[HN Gopher] Gitlab Blocked Iranians' Access
___________________________________________________________________
Gitlab Blocked Iranians' Access
Author : pabs3
Score : 314 points
Date : 2020-10-25 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ahmadhaghighi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ahmadhaghighi.com)
| tpetry wrote:
| So the consens is that many companies are doing this because of
| sanctions by the US.
|
| What about cloudflare? They are responsible for more and more of
| the internet's traffic. And even if you are a non-us company and
| have servers not in the US many people use cloudflare because of
| its ddos protection. Does cloudflare block these countries too as
| they are an american company despite you not being a us company.
| arp242 wrote:
| One difference is that Cloudflare doesn't directly do business
| with you if you visit a website that's using cloudflare,
| whereas signing up for GitLab (or cloudflare, for that matters)
| means entering in a legal agreement.
|
| I'd have to look at the exact text of the sanctions to see if
| providing service like cloudflare is a violation, but it's not
| really the same thing as having an account.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It might be over-compliance on GCP's part, or it might not be.
| The DOJ isn't currently prosecuting companies for not complying
| with sanctions, but that doesn't mean they won't decide
| tomorrow to hit every big US website that doesn't block Iran
| IPs by default. The law certainly isn't clear on where in the
| OSI model you're supposed to stop doing business with Iran
| traffic. Maybe even IX's are liable if they route traffic that
| are from Iranian IPs.
| dijit wrote:
| Quick note that anyone using a US based cloud provider will
| likely be blocking all sanctioned countries. It's not
| configurable at all.
|
| It was a sticking point for us when deploying the sequel to a
| game I was working on. Ultimately we determined that the benefits
| of using the provider outweighed the benefit to users since we
| weren't shipping the game there officially anyway. (With one
| notable exception)
|
| It still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
|
| It should be noted that it's also Cuba and Crimea that are
| blocked. I was principally annoyed at the lack of usability in
| Crimea, as any way you slice it it's part of a country that is
| not being sanctioned in the same way and the citizenry did
| nothing wrong.
| godelzilla wrote:
| Imperialism always attacks innocent citizens.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| In the past I worked for an Israeli company listed on a US
| stock exchange. They were proud that they had customers in
| virtually every corner of the world, and had just six countries
| they couldn't do business in. One (Lebanon) because of the
| Israeli government, and five (including Iran) because of the
| US.
|
| Most interesting to me: apparently when they first went public
| and became subject to US regulation they had to close quite a
| large number of customer accounts in Iran.
| freehunter wrote:
| It's interesting to me that the US views Iran more harshly
| than Israel does.
| mcny wrote:
| Iran, Israel, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia... There is so much
| going on there. Are they all at conflict with one another?
| Who are allies? How does this work?
| einpoklum wrote:
| > I was principally annoyed at the lack of usability in Crimea,
| as any way you slice it it's part of a country that is not
| being sanctioned in the same way and the citizenry did nothing
| wrong.
|
| If "doing wrong things" is a criterion for being blocked on
| GitLab, then there are _so_ many organizations and states which
| should be blocked, and arguably hundreds of Millions of people
| who serve in military forces which do wrong things etc.
|
| So, there is really no justification for this regardless of
| slicing. IMHO.
| toast0 wrote:
| At least on some clouds, it's configurable, but your lawyers
| need to speak to their lawyers, etc, to get worldwide access
| enabled, and annual reconfirmation between lawyers.
|
| You would probably have to be in an OFAC exception category, of
| course. Routing to sanctioned countries from a provider that
| mostly blocks them probably isn't the best either.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| You might want to delete the "and the citizenry did nothing
| wrong" ending to your otherwise reasonable post. I don't think
| you meant it the way it sounds.
| bigbubba wrote:
| What do you think the citizenry of Crimea did wrong?
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Nothing; see my reply elsewhere in this thread. I meant the
| opposite of what you understood me to mean, but I can see
| why I was misunderstood.
| trhway wrote:
| they voted wrong way.
| bigbubba wrote:
| I'm under the impression that nobody but Russian state
| media claims that election was legitimate.
| trhway wrote:
| wrong way in wrong elections :) Of course, like any
| Russian election it was just a formality, a decor. Nobody
| really needed it as the will of the people was clear - no
| more threats of more of those "trains of friendships"
| full of Western Ukrainian nationalists, especially given
| all the quiet massive arming of those nationalists that
| had happened under the cover of the Ministry of Internal
| Affairs in the run up to the 2014.
| kdmytro wrote:
| What massive arming?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I legit am not sure how it sounded to you in a way that
| seemed unfortunate.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| It implies that, unlike Crimea, the citizenry of countries
| _other_ than Crimea (Iran/Sudan/Cuba etc) _did_ do
| something wrong.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I am being misunderstood because of the wording I used. The
| reason "and the citizenry did nothing wrong" is problematic
| is because it implies that, unlike Crimea, the citizenry of
| countries _other_ than Crimea (Iran/Sudan/Cuba etc) _did_ do
| something wrong.
|
| I was not saying that the citizens of Crimea did something
| wrong: I was saying the opposite.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I only use Amazon Route 53. Does anyone know if that's ever
| been blocked in Iran etc?
|
| It doesn't seem to be blocked at the moment, but it's also
| something I can't find any official documentation on.
| dijit wrote:
| It would only affect you if your doing direct DNS requests to
| route53- which is almost never the case for clients.
| f6v wrote:
| > and the citizenry did nothing wrong Well nobody is wrong when
| it comes to Crimea except those who claim it's part of Ukraine.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > US based cloud provider
|
| Huh, I thought it was GitLab B.V. and that still exists[1], but
| Wikipedia says they're headquartered in the USA as of 2018[2]
| and the official "About" page[3] mentions Amsterdam, the
| Netherlands nor B.V., but does mention a "GitLab Inc.". The
| history on Wikipedia doesn't mention them having moved and
| still has the "Tech companies from the Netherlands" category
| (not sure if that's because they're still originally from
| there, or because the category was never removed).
