher Richard Clayton at the University of Cambridge found that about a quarter of them were specific pages on otherwise legitimate free file hosting services, among them RapidShare, Megaupload, SendSpace and Zshare. Listing these pages on the confidential blacklist of pages would cause all accesses to the sites hosting them to be referred to the IWF, potentially causing unintended interference as discussed below.
In 2018 the IWF URL List contained 100,682 unique URLs.
Incidents
R v Walker |
1860_22 | R v Walker, sometimes called the "Girls (Scream) Aloud Obscenity Trial", was the first prosecution for written material under Section 2(1) of the Obscene Publications Act in nearly two decades. It involved the prosecution of Darryn Walker for posting a story entitled "Girls (Scream) Aloud" on an internet erotic story site in 2008. The story was a fictional written account describing the kidnap, rape and murder of pop group Girls Aloud. It was reported to the IWF who passed the information on to Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Unit. During the trial the prosecution claimed that the story could be "easily accessed" by young fans of Girls Aloud. However, the defence demonstrated that it could only be located by those specifically searching for such material. As a result the case was abandoned and the defendant cleared of all charges.
Wikipedia |
1860_23 | On 5 December 2008, the IWF system started blacklisting a Wikipedia article covering the Scorpions' 1976 album Virgin Killer, and an image of its original LP cover art which appeared on that article. Users of some major ISPs, including BT, Vodafone, Virgin Media/Tesco.net, Be/O2, EasyNet/UK Online/Sky Broadband, PlusNet, Demon, and TalkTalk (Opal Telecom), were unable to access the filtered content. Although controversial, the album and image are still available, both through Internet shopping sites and from physical shops. The image had been reported to the IWF by a reader, and the IWF determined that it could be seen as potentially illegal. The IWF estimated the block affected 95% of British residential users. The IWF has since rescinded the block, issuing the following statement: |
1860_24 | Additionally, many UK Internet users were unable to edit Wikipedia pages unless registered and logged in with Wikipedia. This is reported to be due to the single blacklisted article causing all Wikipedia traffic from ISPs using the system to be routed through a transparent proxy server. Wikipedia distinguishes unlogged-in users from each other by their IP address, so interpreted all unlogged-in users from a particular ISP as a single user editing massively from the proxy address, which triggered Wikipedia's anti-abuse mechanism, blocking them. |
1860_25 | Wayback Machine
On 14 January 2009 some UK users reported that all of the 85 billion pages of the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) had been blocked, although the IWF's policy is to block only individual offending webpages and not whole domains. According to IWF chief executive Peter Robbins this was due to a "technical hitch". Because the Internet Archive's web site contained URLs on the IWF's blacklist, requests sent there from Demon Internet carried a particular header, which clashed with the Internet Archive's internal mechanism to convert web links when serving archived versions of web pages. The actual blocked URL which had caused the incident never became publicly known.
Unintended effects |
1860_26 | Of proxy server used by ISPs
Many ISPs implement IWF filtering by using a transparent proxy server of their own, unconnected with IWF. Quoting Plusnet "If the IP address matches that of a server that's used to host one of the websites on the IWF list then your request is diverted to a proxy server." The hosting server itself is not blacklisted, the problem is due to requesting a page from a server which also hosts a listed page. The IWF lists the Internet companies which "have voluntarily committed to block access to child sexual abuse web pages". These companies may use transparent proxies or other techniques. |
1860_27 | Using a transparent proxy has the unintended side effect, quite independent of IWF filtering, of appearing to websites connected to as originating from the proxy IP instead of the user's real IP. Some sites detect the user's IP and adjust their behaviour accordingly. For example, if trying to download files from a file distribution website which restricts free-of-charge usage by enforcing a delay of typically 30 minutes between downloads, any attempt to download is interpreted as originating from the ISP's proxy rather than the user. The consequence is that if any user of that ISP has downloaded any file from the site in the last half-hour (which is very likely for a large ISP), the download is not allowed. This is an unintended consequence of ISP's use of proxy servers, not IWF filtering. File sharing sites distribute files of all types; for example Linux distribution files, which are very large. The use of proxy servers is also reported to have caused the problem with editing |
1860_28 | Wikipedia (but not the blocking of the actual offending web page) reported above. |
1860_29 | Criticism
Ineffectiveness
IWF filtering has been criticised as interfering with legitimate Internet activity while being ineffective against anyone intending to access objectionable content. One carefully argued discussion, while opposing such things as child pornography and terrorism, points out that filtering has side effects, as discussed in this section, and would not stop access to material such as images of child sexual abuse as it would not stop email, ftp, https, p2p, usenet, irc, or many other ways to access the same content. As there are simple encryption systems, it never can stop it – at best it just drives it underground where it is harder to assess and track. |
1860_30 | Charity status
In February 2009 a Yorkshire-based software developer lodged a formal complaint regarding the IWF status as a charity with the Charity Commission, in which he pointed out that "regulating the worst of the internet" was "not really a charitable purpose", and that the IWF existed mainly to serve the interests of ISPs subscribing to it rather than the public. An IWF spokesperson said that the IWF had attained charitable status in 2004 "in order to subject itself to more robust governance requirements and the higher levels of scrutiny and accountability which charity law, alongside company law, brings with it". The IWF is listed by fakecharities.org, "a directory of those so-called charities that receive substantial funding from either the UK or EU governments". It has also been termed a quango by critics, implying poor management and lack of accountability. |
1860_31 | The IWF publishes details of inspections and audits on its website which includes a hotline audit every two years by independent experts, quality assurance inspections by INHOPE, the hotline umbrella body, its ISO27001 compliance and a human rights audit of the organisation which was carried out by Lord Ken Macdonald in 2014.
