Would-be webloggers living under repressive regimes from China to Iran can now download an online handbook on how to become a successful "cyber-dissident".

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media watchdog, today published its Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, an 87-page pamphlet full of tips on producing successul blogs and sneaking past censors. The handbook was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris.

"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," Julien Pain, head of the watchdog’s Internet Freedom desk, writes in the introduction. "Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."

One of the contributors to the handbook, Arash Sigarchi, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for posting messages online that criticised the Iranian regime. Another, from Nepal, started blogging anonymously after King Gyanendra seized power in February.

The handbook gives advice on choosing the best blogging software and writing and formatting in a way that will get a site picked up by the major search engines. It also gives advice on how to write in a way that connects with the readers and how to make the blogs genuinely interactive.

And it gives detailed advice on safeguarding anonymity by using psuedonyms and proxy services that can replace the easily traceable IP addresses of home computers.

The handbook's publication comes two weeks after Reporters Without Borders launched a furious assault on Yahoo! after its Hong Kong subsidiary passed on technical information to Chinese police that saw a Chinese journalist jailed for ten years for passing sensitive information abroad.

"We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," the organisation said.

The handbook, which is available in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French, says that China has quickly become the "world champion" in internet censorship - with the help of major US corporations eager for a share of its burgeoning internet market.

"The country’s police and courts also treat very harshly website editors who don’t obey the rules laid down by the governing Communist Party," it adds.

"Seventy-five cyber-dissidents are currently in prison for trying to post independent news online, some of them serving sentences of more than 10 years."

Also listed as states which suppress freedom of expression online are Vietnam, Iran, Tunisia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.

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