|
| Not sure blocking Iran would have happened if they hadn't
| opened a corp overseas.
|
| [1] https://www.kvk.nl/orderstraat/product-
| kiezen/?kvknummer=600...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GitLab&diff=82685...
|
| [3] https://about.gitlab.com/company/
|
| Edit: slightly older, 2017 reference of USA headquarters
| https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6J-gitlab-s-secret-to-ma...
|
| Editv2: the TOS still says that the intellectual property is
| with GitLab B.V. but the branding page says the trademark is
| held by GitLab Inc. The privacy policy is not GDPR-complaint
| (on multiple counts and I haven't even read it, just spotted
| some things like implicit+non-opt-outable consent while looking
| for who is the data controller) and doesn't mention who the
| data controller is. It does make clear that all data goes to
| the USA and you better suck it up. Looks like they fully
| embraced all of the USA's freedoms including censorship and
| privacy violations under their home country's law. I'm giving
| up searching for more info about the move at this point: there
| is no news article in HN search, the blog search requires me to
| accept more tracking which (after seeing the illegal-in-the-EU
| privacy policy) I'm not sure I'm willing to engage in, and the
| website seems to have had mixed mentions of B.V. and Inc. as of
| 2016.
| ralph84 wrote:
| The minute they took money from US VCs they agreed to play by
| US rules.
| dijit wrote:
| Gitlab is hosted on google cloud, and fronted by
| cloudflare... those IP restrictions apply to google cloud,
| AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud. (and Cloudflare since that's a
| US company also)
| PestoDiRucola wrote:
| Gitlab blocked Iran's Access*
|
| This happened because of US sanctions[0].
|
| [0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/code-of-
| condu...
| 542458 wrote:
| I'm a little confused at people who are mad at GitLab here. I'm
| under the impression that sanctions and export control laws
| tend to be fairly strict, and penalties for knowing non-
| compliance are harsh, including the possibility of jail time.
| GitLab's hands are pretty tied here.
| f6v wrote:
| There's heated debate whether companies have to be political
| or not. Even whether it's in principle possible to not be
| political. If someone thinks all companies should have
| political stance, then "silence is violence", even worse,
| since gitlab is complying. US sanctions against Iran aren't
| universally supported even by US satellites, and some would
| say are immoral. So time for some activism?
| jessaustin wrote:
| _So time for some activism?_
|
| Anyone on earth with access to the internet in non-
| sanctioned and non-sanctioning IP ranges could set up a
| mirror to help Iranians and other sanction victims. Private
| repos might be a little more difficult to handle, but still
| possible. Like the "Great Firewall", USA's petty
| totalitarianism can be routed around if people care to do
| so.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886783
| jlgaddis wrote:
| > _... sanctions and export control laws tend to be fairly
| strict, and penalties for knowing non-compliance are harsh,
| including the possibility of jail time._
|
| Yeah, no kidding. It's not even " _knowing_ non-compliance ",
| though -- although that's almost certainly _worse_.
|
| To illustrate this with an example that most HN readers will
| easily understand (and which some might even be affected by):
|
| The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department
| of the Treasury recently issued an advisory [0,1] to "alert"
| U.S. companies of the potential risks of "facilitating"
| ransomware payments.
|
| The TL;DR is that "U.S. persons, wherever located" are
| subject to heavy civil penalties -- under "strict liability"
| -- if you "facilitate" a payment from a ransomware victim
| that ultimately ends up going to an "entity" that's in one of
| the embargoed/sanctioned countries (Iran, North Korea, Syria,
| Crimea, Cuba, ...) or on OFAC's "Specially Designated
| Nationals and Blocked Persons List".
|
| "Strict Liability", by the way, means that you're still
| liable and subject to penalties _even if_ you "did not know
| or have reason to know".
|
| _" Oh, really? Oh, well, that's too bad. You're still
| liable, pay up!"_
|
| Finally, think about how broadly the vague term "facilitate"
| might possibly be interpreted (especially by the U.S.
| Government!) There's belief in some infosec circles that this
| even means that, for example, a consultant who told a
| ransomware victim, "yeah, you should probably pay if you want
| your data back" might be considered liable.
|
| --
|
| [0]: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-
| sanctions/...
|
| [1]: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/ofac_ransomwa
| re_a... (PDF)
| mirekrusin wrote:
| We shouldn't be upset at github/githlab/npm/dockerhub but our
| industry and ourselves - how did we let our
| projects/packages/tools/infrastructure to be hosted on such
| platforms in the first place? Hopefully this will trigger
| more activity on decentralised solutions; git is
| decentralised already, needs some ipfs/torrent/etc wrapper
| for issues/rest or maybe something based on fossil etc.
| closeparen wrote:
| I don't think I want to live in a world where software
| engineers make up their own foreign policy.
|
| At the very least, enforceable sanctions give us options
| other than war. Giving that up could carry an immense human
| cost. An understanding of distributed software architecture
| does not come with the ability to understand and weigh that
| cost, nor does it make you a legitimate authority on which
| tradeoffs to choose. It's probably inevitable, but I'll be
| disappointed in our community if it happens.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Well, we put our projects on the most popular platform, for
| visibility; and visibility is important for FOSS projects.
|
| But you make a valid point. Perhaps we should put the
| "master reop" on something that's decentralized and not
| subject to US censorship, and only place a copy on
| GitHub/GitLab/etc.
| londons_explore wrote:
| We should change the rules so that anything that's provided,
| for free, to the entire world can also be given to sanctioned
| countries and individuals.
| r-w wrote:
| Not in an era when information is the most valuable
| commodity. Just look at the discrepancy in patent treatment
| been the US and China: openness on our part can still go
| unrequited and be taken advantage of. No matter what we
| give a sanctioned county free access to, they can just bend
| it to their own will.