False positives
Following the IWF's blacklisting of the Wikipedia article, the organisation's operating habits came under scrutiny. J.R. Raphael of PC World stated that the incident had raised serious free-speech issues, and that it was alarming that one non-governmental organisation was ultimately acting as the "morality police" for about 95% of UK's Internet users. Frank Fisher of The Guardian criticized the IWF for secretiveness and lack of legal authority, among other things, and noted that the blacklist could contain anything and that the visitor of a blocked address may not know if their browsing is being censored. |
1860_32 | Pressure to implement filtering
The government believes that a self-regulatory system is the best solution, and the Metropolitan Police also believe that working with ISPs, rather than trying to force them via legislation, is the way forward. The IWF has a list of URLs considered to host objectionable material (distinct from the actual, confidential, blacklist of pages) which is available to ISPs, but ISPs are not obliged to subscribe to it.
Legality
As a "self-appointed, self-regulated internet watchdog, which views user-submitted content and compiles a list of websites that it deems to contain illegal images" there have been questions raised regarding the legality of their viewing content that would normally constitute a criminal offence. |
1860_33 | IWF has a memorandum of understanding between the Crown Prosecution Service and the NPCC to "clarify the position of those professionally involved in the management, operation or use of electronic communications networks and services who may face jeopardy for criminal offences so that they will be reassured of protection where they are acting to combat the creation and distribution of images of child abuse".
Secrecy
The IWF has been criticized for blacklisting legal content and for not telling websites that they are being blocked. In these circumstances the owner(s) of the blocked webpage might not even know they have offending content on their site, which means that the content would still be readily available to anyone outside of the UK. |
1860_34 | Technical issues
Internet companies which deploy services across the world implement the IWF URL List to help prevent people from stumbling across child sexual abuse imagery. The blocking methodology is implemented by the company taking the list and the IWF's good practice to blocking guide recommends companies to use a splash page so that people know why a page is being blocked from view, rather than simply delivering a "page not found" message.
Lord Ken Macdonald carried out a Human Rights Audit. Addressing the IWF's Members at its AGM on 26 November 2013, Lord Macdonald said he was "deeply impressed" with the quality of staff and their "commitment and attention to freedom of expression and privacy rights". |
1860_35 | Historically, the blacklisting of sites may have been concealed by a generic HTTP 404 "page not found" message rather than an explanation that the content has been censored. The exact method of censorship is determined by the implementing ISP; BT, for example, return HTTP 404 pages, whereas Demon returned a message stating that the page was censored, and why.
At the time of the Wikipedia blocking, performance issues accessing the site from the UK were reported.
In October 2014 users on Sky Broadband reported very slow and intermittent performance of image host Imgur. Clicking on an image would typically result in the site appearing to be down. Accessing via HTTPS causes images to load normally because it bypasses the proxy used on sites with blacklisted content.
IWF Services
Aside from the IWF URL List, the IWF has developed many services which may be taken by internet companies to help stop the spread of child sexual abuse imagery online. |
1860_36 | See also
Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP)
Cleanfeed
Child abuse image content list
Graham Coutts
Internet censorship in the United Kingdom
Internet Crimes Against Children
List of websites blocked in the United Kingdom
NSPCC
Operation Ore
Quango
Virtual Global Taskforce
References
External links
Chairing the IWF essay by Roger Darlington
Anti–child pornography organizations
Children's charities based in England
Internet censorship in the United Kingdom
Charities based in Cambridgeshire
1996 establishments in England
Organizations established in 1996
Computer security organizations
Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom
Internet-related organizations
Science and technology in Cambridgeshire
South Cambridgeshire District |
1861_0 | Harry Potter fandom refers to the community of fans of the Harry Potter books and films who participate in entertainment activities that revolve around the series, such as reading and writing fan fiction, creating and soliciting fan art, engaging in role-playing games, socialising on Harry Potter-based forums, and more. The fandom interacts online as well as offline through activities such as fan conventions, participating in cosplay, tours of iconic landmarks relevant to the books and production of the films, and parties held for the midnight release of each book and film.
By the fourth Harry Potter book, the legions of fans had grown so large that considerable security measures were taken to ensure that no book was purchased before the official release date. Harry Potter is considered one of the few four-quadrant, multi-generation spanning franchises that exist today, despite Rowling's original marketing of the books to tweens and teens.
Pottermania |
1861_1 | Pottermania is an informal term first used around 1999 describing the craze Harry Potter fans have had over the series. Fans held midnight parties to celebrate the release of the final four books at bookstores which stayed open on the night leading into the date of the release. In 2005, Entertainment Weekly listed the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as one of "Entertainment's Top Moments" of the previous 25 years. |
1861_2 | Diehard fans of the series are called "Potterheads". Some even theme their weddings around Harry Potter. A Bridal Guide featured two real weddings soon before the release of the final film, which quickly spread through the fandom via Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
The craze over the series was referenced in Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada as well as its 2006 film adaptation. In the story, the protagonist Andrea Sachs is ordered to retrieve two copies of the next instalment in the series for her boss's twins before they are published so that they can be privately flown to France, where the twins and their mother are on holiday.
