This Week On TechCrunch: Iran takes back Twitter, RockYou makes data portability too easy, Das Twitter launches and more…

This time next week, if Mel Tormé is to be believed, chestnuts will be roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost will be nipping at your nose. There will also be some business with a sleigh. But Christmas is still a whole seven days away and right now it's business as usual on TechCrunch, as evidenced by our up to the minute coverage of Twitter being (apparently) hacked by the Iranians.

Obviously as regular TechCrunch readers will know, any hacker of Twitter is a friend of ours, but there's something about this recent attack on the popular micro-blogging service that I find particularly heartening.

For too long the anti-Iranian lobby has had the upper hand on Twitter, with self-righteous celebrities turning their avatars green in protest at the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and various hashtag memes criticising the country's human rights record. It's about time that supporters of the murderous regime got their PR machine in gear and redressed the balance with a bit of pro-Iranian propaganda.

And - hell - why mess around with hashtags or avatars when you can just hijack the entire site with your message that "U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To"? It's always nice to see Hezbollah getting a bit of linklove too.

Let's hope the fair and balanced trend continues: I'm particularly looking forward to high-profile Iranian celebrities turning their avatars red, white and blue while a flurry of hashtag memes celebrates the continuing erosion of democracy and basic human rights and the subjugation of women.

Yunno, inshallah.

Next week: China.