| Dahoon wrote:
| Did you just call the US patent system "Open"?
| Zanni wrote:
| In order to obtain patent protection, you have to make
| public the details of your invention, so "open" in the
| sense that the information is available, and vulnerable
| thereby to foreign manufacturers who don't respect the
| patent.
| acdha wrote:
| That's getting off-topic: U.S. law currently requires this.
| Whether or not you agree with that policy, the question is
| whether GitLab should knowingly break that law, incurring
| potentially significantly or even ruinous impact to their
| business, until the law is changed or should they comply
| while working with their representatives to change the
| laws? That's a lot of risk to ask a company to take on for
| something which doesn't benefit Iranians that much.
| delfinom wrote:
| The thing about the law is, it's not the company that
| suffers but employees can and will be thrown in jail.
| Executives aren't going to stick their necks out.
| miracle2k wrote:
| There are tens of thousands of companies in the US which
| actively provide web-services, and which do not actively go
| fishing for accounts that may possibly be Iranian. Are they
| all possibly facing jail time?
|
| Is there a requirement to actively monitor the service for
| possible Iranians? What kind of actions are required
| specifically to be safe from jail? Is it a requirement to
| actively block IPs? Spoiler: These things are not specified.
|
| Maybe we should be angry with the US government for the lack
| of legal certainty provided to its citizens.
|
| However, given that no one in a situation like Gitlab has
| been prosecuted, maybe their hands are bound after all.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Omission (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_(law))
| creates the exact same liabilities. It's not about fishing
| for accounts. Just because you're not being prosecuted,
| doesn't meant that you don't need to comply with law. For a
| large company like GitLab is a fiduciary responsibility to
| do this whether or not they have the federal government
| telling them to do it at the current time.
| delfinom wrote:
| But on that note, the US government is almost certainly
| sending all these company a one time warning letter to
| immediately comply or face jail.
| BlueToth wrote:
| Firebase also blocks Iranian IP's, which is why I don't use that
| service.
| [deleted]
| goku99 wrote:
| Isn't sharing project/code, or any intellectual property with
| Israel or nations which Iran Supremo doesn't approve, banned too?
| (in Iran)
|
| I find this ridiculous, trying to stop flow of intellectual
| knowledge.
| null_deref wrote:
| Yes, that's was an interesting case of what you mentioned
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24364793
| vfclists wrote:
| Who is the new company Gitlab has switched to, and why didn't
| Gitlab consider the consequences of their decision?
|
| Why doesn't Gitlab simply host their services outside US
| jurisdiction?
| delfinom wrote:
| Good luck? Short of moving entirely to China or Russia, they
| have no chance of escaping us sanction law. If they wish to
| hold even a european bank account, their bank will force them
| to comply with the sanctions or they will be terminated.
| miracle2k wrote:
| People should resist the temptation to defend this.
|
| 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of
| websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not do
| this.
|
| 2. It does not speak well of the United States justice system if
| someone could be prosecuted for failure to block Iranian IPs. If
| this were required, the law should be clear. Otherwise, the US
| citizens deserve not to be in fear of prosecution.
|
| 3. Beyond IP-blocking, if the US government wants to require
| companies to go actively fishing for possible Iranian accounts,
| it should clearly codify this. Otherwise, companies should not
| have to fear prosecution.
|
| Summary: Gitlab should grow a pair, and Americans should ask
| themselves if this kind of legal uncertainty is desirable.
|
| Finally, legal effort to make websites inaccessible in Iran is
| entirely incompatible with being taken seriously when complaining
| about internet freedom in Iran.
|
| Note that this goes so far that the entire Google Cloud network
| blocks Iranian IPs, including any and all services and websites
| hosted there, including say resources that might provide valuable
| information to regime opponents.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Come on dude. You are not a lawyer and your assessment of the
| situation clearly goes against federal law. You can personally
| feel bad about this but if the government tells you to comply
| with this and your vendors tell you to comply with this (so
| they can comply with federal law) then there's absolutely zero
| things you can do.
| monokh wrote:
| > 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of
| websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not
| do this.
|
| How do you define an iranian account? It's a complicated rule
| set there. Iranians not legally resident in Iran are exempt
| from the sanctions for example.
|
| I feel like IP bans are correct. If you're evading sanctions
| and internet censorship, you use whatever proxy and many do
| just this. Companies under these sanctions can write it off as
| not being the wiser and the users get to where they need to.
|
| Closing accounts with an IP login from Iran does feel like an
| unnecessary step here.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| It's fear all the time. Fear is the biggest weapon for all kind
| of states. That's why some of us might have self-censorship
| because we fear that we will get penalised hard if we do not
| play by the rule.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Just look here on this page. Lots of people who would decry
| censorship and cruelty on the part of some nations, are here
| arguing in support of the same qualities of the nation that
| could do the most harm to them.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| >Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of
| websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not
| do this.
|
| I wish dang would ban users for blatant misinformation such as
| this. The number of people who end up believing these lies as
| truth probably outweighs the benefit of any civil discussion it
| could lead to: in the US, it's now obvious that "alternative
| facts" has led to a breakdown of civil discussion, after all.
| ztjio wrote:
| I sympathize with your position and even agree in the context
| of other types of sites, but, what really needs to happen
| here is YC users need to learn that nothing in these comment
| threads is authoritative. This is the land of Dunning-Kruger
| and nobody should ever directly believe anything here, no
| matter how trustworthy it seems.
|
| Always verify.
|
| If effort was put into censoring bad information, that might
| instill a false sense of trust that could never be met by
| mods. Instead, effort should be put into making sure everyone
| knows to be skeptical. That, to me, seems more in line with
| how this site operates.
|
| If people want to be believed, they should cite authoritative
| sources.
| momokoko wrote:
| This is dangerously inaccurate information. To those reading
| this, the US absolutely considers blocking Iranian IPs a
| required action under the sanctions. The person posting this
| could get you in serious legal trouble.