Some celebrity fans of Harry Potter include Lily Allen, Guillermo del Toro, Ariana Grande, Stephen King, Keira Knightley, Jennifer Lawrence, Evanna Lynch, Liam Neeson, Barack Obama, Simon Pegg, Seth Rogen, and Matt Smith. |
1861_3 | Fan sites
There are many fan web sites about Harry Potter on the Internet, the oldest ones dating to about 1997 or 1998. One of the most famous sites allows fans of the book an opportunity to be sorted into a house themselves. J. K. Rowling has an open relationship with her fan base, and since 2004 periodically hands out a "fan site award" on her official web site. The first site to receive the award was Immeritus, a fan site mostly devoted to Sirius Black, and about which Rowling wrote, "I am so proud of the fact that a character, whom I always liked very much, though he never appeared as much more than a brooding presence in the books, has gained a passionate fan-club." |
1861_4 | In 2004, after Immeritus, Rowling bestowed the honour upon four sites. The first was Godric's Hollow; for some time however, the site's domain name was occupied by advertisers and its content was lost and there is no further record on Rowling's site that Godric's Hollow ever received the award, although in 2010 the website came back online again albeit with a lot of content missing. The next site was the Harry Potter Lexicon, an online encyclopedia Rowling has admitted to visiting while writing away from home rather than buying a copy of her books in a store. She called it "for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home." The third site of 2004 was MuggleNet, a web site featuring the latest news in the Potter world, among editorials, forums, and a podcast. Rowling wrote when giving the award, "It's high time I paid homage to the mighty MuggleNet," and listed all the features she loved, including "the pretty-much-exhaustive information on all books and films." The last site was HPANA, |
1861_5 | the first fan site Rowling ever visited, "faster off the mark with Harry Potter news than any other site" Rowling knows, and "fantastically user-friendly." |
1861_6 | In 2005, only The Leaky Cauldron was honoured. In Rowling's words, "it is about the worst kept secret on this website that I am a huge fan of The Leaky Cauldron," which she calls a "wonderfully well designed mine of accurate information on all things Harry Potter." On another occasion, Rowling has called the Leaky Cauldron her "favourite fan site." In 2006, the Brazilian website Potterish was the only site honoured, in recognition of its "style, [its] Potter-expertise and [its] responsible reporting." |
1861_7 | In May 2007, Harry Potter Fan Zone received the award. Rowling recognised the insightful editorials as well as praised the site for its young and dedicated staff. In December 2007, the award went to The Harry Potter Alliance, a campaign that seeks to end discrimination, genocide, poverty, AIDS, global warming, and other "real-world Dark Arts", relating these problems to the books. Rowling called the project "extraordinary" and "most inspirational", and paralleled its mission to "the values for which Dumbledore's Army fought in the books". In an article about her in Time magazine, Rowling expressed her gratefulness at the site's successful work raising awareness and sign-up levels among anti-genocide coalitions. |
1861_8 | At one time, Warner Bros., which owns the rights to Harry Potter and its affiliates, tried to shut down the sites. The unsuccessful attempt eventually led to their inviting the webmasters of the top sites to premieres of the films and tours of the film sets, because of their close connection with the fans. Warner Bros. executives have acknowledged that many fans are disappointed that certain elements of the books are left out, but not trying to avoid criticism, "bringing the fan sites into the process is what we feel is really important."
These fan sites contain news updates into the world of the books, films, and film cast members through the use of forums, image galleries, or video galleries. They also host user-submitted creations, such as fan art or fan fiction.
Podcasts |
1861_9 | The Harry Potter fandom has embraced podcasts as a regular, often weekly, insight to the latest discussion in the fandom. Apple Inc. has featured two of the podcasts, MuggleCast and PotterCast. Both have reached the top spot of iTunes podcast rankings and have been polled one of the top 50 favorite podcasts. At the 2006 Podcast Awards, when MuggleCast and PotterCast each received two nominations for the same two categories, the two podcasts teamed up and requested listeners vote for PotterCast in the Best Entertainment category and MuggleCast in the People's Choice category. Both podcasts won these respective categories. |
1861_10 | MuggleCast, hosted by MuggleNet staffers, was created in August 2005, not long after the release of Half-Blood Prince. Topics of the first show focused on Horcruxes, "R.A.B.", the Goblet of Fire film, which was due for release two months later, and the website DumbledoreIsNotDead.com. Since then, MuggleCast has held chapter-by-chapter discussions, character analyses, and a discussion on a "theory of the week". MuggleCast has also added humour to their podcast with segments like "Spy on Spartz," where the hosts would call MuggleNet webmaster Emerson Spartz and reveal his current location or activity with the listening audience. British staff member Jamie Lawrence tells a British joke of the week, and host Andrew Sims reads an email sent to MuggleNet with a strange request or incoherent talk (dubbed "Huh?! Email of the Week"). MuggleCast is currently the highest rated Harry Potter Podcast on the Internet. The MuggleCast website will continue to serve as a resource for other Harry Potter |
1861_11 | fans who want to rediscover the show. |
1861_12 | PotterCast was released less than two weeks after MuggleCast's first episode. Produced by The Leaky Cauldron, it differed from MuggleCast with a more structured program, including various segments and involvement of more people on the Leaky Cauldron staff compared to MuggleCast. It also was the first Potter podcast to produce regular interviews with people directly involved with the books and films. The first show featured interviews with Stuart Craig, art director of the films, as well as Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley. PotterCast has also interviewed Matthew Lewis (the actor who portrays Neville Longbottom), Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), Jamie Waylett (Vincent Crabbe), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell (directors of the first four films), Arthur A. Levine and Cheryl Klein (editors of the books at Scholastic), and Rowling herself. |
1861_13 | The two sites are friendly rivals and have aired several combined episodes, which they call "The Leaky Mug", a separate podcast released on a separate feed from time to time. Live joint podcasts have been held in New York City, Las Vegas, and California. From time to time, hosts on one podcast will appear on their counterpart.
