TO censor the Internet painlessly, undetectably, is the dream that keeps repressive governments up late at their mainframe computers. After all, no users are so censored online as those who never see it.

The Iranian government is carrying out an Internet crackdown in hopes of subduing the protest movement that has surged since the disputed results of the presidential election on June 12. At the same time, the Iranian government has been sending out the police to restrain protesters and foreign journalists.

Thus far, however, the Iranian government has learned the difficulty of trying to control the Internet in half-steps. Because the government’s censorship efforts are so evident  transparent, even  there is a battle raging online to keep Iran connected to the world digitally, and thus connected to the world. Sympathizers around the world are guiding Iranians to safe access to the Internet and are hosting and publicizing material that is being banned within Iran.

If only Iran’s leaders had thought through the implications of what can be called the Cute Cat Theory of Internet Censorship, as propounded by Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. His idea is deceptively simple: most people use the Internet to enjoy their lives, and among the ways people spread joy is to share pictures of cute cats. Even the sarcastic types (who, for example, have been known to insert misspelled messages under pictures of kittens) seem to be under their thrall.