|
| With that said, most companies do not start blocking these IPs
| until they are either contacted by US authorities and asked to
| comply or via the recommendations of an audit by an outside
| private company.
|
| Please do not trust what this person is saying. Remember,
| violating sanctions can get you a prison sentence, not just a
| fine.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > People should resist the temptation to defend this.
|
| You yourself are defending these ludicrous sanctions to some
| extent:
|
| > 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance.
|
| So blocking Iranian IPs is fine?
|
| If you tell me "but GitLab is in the US, it has to" - it chose
| to base itself in the US only after apparently having
| previously being based elsewhere. With the way things stand, it
| is unreasonable for an online universal service provider, with
| individual user accounts, to operate from the US - similarly to
| how it should not operate out of China or Turkey (where
| restrictions are even stronger).
|
| Anyway...
|
| > Summary: Gitlab should grow a pair, and Americans should ask
| themselves if this kind of legal uncertainty is desirable.
|
| Most people in the US are barely aware of international
| affairs. This comes to mind from a few years back:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...
|
| > Finally, legal effort to make websites inaccessible in Iran
| is entirely incompatible with being taken seriously when
| complaining about internet freedom in Iran.
|
| You're mistaken. The US is not taken seriously on the merit of
| its arguments (and probably hasn't been for a couple of
| centuries already); it is taken seriously due to its ability to
| exert military and economic pressure.
| saurik wrote:
| > > 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is
| almost certainly over-compliance.
|
| > So blocking Iranian IPs is fine?
|
| The person you responded to, in the very sentence you quoted,
| said no, as this is "over-compliance".
| einpoklum wrote:
| s/So blocking Iranian IPs/So blocking Iranian accounts/
|
| in my previous message :-(
| Dunedan wrote:
| > 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of
| websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not
| do this.
|
| I can tell you for certain that at least AWS and Atlassian do
| that.
|
| I learned that while surfing from an IP address which was
| mistakenly associated with being located in Iran. I only
| discovered that, because said websites weren't available. As I
| got that fixed quite fast afterwards I haven't done more
| browsing, that's why I can only name these two companies, but
| I'm pretty sure there are much more big companies doing such
| blocking based on IP address geolocation.
| r-w wrote:
| > I learned that while surfing from an IP address which was
| mistakenly associated with being located in Iran. [...] As I
| got that fixed quite fast afterwards I haven't done more
| browsing
|
| Tor?
| Dunedan wrote:
| That was just a regular internet connection. Not sure who
| messed up, but somehow the (dynamic) IP address block the
| ISP handed out was associated with Iran at that point in
| time.
| lacker wrote:
| I don't quite understand your summary. You say "GitLab should
| grow a pair", but also that any infrastructure using Google
| Cloud will block Iranian IPs, so many companies will end up
| unusable from Iranian IPs regardless of their own opinions?
| rootsudo wrote:
| >Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance.
|
| Very easy to set a geo blocker or conditional access policy and
| have full compliance. Exempting unique IP addresses becomes
| annoying, but if needed possible.
|
| It also cuts down on the other side of the house of security
| related incidents, which, if your company offers a product
| interested by people in that state, or, has news that can be
| taken in a dim light, prevents ddos and other annoying things.
|
| Not perfect, but one reason why there's 'over compliance'.
|
| > It does not speak well of the United States justice system if
| someone could be prosecuted for failure to block Iranian IPs.
| If this were required, the law should be clear. Otherwise, the
| US citizens deserve not to be in fear of prosecution.
|
| Cheap insurance, especially if you have no intentions of doing
| business from there.
| tinco wrote:
| > Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost
| certainly over-compliance.
|
| Do you have a source for this being over-compliance? Gitlab and
| Github are both actively sharing technology. It's not like
| Gitlab randomly decided "Hey let's block Iran today", obviously
| they have in house legal council who advised this course of
| action.
|
| With regards to your second point, everyone knows there are
| sanctions on Iran, it's been all over the news, and besides
| it's not like Gitlab is a random US citizen. They are a big
| company that is doing business overseas. It stands to reason
| that they should be aware of _all_ laws and restrictions on
| international trade.
|
| I think it's the other way around, companies like Google and
| Facebook should grow some responsibility, it is not
| unreasonable to ask a company to "fish" for any accounts that
| conflict with any laws. Google and Facebook might give the
| impression that it's hard, but it's really not, it's only hard
| if you expect to make hundreds of dollars for every dollar that
| you invest acquiring your user base.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > obviously they have in house legal council who advised this
| course of action
|
| From my experience at technology companies, this may indeed
| be the case, but I would also not underestimate the chance
| that someone made this decision without being advised to do
| so by an expensive legal council.
| jakear wrote:
| Just FYI.. you perhaps meant counsel not council, though the
| meanings are similar enough it can be hard to tell.
| tinco wrote:
| Woops sorry you're totally right.
| koalafied wrote:
| As an international student from an embargoed country, I'm
| increasingly worried if at some point there will be a law
| resulting in blockage of my bank account. Already I've heard news
| of PayPal causing trouble for some of us, so I've stopped using
| PayPal for good.
| philtar wrote:
| Yes, gitlab has no choice but to block them.
|
| Also yes, gitlab doesn't really care about them or they would
| have given some sort of notice. Even 24 hours.
| 542458 wrote:
| Does the law have an exemption for notifying people and giving
| them a grace period? As this is sanctions / export control, I
| was under the impression that deficiencies in compliance had to
| be corrected as soon as they were noticed - which in this case
| would mean cutting off business relations and communications
| immediately.
| aejnsn wrote:
| Free software does not constitute a free service. It's open
| source, host your own GitLab instance.
|
| Furthermore, this is as if GitLab is the only service to block
| Iran. I didn't say the Persian people, I said Iran.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| My condolences, but on the other hand, you have to understand
| that not all open source licenses/projects are borderless, like
| MIT and Apache they are US-based, and so the curse US cast upon
| will be effectively apply there too.