Other notable Harry Potter podcasts include:
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, in which the books are read as if they were a religious text
Witch Please, which looks at the books through a feminist lens
Potterotica, in which actors read Harry Potter fan fiction aloud
Potterless, a comedy podcast in which an adult man reads the books for the first time and tries to predict future plot points
5 Minuten Harry Podcast, a German podcast by YouTuber Coldmirror in which she analyses the first film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Fan fiction |
1861_14 | Rowling has backed fan fiction stories on the Internet, stories written by fans that involve Harry Potter or other characters in the books. A March 2007 study showed that "Harry Potter" is the most searched-for fan fiction subject online. Some fans will use canon established in the books to write stories of past and future events in the Harry Potter world; others write stories that have little relation to the books other than the characters' names and the settings in which the fan fiction takes place. On FanFiction.Net, there are over 834,000, while Archive of Our Own has over 300,000 fan fictions on Harry Potter . There are numerous websites devoted solely to Harry Potter fan fiction. Of these, according to rankings on Alexa.com, HarryPotterFanfiction.com has grown to be the most popular. |
1861_15 | A well-known work of fan fiction is The Shoebox Project, created by two LiveJournal users. Over 8500 people subscribe to the story so that they are alerted when new posts update the story. The authors' works, including this project, were featured in an article in The Wall Street Journal discussing the growth in popularity of fandoms.
The current most reviewed piece of fanfiction, with over 25,000 reviews, is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky writing under the pseudonym of Less Wrong.
In 2006, the "popular 'bad' fanfic" My Immortal was posted on FanFiction.Net by user "Tara Gilesbie". It was deleted by the site's administrators in 2008, but not before amassing over eight thousand negative reviews. It spawned a number of YouTube spoofs and a number of imitators created "sequels" claiming to be the original Tara. |
1861_16 | In 2007, a web-based novel, James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing, was written by a computer animator named George Lippert. The book was written as a supplement to fill the void after Deathly Hallows, and received eventual approval from Rowling herself.
Rowling has said, "I find it very flattering that people love the characters that much." She has adopted a positive position on fan fiction, unlike authors such as Anne McCaffrey or Anne Rice who discourage fans from writing about their books and have asked sites like FanFiction.Net to remove all stories of their works, requests honored by the site. However, Rowling has been "alarmed by pornographic or sexually explicit material clearly not meant for kids," according to Neil Blair, an attorney for her publisher. The attorneys have sent cease and desist letters to sites that host adult material. |
1861_17 | Potter fan fiction also has a large following in the slash fiction genre, stories which feature sexual relationships that do not exist in the books (shipping), often portraying homosexual pairings. Famous pairings include Harry with Draco Malfoy or Cedric Diggory, and Remus Lupin with Sirius Black. Harry Potter slash has eroded some of the antipathy towards underage sexuality in the wider slash fandom. |
1861_18 | Tracey "T" Proctor, a moderator of FictionAlley.org, a Harry Potter fanfiction website, said 'I don't really get into the children's aspect of it, but rather the teachers, the adult characters. I read someone once who said, "If she didn't want us fantasizing about her characters, she needs to stop having these handsome men portraying them." And that's the truth: It's very hard not to look at Alan Rickman [Professor Severus Snape] and Jason Isaacs [Lucius Malfoy] and not get erotic thoughts. I have some fan fiction at Fiction Alley. You want to write stories about the characters that J.K. is not writing, about their love lives that you don't see in the book.'
In November 2006, Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy in the Potter films, said that he had read fan fiction about his character and gets "a huge kick out of the more far-out stuff." |
1861_19 | Discussion
Prior to the publication of Deathly Hallows, much of the energy of the Potter fandom was devoted to speculation and debate about upcoming plot and character developments. To this end, clues from the earlier books and deliberate hints from J. K. Rowling (in interviews and on her website) were heavily scrutinised by fans. In particular, fan essays were published on websites such as Mugglenet (the "world famous editorials"), the Harry Potter Lexicon and The Leaky Cauldron (Scribbulus project) among others: offering theories, comment and analysis on all aspects of the series. The Yahoo discussion list Harry Potter for Grown Ups (founded in 1999) is also noteworthy for its detailed criticism and discussion of the Harry Potter books. |
1861_20 | Speculation intensified with the July 2005 publication of Half-Blood Prince and the detailed post-publication interview given by Rowling to Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron. Notably, DumbledoreIsNotDead.com sought to understand the events of the sixth book in a different way. (Rowling later confirmed, however – on 2 August 2006 – that Dumbledore was, in fact, dead, humorously apologising to the website as she did so.) A collection of essays, Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?: What Really Happened in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Six Expert Harry Potter Detectives Examine the Evidence, was published by Zossima Press in November 2006. Contributors included the Christian author John Granger and Joyce Odell of Red Hen Publications, whose own website contains numerous essays on the Potterverse and fandom itself. |
1861_21 | In 2006, in advance of the arrival of the seventh Potter novel, five MuggleNet staff members co-authored the reference book Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End, an anthology of unofficial fan predictions; while early in 2007, Leaky launched HarryPotterSeven.com, featuring "roundups and predictions from some of the most knowledgeable fans online" (including Steve Vander Ark of the Lexicon). Late additions to the fan scene (prior to the publication of Deathly Hallows) included BeyondHogwarts.com (the successor to DumbledoreIsNotDead.com), which billed itself as "the only ongoing online Harry Potter fan conference", as well as Book7.co.uk, which offered a hypothetical "evidence-based synopsis" of the seventh novel. To this day, debate and reaction to the novels and films continues on web forums (including Mugglenet's Chamber of Secrets community and TLC's Leaky Lounge).
Fan film and television |
1861_22 | A 2018 Italian fan-made prequel to the series, Voldemort: Origins of the Heir, depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power. The teaser trailer was released on in June 2017, receiving exceeded thirty million views in less than 48 hours on Facebook. The full movie was later released on YouTube on 13 January 2018, receiving over twelve million views in ten days.
Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis is an online TV series focused on Hermione Granger's life after Hogwarts. In the show, Granger, cast as a black woman played by Ashley Romans, has broken up with Ron Weasley and moved to Los Angeles to reevaluate her life and choices. |
1861_23 | A 2020 Turkish fan-made film, James Potter and the Heir of the Sword, starts with the epilogue of Deathly Hallows. Jealous of the relationship between Scorpius Malfoy and Albus Severus Potter, Albus' brother James is in conflict with Scorpius to be the best brother. The prophecy of King Arthur’s Monster, which occurs every 100 years, hits Hogwarts. A great adventure awaits our Potters and their friends who can’t seem to get out of trouble.
Conventions |
1861_24 | Fan conventions have been another way that the fandom has congregated. Conventions such as Prophecy, LeakyCon, Infinitus, Azkatraz, and Ascendio have maintained an academic emphasis, hosting professional keynote speakers as well as keeping the atmosphere playful and friendly. They have featured prominent members of the fandom such as Jennie Levine, owner of SugarQuill.net (Phoenix Rising, 2007); Melissa Anelli, current webmaster of The Leaky Cauldron (Phoenix Rising, 2007; Leakycon, 2009/2011/2012); Sue Upton, former Senior Editor of the Leaky Cauldron (Prophecy, 2007); Heidi Tandy, founder of Fiction Alley (Prophecy, 2007), Paul and Joe DeGeorge of the wizard rock band Harry and the Potters (along with several other more well-known Wizard Rock bands such as The Remus Lupins, The Parselmouths, Ministry of Magic, and The Whomping Willows) (see below) (Prophecy, 2007; Leakycon, 2009/2011/2012), Andrew Slack, founder of The Harry Potter Alliance, and StarKid, the cast of the fan made |
1861_25 | musicals "A Very Potter Musical", "A Very Potter Sequel", and "A Very Potter Senior Year". |
1861_26 | Still, the conventions try to attract the fandom with other fun-filled Potter-centric activities, often more interactive, such as wizarding chess, water Quidditch, a showing of the Harry Potter films, or local cultural immersions. Live podcasts are often recorded during these events, and live Wizard Rock shows have become a fairly large part of recent conventions. Members of the Harry Potter cast have been brought in for the conferences; actors such as Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) and Christopher Rankin (Percy Weasley), along with several others, have appeared to give live Q&A sessions and keynote presentations about the series. |
1861_27 | In addition to fandom-specific programming, LeakyCon 2011 and 2012 have hosted LitDays (as well as incorporating the many fandoms Harry Potter fans have branched into since the ending of the series). LitDays are full of programming with authors, agents, and editors. A few key examples are John Green, author of the award-winning young adult novels The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska; Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and Leviathan; and David Levithan, author of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and The Lover's Dictionary. |
1861_28 | These conventions are now incorporating the recently opened theme park The Wizarding World of Harry Potter into their itinerary, built inside Universal's Island of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. At the Harry Potter fan conventions Infinitus 2010, LeakyCon 2011, and Ascendio 2012, special events were held at the theme park dedicated to the series. These are after-hours events for convention attendees who purchased tickets to experience and explore the park by themselves. The event included talks given by creators of the park, free food and butterbeer, and live wizard rock shows inside the park.
Festivals
In addition to conventions, Harry Potter fandom has further expanded to town festivals, including the Chestertown Harry Potter Festival (Maryland), the Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Festival (Philadelphia), Edgerton's Harry Potter Festival (Wisconsin), and the Spellbound Festival (Michigan, 2016; Ontario, 2018; New York, 2019), among others. |
1861_29 | The Chestnut Hill event had been held annually for seven years until 2018 when it was rebranded under a more general "Witches and Wizards" theme, following a cease and desist letter from Warner Bros.
"Ship debates"
In the fandom the word "ship" and its derivatives like "shipping" or "shipper" are commonly used as shorthand for the word "relationship."
The Harry Potter series generated ship debates with supporters of the prospective relationship between Harry Potter and his close female friend Hermione Granger at odds with supporters of Hermione ending up instead with Ron Weasley, close friend of both, as well as supporters of Harry ending up with Ginny Weasley, Ron's younger sister. |
1861_30 | Quotes from Rowling which seemed to contradict the possibility of Harry ending up with Hermione were usually countered by claiming them to be deliberate obfuscations designed to lure astute observation off-course (though such claims were far from undisputed, given that these allegedly vague quotes included such phrases as "[Harry and Hermione] are very platonic friends", and were repeated on at least three different occasions). |
1861_31 | An interview with Rowling conducted by fansite webmasters Emerson Spartz (MuggleNet) and Melissa Anelli (The Leaky Cauldron) shortly after the book's release turned out to be quite controversial. During the interview Spartz commented that Harry/Hermione shippers were "delusional", to which Rowling chuckled, though making it clear that she did not share the sentiment and that the Harry/Hermione fans were "still valued members of her readership". This incident resulted in an uproar among Harry/Hermione shippers. The uproar was loud enough to merit an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Rowling's attitude towards the shipping phenomenon has varied between amused and bewildered to frustrated, as she revealed in that interview. She explained:
In a later posting on MuggleNet, Spartz explained: |
1861_32 | Rowling has continued to make references, less humorous and more, to the severity of the shipper conflicts. In one instance she has joked about trying to think of ways of proving to Emerson, when inviting him for the aforementioned interview, that it was really her and not "some angry Harry/Hermione shipper trying to lure him down a dark alleyway"; In another, she has described her impression of the Harry Potter fandom's shipping debates as "cyber gang warfare". |
1861_33 | Rowling stated in a 2014 interview with Wonderland magazine that she thought that realistically Ron and Hermione had "too much fundamental incompatibility." She stated that Ron and Hermione were written together "as a form of wish fulfillment" as way to reconcile a relationship she herself was once in. She went on to say that perhaps with marriage counselling Ron and Hermione would have been all right. She also went on to say in a talk at Exeter University that Harry's love for Ginny is true, thereby denying any potential canon relationship between Harry and Hermione. |
1861_34 | Other relationships
On a less intense scale, other relationships have been doted upon in the fandom from suggestive hints or explicit statements throughout canon, such as those between Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, Harry's parents James Potter and Lily Evans, Rubeus Hagrid and Olympe Maxime, or Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater, or Rose Granger-Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy. A potential relationship between Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood was originally dispelled by Rowling, though she later retracted this and said she noticed a slight attraction between them in Deathly Hallows. |
1861_35 | Some couples, besides Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione, have been explicitly stated in the series: Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour are married in Deathly Hallows after dating throughout Half-Blood Prince. In Half-Blood Prince, Nymphadora Tonks keeps her feelings for Remus Lupin to herself, but remains depressed when he refuses her advances; he feels that his being a werewolf would not create a safe relationship. Tonks professes her love for him at the end of the book, and she and Lupin have been married by the beginning of Deathly Hallows and have a son 'Teddy' later in the book. Other couples, such as Harry and Draco or Lupin and Sirius Black, are favourites among fans who read fan fiction about them. There is also debate about Lily and Severus vs. James.
