Arresting bloggers to suppress freedom of speech becomes more and more common. China threw a political blogger in jail, Egypt detained a blogger without a trial, Malaysia arrested a blogger for sedition - and Iran considers a law to murder bloggers. (Even at the U.S. border feds can now ‘detain’ anybody’s laptop).

The World Information Access Project at the University of Washington released a report that identified 64 bloggers, unaffiliated with news organizations, who had been arrested for the contents of their blogs between 2003 and 2008.

WIA writes:

After surveying our data, we predict that the number of blogger arrests will rise in 2008. The popularity of online blogs continues to grow and inspire more media coverage of arrest incidents. Countries are enforcing greater Internet regulation, which will only increase with the elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the United States this year.