|
| Only libre software like GNU and public domain works will
| probably give you the complete freedom to not be wary of this
| kind of nation-to-nation wraith.
| CIAvash wrote:
| There are a lot of misinformation here. Nobody has to block
| Iranians. Look at GitHub, they limited Iranian accounts, not
| block them.
| ramoz wrote:
| Gitlab needs to maintain its dominant position in U.S Public
| Sector.
| samim wrote:
| Weaponising open source is a new low, even for this particularly
| clueless US regime. But this is really only meaningful in the
| short-term. In the mid-term (2030ish), the tech game is very
| likely to have drastically changed: Other countries will have
| taken the technological lead (china & co), while the US is still
| engaged in endless internal conflicts (in effect a mafia-state,
| akin to what happend in Russia after 1990). All the global talent
| that once powered the US tech innovation motor (droves of
| Chinese, Indian, Russian and European PhD students etc.) will
| have disappeared. At that point, we might see headlines along the
| lines of "Globally leading open source platform Gitea Blocked US
| Access". Personally, i would prefer to see yet another scenario,
| where the entire global Intellectual property market collapsed
| and was replace by "open source everything" - but that might be a
| more long term vision.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| > _Weaponising open source is a new low, even for this
| particularly clueless US regime._
|
| You assume it's about open source in particular. It isn't. US
| sanctions are very sweeping in scope.
| doomlaser wrote:
| > GitLab is not the only actor in this discrimination against
| Persian/Iranian people, we also blocked by GitHub, Docker, NPM,
| Google Developer, Android, AWS, Go, Kubernetes and etc.
|
| US sanctions compliance most likely
|
| _Edit:_ confirmed by Gitlab:
| https://twitter.com/gitlab/status/1312183287402512384
| skrebbel wrote:
| Also, nitpick, nobody's blocking Persians. I'm not Persian but
| if I go to Iran I bet I'm blocked too.
|
| I'm strongly opposed to these sanctions, and I also think
| GitLab should've given people notice so they could get their
| data out. But I'm not sure it's a good place to pull the racism
| card.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| I agree it's not racism on GitLab's part, but the U.S.
| officials behind these sanctions themselves do use phrases
| like that they want to 'choke Iran's economy', that is in the
| middle of a pandemic where people's respiratory systems are
| at risk, it certainly doesn't look good on their part.
|
| Also worth noting that GitLab has previously banned hiring
| from China/Russia, so it's no stranger to blanket bans of
| questionable nature.
|
| 1 - https://www.zdnet.com/article/gitlab-considers-ban-on-
| new-hi...
| navaati wrote:
| They also ban hires from France FWIW, but that's because
| they wouldn't touch our labour code with a 10-foot pole
| haha.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Wait, I was under the impression that GitLab was
| originally a Dutch company (it appears to be American
| now)? Are the labor laws in France that much more lax
| than in the Netherlands?
| doomlaser wrote:
| I didn't realize until today that Gitlab is entirely
| remote and has been since it was founded (long before
| covid) https://www.inc.com/cameron-albert-deitch/gitlab-
| tips-remote...
| voltagex_ wrote:
| Wait, what?
| microcolonel wrote:
| There is nothing racist about economic sanctions against a
| country which is in active conflict with our armed forces
| outside of their borders, which is actively engaged in psy-
| ops to destabilize American society.
|
| Economic sanctions against America would not be racism
| against scots/germans/west africans or whatever.
|
| You can argue against sanctions on all sorts of grounds,
| but the flimsiest is claiming that they're racist.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > There is nothing racist about economic sanctions
| against a country which is in active conflict with our
| armed forces outside of their borders
|
| I think that singing about how you want to destroy the
| country, how you want to choke it etc. do prove racist
| tendencies.
|
| As for armed forces acting outside of borders, you cannot
| claim that U.S. armed forces are any more 'authorized' to
| be in these places than Iranian ones, can you?
|
| So in the end, it comes down to nothing more than the
| U.S. having the ability to implement these sanctions and
| Iran not, there's no 'principles' in it, just geo-
| politics.
|
| What is remarkable however is that this pandemic is a
| uniquely challenging situation even for countries not
| under sanctions, so placing new sanctions on the country,
| as was recently done, is plain inhumane.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >I agree it's not racism on GitLab's part, but the U.S.
| officials behind these sanctions themselves do use phrases
| like that they want to 'choke Iran's economy', that is in
| the middle of a pandemic where people's respiratory systems
| are at risk, it certainly doesn't look good on their part.
|
| Oh come on. That is not scraping the barrel but the bare
| metal underneath for offense. And most people die of hearth
| attacks anyway.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Also worth noting that GitLab has previously banned hiring
| from China/Russia, so it's no stranger to blanket bans of
| questionable nature.
|
| I wouldn't consider not hiring from countries with
| aggressive foreign policies and non-democratic governments
| that use coercion on their own citizens (including
| employees of said company) as questionable. GitLab's main
| job is to protect it's company and it's customers not to
| try to build some sort of utopian post-reality
| civilization.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > countries with aggressive foreign policies
|
| If we go by that logic, the U.S. would get on that list.
|
| > non-democratic governments that use coercion on their
| own citizens
|
| If that was indeed the standard to go by, I'd agree, but
| the list would then need to be much, much longer and
| possibly include even some traditionally democratic
| countries like Australia who have an actual law where
| they can force employees to secretly install backdoors.
|
| Saudi Arabia infiltrated Twitter and compromised some of
| its employees to obtain info on regime critics that could
| endanger their lives, as just another example.
|
| The list would by these metrics include well over half
| the world.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >If we go by that logic, the U.S. would get on that list.
|
| I put an AND in my statement for a reason, please don't
| cherry pick parts of sentences.
|
| >The list would by these metrics include well over half
| the world.
|
| That's like saying that if you don't want to die you
| should live in a cocoon and never leave the house, rather
| than just making sure to avoid the most dangerous
| activities. GitLab is blocking the countries it sees as
| the most risky and carry the least cost in blocking. I'm
| sure their lawyers would love to block half the world but
| that would cost them too much.
| amaccuish wrote:
| > I put an AND in my statement for a reason, please don't
| cherry pick parts of sentences.
|
| As a non US-citizen, I don't really care if the US is
| democratic or not.
|
| People have voted and continue to vote for terrible
| things. What matters is what a country does. So actually
| the US would certainly be on that list.
|
| Unless your argument is, it's not evil if we all voted
| for it?