Roleplaying games
Roleplaying is a central feature of the Harry Potter fandom. There are two primary forms: internet-based roleplay and live-action roleplay, or LARP. |
1861_36 | LARPing often involves re-enacting or creating an original Quidditch team. Match rules and style of play vary among fandom events, but they are generally kept as close as possible to the sport envisioned by Rowling. The 2006 Lumos symposium included a Quidditch tournament played in water. More common are ground-based games such as the handball style developed by USA Team Handball and featured at the MuggleNet-sponsored Spellbound event, as well as the Muggle Quidditch style played intramurally at Millikin University (at left). This version of quidditch has grown past intramural play, is far from LARPing, and has an international governing body, the IQA. |
1861_37 | Internet-based roleplay tries to simulate the Hogwarts experience. Many sites are forum-based, emphasizing taking classes taught by staff members in order for the players to earn points for their respective houses. Some internet-based roleplay sites go more in depth into canon and storylines, and do not specifically rely on posting as the only method for gaining house points while others have expanded to include activities such as Quidditch, dueling, and board-wide plots. Hogwarts-school.net (est. 2000), for example, is a forum-based roleplaying game which allows players to take classes, engage in extracurriculars, and also has many options for adult characters in St. Mungos, the Daily Prophet, and the Ministry of Magic. |
1861_38 | 2007 saw the launch of World of Hogwarts, a completely free MMORPG Harry Potter roleplaying game in Second Life, set ten years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Here, roleplayers can create an avatar and interact with other students, attend lessons organized by other roleplayers, play Quidditch, sit for their exams, earn and lose points for their house, visit Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and the Forbidden Forest, get a job at the Ministry of Magic, explore several secret passages within the castle, and even immerse themselves into intricate and well-composed storyline plots that have, through time, grown into the canon rules of the game. |
1861_39 | A website created by ISO Interactive, called the Chamber of Chat is a free online interactive virtual world under a MMO format. Although not a full MMORPG format, Chamber of Chat is set up with 3D virtual chatrooms and avatars where fans can socially interact with each other in Pictionary and Harry Potter Trivial games or participate in discussion groups about Harry Potter or Film media or perform plays as a theater group to other fans as audience. They hold special community event such as Harry Potters Birthday or Halloween and have seasonal house competitions. Fans are able to create their own avatars, collect or be rewarded coins to purchase furniture items for their own "clubhouse". However, the website emphasizes more social interaction between fans' avatars to stimulate the Hogwarts student experience. "Chamber of Chat is a graphical Social Virtual World with a few Facebook plug-ins. The Harry Potter Virtual World is designed for fans. This give users the feeling that they are |
1861_40 | interacting in the actual 3D world. You can hang out with other students, relax in the common room, mingle at the pub, play games like Pictionary and even download cool looking wallpapers." |
1861_41 | On 19 April 2007, Chamber of Chat was awarded Adobe Site of the day. Chamber of chat has also been awarded a place among the SmartFoxServer Showcase. "Chamber of Chat is an MMO community inspired to the magic worlds of the Harry Potter saga. The application is a great example of integration between Director/Shockwave (client) and SmartFoxServer PRO.". Chamber of Chat has been a long time associated branch of The Leaky network and although as part of the network with The Leaky Cauldron, Pottercast and "Ask Peeves" search engine, it was ranked number two behind Indiana Jones's TheRaider.Net out of 25 essential fansites of "The Best of the Web" by Entertainment Weekly in December 2007. |
1861_42 | Other sites use modified versions of phpBB that allow for a certain level of interactive roleplaying and are what is commonly referred to as "forum-based roleplaying". Interactive gaming can include player versus player features, a form of currency for making purchases in stores, and non-player characters such as monsters that must be fought to gain levels and experience points. However, these features are more prevalent in games that are not forum-based. Advancement in such games is usually dependent on live chat, multiplayer cooperation, and fighting as opposed to taking classes or simply posting to earn points for one's "house"; like at Hogwarts, players in forum-based games are sometimes sorted into a different group distinguishing different values within a person.