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Unless your argument is, it's not evil if we all voted
| for it?
|
| This has nothing to do with good and evil which seems to
| be a point you're missing. It's about risk of coercion to
| employees of companies. The US government could be
| turning babies into hand bags but if it doesn't coerce
| it's residents into acting against their employers then
| it doesn't create a risk for companies.
|
| edit: Seriously, this was all in the original sentence
| that you people keep cherry picking from.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The US has no more qualms about coercion of employees in
| order to further foreign policy than China or Russia. US
| legal options for such things are incredibly wide and far
| ranging.
| dessant wrote:
| Some companies will block you despite having no legal
| obligation, because it's more convenient, than to apply the
| law in a sensible manner. GitLab is apparently such a
| company.
|
| > 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative.
| Do I need to restrict the account?
|
| > No. As long as you are satisfied that the client is not
| ordinarily resident in Iran, then the account does not need
| to be restricted.
|
| https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-
| sanctions/...
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| This refers to bank accounts. A restricted account would
| mean the account can be closed and cashed out, but not used
| in other ways.
| dessant wrote:
| The same principle applies to GitLab in regards to
| account closure, they don't have to close an account
| without any interaction because the user has at some
| point logged in from an Iranian IP address, and they can
| preemptively restrict an account and ask for proof of
| residence.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Fossil on something like ipfs/torrent sounds like a great
| solution (where tickets etc/the whole thing is embedded in
| the repo itself). Even for enterprise projects where we're
| hit by outages from time to time it feels like a great
| solution. What if sanctioned/blocked account has publicly
| used repository?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| So what do you use instead? Non US-alternatives or VPNs?
| microcolonel wrote:
| Characterizing this as "discrimination against Persian people"
| is extremely dishonest. There are like half a million Persian
| people in America alone, as many as there are Wyomingites, who
| have the same access to GitLab as anyone else; this is a
| question of commerce between the U.S. and Iran, not a question
| of _discrimination against Persians_.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Not likely but quite definitely, the price of violating US
| sanctions is quite high, no one wants to be at risk of being
| made an example of.
|
| Depending on the actual sanctions these might not require a
| blanket ban on paper but in practice there is no effective way
| of performing sufficient KYC for every individual from Iran to
| comply with the sanctions even if they only target specific
| individuals and institutions.
| skywhopper wrote:
| I work at a SaaS company based in the US, and we've actively
| blocked a half-dozen or so countries for years, including Iran,
| because of sanctions. I'm honestly surprised GitLab wasn't
| already doing so.
| posnet wrote:
| Yep, usually gets picked up when a company ends up getting SOX
| compliance before going public. While OFAC sanctions are not
| strictly speaking part of SOX, every audit I've seen ends up
| putting them in place anyway.
| 616c wrote:
| Sadly to the point. I feel for Iranians in Iran (I know many,
| whether they call themselves Persians or Iranians as expats is
| their choice and I respect that).
|
| Having had the opportunity to meet the former in their homeland
| so so long ago, many Americans do not understand how grueling
| the sanctions regime system is for average Iranian citizens in
| their everyday; this is sadly a minor example as I saw based
| experiences a decade ago. It does not impact government
| officials as much as we hope, and the citizens are far, far
| less empowered to force government change to break free of a
| system sanctions hopes to disincentivize (I will not even waste
| time here, Google and look, even recent attempts lead to
| backlash).
|
| As a Westerner, and a lover of HN, I would love to see data-
| driven examples of sanctions actually working. Was South Africa
| are only positive example from US sanction strategies? I will
| go look, but this is one of many examples in Iran of us causing
| resentment and confusion for citizenry and not really helping.
| (For Americans, this is a not a red-blue problem if we talk
| long-term approach, all political parties have sided with
| sanction strategies in the long-term for a while: Cubans and
| Iranians we have punished and it has not really seemed to help
| us _in the long-term_ shifting their governments and policy
| objectives, but I would love to see evidenced counterpoints.)
|
| The first time I was struck by this perverting are efforts in
| explaining open society to citizens of countries with
| indifferent governments was a decade ago, when SourceForge did
| the same thing. We respect the rule of law, but to spite the
| faces of democratic cultural principles. Oh well.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073903
| falcolas wrote:
| What non-violent (yes, there is violence inherent in
| sanctions, but it is a rather different scale than war)
| alternative would you suggest for punishing a foreign
| country?
|
| EDIT: I see this question has been asked in other threads,
| but not answered. Whether Iran _should_ be punished is a
| separate question (one on which I am personally too ignorant
| to hold an opinion about) from how should one country punish
| another.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Countries are not people (they are _made_ of people).
| Punishing them makes little sense. If one wants a country
| to behave some way, one should think of how to make it
| happen, and what 's the cost to everyone involved.
|
| Sanctions should never be part of a punitive system, which
| at the level of a whole country is inevitably unjust. They
| should only be part of an _incentive_ system, where you
| hope to steer the other country to the direction you want.
| Looked at it this way, we wouldn 't ask ourselves whether
| sanctions are warranted. We'd ask ourselves how _effective_
| they are.
|
| Oh, and there's this question of whether a country should
| have the right to influence another country to begin with.
| Not gonna answer that one here.
| umvi wrote:
| Well in the case of authoritarian regimes, I would imagine
| trying to pump _more_ information from the free world into
| it would be a more effective "punishment" that restricting
| information. In practice though that's hard. Most
| authoritarian regimes have state censors/firewalls to
| filter only information that is advantageous for the state.
| falcolas wrote:
| China (hell, vaccinations/flat earth too) has shown that
| this isn't terribly effective. The 'west' has been
| pursuing a policy of "if we enlighten them, they will
| revolt", and it ain't happening. Some have been
| enlightened, others have had their own biases
| strengthened, and the government has simply continued
| unchanged.
| judge2020 wrote:
| On the other hand, a presidency term without a few
| foreign coups is considered a dull affair.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > What non-violent alternative would you suggest for
| punishing a foreign country?
|
| It is not for the US to "punish" other world states, even
| if "Iran should be punished".
|
| If you, or your state, believe some kind of sanctions are
| in order, there are international bodies and forums where
| this can be discussed and decided upon: The UN security
| council, international courts, and other more specialized
| bodies, some of which can make decisions which constitute
| sanctions.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Why discussing it in the UN is better? Why involving
| other non democratic countries in the decision making?
| The UN is not some magical entity where every decision is
| better than whatever decision the US can take by
| themselves. If anything it is the opposite, since many of
| the countries there are not democratic, corrupt or just
| plain backward and their decision have no consequences to
| their leaders.
| hohohmm wrote:
| Imperialism in its truest form.
| monkin wrote:
| GitLab can't do nothing about it, and whining will not help.
| Everything is on government level.
| goku99 wrote:
| Just of clarification, did they take down the project of all
| Iranian nationals? or simply block access to GitLab from Users
| with IP from Iran? Would it be possible to hide their identity,
| say tor or VPN?
| input_sh wrote:
| Can't speak for GitLab specifically, but I have spoken to
| Persians living abroad that had their credit cards cancelled,
| bank accounts frozen, and SIM cards simply stopping to work.
| One of them hasn't lived in Iran in two decades and denounced
| their citizenship half a decade ago.
|
| Businesses don't care. It's easier for them to have a couple
| of false positives than it is to deal with the possible
| consequences.
| nix23 wrote:
| >GitLab can't do nothing about it
|
| Change your Hosting to a non US Company is what you can do.
| [deleted]
| ahadinyoto wrote:
| Not whining. Bringing this into our attention is important,
| especially for those who live outside the US. I've been naively
| trusting the US-based services as always open and free, as in
| freedom. It's not. Any political move may mean my data can get
| frozen out and become unreachable anytime. A real wake up call.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Of course GitLab can do something about it. It happened, as
| their tweet says, because they changed vendor. So it sounds
| like they may be able to work around it by changing their
| hosting choices.
|
| Also, this may come as a shock to you, but when a law is
| sufficiently unjust, there can come a time to disobey the law.
| In this case, disobeying the law would not directly risk
| anyone's safety, lowering the barrier somewhat.
| arkitaip wrote:
| What a defeatist attitude. What you unkindly label as whining,
| I see as advocacy for a good cause. Blocking access to gitlab
| does nothing but strengthen the autocracy in Iran and prevents
| Iranian devs from making a living and supporting their
| communities.
| monkin wrote:
| Putting post like that is nothing more than whining, as it
| doesn't change anything. Want to do something better? Write
| some petitions, make a campaign or anything other, but
| bashing company that have to comply with US laws is just
| stupid. Sorry if this is unkindly and defeatist for you.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Exactly, want to do something? Complain to your government
| representatives, not Gitlab.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Second order thinking means both tactics have value and
| merit, right? If not, I am open to hearing why.
| dessant wrote:
| They are not whining, and GitLab could have notified them about
| the account suspension, and sent them a link with their
| archived account data to download.
| dharmab wrote:
| No, they could not have. The law is very clear that
| absolutely no business activity is allowed.
|
| Source: I implemented part of the sanctions compliance for a
| major tech company's platform (and saw other projects get
| sunset because they didn't implement it)
| dessant wrote:
| GitLab has been responding to private support requests from
| Iranians regarding the account closures, isn't that service
| considered business activity?
|
| Btw, doesn't blocking by IP address go beyond what is
| required by law, since only Iranian residents are subject
| to sanctions? Would preemptively restricting accounts that
| have logged in from an Iranian IP address and asking for
| proof of residence break the law?
| [deleted]
| throw2010251456 wrote:
| Oh noes, they blocked Iranian access to Gitlab?! How about the US
| blocking Iranians access to life saving medications instead? This
| is pretty much on the level of being a warcrime!
| Siira wrote:
| I am Persian. From what I gather, the middle-plus class here
| still mostly believes that changing the regime is costly and
| risky (especially since it might very well lead to a civil war,
| as the regime has no humanity and has shown that it will kill
| every single one of the people to survive). These sanctions
| certainly help align our incentives more with the US agenda, but
| they do not seem to be enough after all. Obama's strategy was
| definitely a failure, as well; It simply gave power and
| legitimacy to the Islamic regime and only got temporary limits in
| return, limits that ultimately did not abate either domestic
| abuse or extraterritorial meddling. In the end, dictators know
| that the Western block is finicky, unstable, and short-termish;
| This makes it so that high-pressure strategies do not work. I do
| not know of a solution, frankly; Most of my peers see immigration
| as the only viable solution. But the blame of the quagmire mostly
| lies with the democrats and the EU. If they had committed to the
| high-pressure strategy from the Obama era, a much better
| compromise would have been reachable with the IR. (The
| democrats+EU mostly sided with the IR in recent protests as well,
| just to spite Trump. They are only good for virtue signalling,
| and do not help the oppressed where it matters.) Western
| democracies generally are very bad game-theoretic agents; They
| play repeated games as if they are oneshots.
|
| PS: Imagine if the USA sponsored Telegram MTPROTO proxies (and
| other anti-censorship tools). That'd deal a huge blow to the IR,
| and make the people more US-friendly as well. Does anyone know
| why they don't? It's an obvious LHF ...