Iconic landmarks tours |
1861_43 | Some travel agencies have organised a subdivision to create tours specifically highlighting iconic landmarks in the world of Harry Potter. HP Fan Trips, offered by Beyond Boundaries Travel since 2004 in conjunction with fan site HPANA, was designed by and for fans of the series, and tours noteworthy Potter-related locations in the United Kingdom. Since 2004, they have exclusively chartered steam locomotive #5972 Olton Hall, the locomotive used in the films as the Hogwarts Express, as well as the carriages labeled as such and seen in the movies. The travel agency Your Man in Europe began hosting Magical Tours in 2006, in conjunction with fan site MuggleNet. They offer four different tours through England and Scotland. |
1861_44 | These tours primarily feature locations used for shooting in the films, though some trips include a Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh, which was once Nicholson's Cafe, where Rowling wrote much of the manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and Edinburgh Castle, where Rowling read from the sixth book on the night of its release to an audience of children. Filming locations visited include Alnwick Castle, where some exterior locations of Hogwarts are shot, places in Fort William, Scotland; Glen Nevis, Scotland; the Glenfinnan viaduct; Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford and the Cloisters located within New College, Oxford. |
1861_45 | Wizard rockWizard music (sometimes shorthanded as Wrock) is a musical movement dating from 2000 in Massachusetts with Harry and the Potters, though it has grown internationally and has expanded to at least 750 bands. Wrock bands mostly consist of young musicians that write and perform songs about the Harry Potter universe, and these songs are often written from the point of view of a particular character in the books, usually the character who features in the band's name. If they are performing live, they may also cosplay, or dress as, that character.
In contrast to mainstream bands that have some songs incorporating literary references among a wider repertoire of music (notably Led Zeppelin to The Lord of the Rings), wizard rock bands take their inspiration entirely from the Harry Potter universe. In preserving the promotion of reading, too, bands like to perform in libraries, bookstores, and schools. The bands have also performed at the fan conventions. |
1861_46 | Documentaries
We Are WizardsWe Are Wizards is a feature-length documentary by Josh Koury about the Harry Potter fandom. It features Wizard rock bands Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, The Hungarian Horntails, and The Whomping Willows. The film also features Heather Lawver, Melissa Anelli, and Brad Neely. We Are Wizards had its World Premiere at the SXSW film festival in 2008, then traveled to 20 film festivals worldwide. The film opened theatrically in 5 cities on 14 November 2008. The film can be seen on Hulu.com, and DVD. |
1861_47 | The Fandom Fan Diaries: Wizard's Gone W!ld
The Fandom Fan Diaries: Wizard's Gone W!ld is a documentary web series that is based on fandom submissions. The producers Miranda Marshall and Amy Henderson starting accepting video submissions in early March 2009 and plan to accept them through 2013. WiZarDs Gone W!LD is affiliated with The Fan Book of HP Fans, yet another fandom project based on submissions that has recently extended its submission deadline date. |
1861_48 | The Wizard Rockumentary
The Wizard Rockumentary: A Movie about Rocking and Rowling is a feature documentary chronicling the rise of Harry Potter tribute bands. Producers Megan and Mallory Schuyler travelled around the United States compiling interviews and concert footage of bands including Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, The Remus Lupins, The Whomping Willow, The Moaning Myrtles, Roonil Wazlib, Snidget, and The Hermione Crookshanks Experience. The film was released in April 2008 and has screened in libraries around the country. The producers are currently negotiating broadcast and home video rights. |
1861_49 | Proyecto Patronus
Project Patronus: magic of a generation (Proyecto Patronus: la magia de una generación) is a Spanish documentary based on the Harry Potter saga. It covers the franchise's influence on a generation of young people, and deals with the multiple values, such as friendship, love, courage and respect, which are reflected in the books. Numerous professionals in psychology and pedagogy who have studied the significance of the saga appear. The film was released in 2016 and has screened in film festivals around Spain. |
1861_50 | Health
In 2003, Dr. Howard J. Bennett coined the term "Hogwarts headache" in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine shortly after the release of the longest book in the series, Order of the Phoenix. He described it as a mild condition, a tension headache possibly accompanied by neck or wrist pains, caused by unhealthily long reading sessions of Harry Potter. The symptoms resolved themselves within days of finishing the book. His prescription of taking reading breaks was rejected by two of the patients on which he discovered this headache. |
1861_51 | Researchers at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford found in 2005 that the admission rate of children with traumatic injuries to the city's ERs plummeted on the publication weekends of both Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. This was due to the volume of children reading Harry Potter rather than engaging in riskier outdoor activities, such as riding of bicycles and scooters, climbing trees or playing sports. The study was led by Dr. Stephen Gwilym whose paper "hypothesized that there is a place for a committee of safety-conscious, talented writers who could produce high quality books for the purpose of injury prevention," noting a potential problem with this strategy: "Obviously, if children are always in reading books and not outside getting exercise, there is a long-term risk of obesity, rickets and lack of sunlight."
See also
Muggle
References |
1861_52 | Waters, G. Mithrandir, A. (2003). Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter (analysis of Books 1-4). Niles, IL: Wizarding World Press.
Further reading
Fantasy fandom
Literary fandom
Film and video fandom |
1862_0 | The Supreme Leader of Iran ( ), also referred to as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution (, ), but officially called the Supreme Leadership Authority (, ), is the head of state and the highest political and religious authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The armed forces, judiciary, state television, and other key government organisations such as Guardian Council and Expediency Discernment Council are subject to the Supreme Leader. The current lifetime officeholder, Ali Khamenei, has issued decrees and made the final decisions on the economy, the environment, foreign policy, education, national planning, and other aspects of governance in Iran. Khamenei also makes the final decisions on the amount of transparency in elections, and has dismissed and reinstated presidential cabinet appointees. |
1862_1 | The Supreme Leader directly chooses the ministers of Defense, Interior, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as certain other ministers, such as the Education, Culture and Science Minister. Iran's regional policy is directly controlled by the office of the Supreme Leader with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. All of Iran's ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Supreme Leader.
The office was established by the Constitution of Iran in 1979, pursuant to the concept of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist. According to the Constitution, the powers of government in the Islamic Republic of Iran are vested in the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive powers, functioning under the supervision of the Supreme Leader. The style "Supreme Leader" () is commonly used as a sign of respect – although the Constitution simply designates them as "Leader" (, ). |
1862_2 | The Supreme Leader ranks above the President of Iran and personally appoints the heads of the military, the government, and the judiciary. Originally the constitution required the Supreme Leader to be Marja'-e taqlid, the highest-ranking cleric in the religious laws of Usuli Twelver Shia Islam. In 1989, however, the constitution was amended and simply asked for Islamic "scholarship", thus the Supreme Leader could be a lower-ranking cleric.
In its history, the Islamic Republic of Iran only has had two Supreme Leaders: Ruhollah Khomeini, who held the position from 1979 until his death in 1989 and Ali Khamenei, who has held the position since Khomeini's death. |
1862_3 | In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader. Thereby, the Assembly has never questioned the Supreme Leader. There have been cases where incumbent Ali Khamenei publicly criticized members of the Assembly, resulting in their arrest and subsequent removal. There also have been cases where the Guardian Council repealed its ban on particular people after being directed to do so by Khamenei. The Supreme Leader is legally considered "inviolable", with Iranians being routinely punished for questioning or insulting him. |
1862_4 | Mandate and status
The Supreme Leader of Iran is elected by the Assembly of Experts (, ), which is also the only government body in charge of choosing and dismissing Supreme Leaders of Iran.
The Supreme Leader is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the head of the three branches of the state (the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Executive). |
1862_5 | He oversees, appoints (or inaugurates) and can dismiss the following offices:
Inaugurates the President and may also together with a two-thirds majority of the Parliament impeach him.
The Chief Justice of Iran (Head of the Judiciary Branch () usually a member of the Assembly of Experts) for a term of 8 years,
the members of the Expediency Discernment Council for a term of 5 years.
the members of Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution.
6 of the 12 members of the Guardian Council from among the members of the Assembly of Experts, the other 6 are chosen by the Parliament out of Islamic jurist candidates nominated by the Chief Justice of Iran who is in turn appointed by the Supreme Leader.
ministers of defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, interior and science.
two personal representatives to the Supreme National Security Council.
Can delegate representatives to all branches of government. Ali Khamenei has currently around 2000 representatives. |
1862_6 | the head of the National Radio and Television Institution IRIB for a term of 8 years
the head of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs
the Imams of the Friday Prayer of each Province Capital (with the advice of all the Marja') for a lifetime
Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran
the Commander of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran
the Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army
the Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy
the Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force
the Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Defense Force
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
the Commander of the IRGC
the Commander of the IRGC Ground Forces
the Commander of the IRGC Navy
the Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force
the Commander of the IRGC Quds Force
the Commander of the Basij Organization
the Commander of the Law Enforcement Force
the Heads of the Counter Intelligence Units
the Heads of the Intelligence Units |
1862_7 | approves elected members of the Assembly of Experts. |
1862_8 | The Supreme Leader does not receive a salary.
Incorporation in the Constitution |
1862_9 | 1979 |
1862_10 | In March 1979, shortly after Ruhollah Khomeini's return from exile and the overthrow of Iran's monarchy, a national referendum was held throughout Iran with the question "Islamic Republic, yes or no?". Although some groups objected to the wording and choice and boycotted the referendum, 98% of those voting voted "yes". Following this landslide victory, the constitution of Iran of 1906 was declared invalid and a new constitution for an Islamic state was created and ratified by referendum during the first week of December in 1979. According to Francis Fukuyama, the 1979 constitution is a "hybrid" of "theocratic and democratic elements" with much of it based on the ideas Khomeini presented in his work Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist (Hukumat-e Islami). In the work, Khomeini argued that government must be run in accordance with traditional Islamic sharia, and for this to happen a leading Islamic jurist (faqih) must provide political "guardianship" (wilayat or velayat) over |
1862_11 | the people. The leading jurist were known as Marja'. |
1862_12 | The Constitution stresses the importance of the clergy in government, with Article 4 stating that all civil, criminal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and all other statutes and regulations (must) be keeping with Islamic measures;…the Islamic legal scholars of the watch council (Shura yi Nigahban) will keep watch over this. and the importance of the Supreme Leader. Article 5 states
during the absence of the removed Twelfth Imam (may God hasten his reappearance) government and leadership of the community in the Islamic Republic of Iran belong to the rightful God fearing legal scholar (Faqih) who is recognized and acknowledged as the Islamic leader by the majority of the population. |
1862_13 | Article 107 in the constitution mentions Khomeini by name and praises him as the most learned and talented leader for emulation (marja-i taqlid). The responsibilities of the Supreme Leader are vaguely stated in the constitution, thus any 'violation' by the Supreme Leader would be dismissed almost immediately. As the rest of the clergy governed affairs on a daily basis, the Supreme Leader is capable of mandating a new decision as per the concept of Vilayat-e Faqih. (Halm, 120–121) |
1862_14 | 1989 |
1862_15 | Shortly before Khomeini's death a change was made in the constitution allowing a lower ranking Shia cleric to become Supreme Leader. Khomeini had a falling out with his successor Hussein-Ali Montazeri who disapproved of human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic such as the mass execution of political prisoners in late summer and early autumn 1988. Montazeri was demoted as a marja and Khomeini chose a new successor, a relatively low-ranking member of the clergy, Ali Khamene'i. However Article 109 stipulated that the leader be "a source of imitation" (Marja-e taqlid). Khomeini wrote a letter to the president of the Assembly for Revising the Constitution, which was in session at the time, making the necessary arrangements to designate Khamene'i as his successor, and Article 109 was revised accordingly. "Khomeini is supposed to have written a letter to the Chairman of the assembly of Leadership Experts on 29.4.89 in which he emphasised that he had always been of the opinion that the |
1862_16 | marja'iyat was not a requirement for the office of leader. |
1862_17 | Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist (Velayat-e faqih) |
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