| crb002 wrote:
| Grow a pair. Racism to Persians is wrong.
| currymj wrote:
| US government does sponsor a lot of anti-censorship tools of
| that type: Tor was funded by the Navy and DARPA, Signal
| received initial funding from the same organization that runs
| Voice of America.
| arp242 wrote:
| The regime is here and as you pointed out it's not easy to
| "just change it"; the point of Obama's strategy was to limit
| the regime's access to nuclear weapons, not to directly make
| life better for the average Iranian. It was effective at that
| goal. And Iran _with_ nuclear weapons would make regime change
| in the future even harder.
|
| International politics with these kind of countries are tricky
| business; personally I'd love nothing more than see Iran become
| a better place, but you can't just force things like this. We
| tried in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that didn't turn out so
| well. People are still trying in Syria and we can't exactly
| call this a great success either.
|
| So ... your best bet is to deal with these kind of regimes the
| best you can, by applying pressure in one area and making a
| deal in another. I think few people are especially happy with
| this, but it's the best option out of a bad bunch.
| didibus wrote:
| A good NPR on the topic:
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/671672020
| panpanna wrote:
| Do you actually live there?
|
| From what I have heard the "high pressure" has only affected
| ordinary people who can't get things like meds and equipment.
| Just look how they were affected by corona, so much worse than
| their neighbors.
|
| I would highly, _highly_, doubt a person actually living there
| would consider the "high pressure" strategy a good thing.
| davedx wrote:
| Whenever anyone uses the term "virtue signalling" I
| automatically discard their opinion in the same way this phrase
| does with the people it's referring to: that a bloc of people
| (the entire EU and democrat party of the US no less) are simply
| "pretending to care to look good".
|
| The use of this phrase belies a cynical, reductionist attitude
| that I have no respect for whatsoever
| concordDance wrote:
| Is it that you think virtue signalling doesn't happen?
|
| Because I've done it myself many times (mostly before I
| understood the term, but also afterwards on occasion).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I have basically no background in the subject, but I'd be
| interested in your perspectives if you feel like answering any
| of these questions:
|
| - What are the United States' goals with respect to Iran?
|
| - What goals of Iran's are being hindered, objected to, or
| otherwise meddled with by the United States?
|
| - _In the end, dictators know that the Western block is
| finicky, unstable, and short-termish; This makes it so that
| high-pressure strategies do not work._ Just to be sure I
| understand this, you 're saying that because Western countries
| (Europe / the US) cannot maintain a consistent foreign policy,
| their targets (other countries) see the best strategy for
| dealing with moments of high pressure from the West as being
| "wait for the pressure to go away"?
|
| - _I do not know of a solution, frankly; Most of my peers see
| immigration as the only viable solution._ Solution to what
| problem? Immigration of who, from where, to where?
|
| _Western democracies generally are very bad game-theoretic
| agents; They play repeated games as if they are oneshots._
|
| I suspect term limits have a lot to do with this.
| fakedang wrote:
| Not OP, not Iranian, but going by my Iranian friend, it's
| mostly as follows:
|
| - odd that you're asking an Iranian Qn#1. They don't know
| either
|
| - Iran wants to play a regional power in the Middle East, far
| greater than it is now. It is to be noted that many countries
| in the ME, such as the UAE, Qatar, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and
| Bahrain have significant Shia minorities or majorities in
| some cases. When the Arab Spring happened, Iran actively
| encouraged protests within the Shia population to overthrow
| the monarchy in Bahrain, until the UAE and Saudi Arabia
| reacted. Even now, the UAE regularly arrests Shia folks it
| suspects of cavorting with Iran (a large part of the Arab
| population in the Emirates are descended from Persia). Not to
| mention, Iran invaded and expelled the local Arab population
| of a tiny island of one of the constituent Emirates of the
| UAE, before the country's formation and during the time of
| the Shah. Iran is quite the expansionist.
|
| - basically what Rouhani thinks. Wait until Biden gets into
| power, and hope that he's going to continue the Obama policy.
| This is not common among all dictators though - some want
| Trump to be in power, like the monarchs of the Arab states,
| since he's an Iran hawk.
|
| - a solution to Iran's repressive regime, duh. Iranians have
| been immigrating en masse for a long time to the US, Canada,
| UK and Europe. Anywhere there is a democracy. There are a ton
| of Americans, British, Europeans and Canadians who graduated
| from Sharif University of Technology, the equivalent of
| Iran's MIT.
|
| - not just term limits, but the need to "pander" to their
| constituencies. One decade, they warred in the Middle East,
| the next decade they want to leave the mess they created, but
| then commit more troops (Obama on Iraq)? It's definitely not
| like Russia or China or India (all of which are/were friendly
| with Iran) who have had a steady policy in the region of
| being on talking terms with everyone.
| gadders wrote:
| Iran is also a state sponsor of terrorism (Hezbollah,
| Hamas), wants nuclear weapons and would destroy Israel if
| they could.
| fakedang wrote:
| Which is just a part of playing the Middle Eastern powers
| game. The current five major powers in the region are
| Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Iran. Out of them,
| one is rumored to be a nuclear power, three are delayed
| nuclear powers, while all but one are state sponsors of
| terrorism directly, and the last one sponsors them
| indirectly. Two of them want Israel destroyed, one is
| openly allied to Israel and one is secretly allied to
| Israel.
|
| Yep, the Middle East is complicated.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Saudi Arabia is the open ally to Israel and UAE is the
| secret one?
| fakedang wrote:
| You got it the other way around - the UAE is the open
| ally, Saudi Arabia is the secret one.
|
| If you're wondering about the rest, Israel is the secret
| nuclear power, the UAE recently became a nuclear power
| (civilian purposes, of course :P), Iran is building up
| nuclear capability, and if it does, Saudi Arabia will
| just buy nukes off Pakistan since they funded the
| latter's nuclear programme.
| throwaway_pdp09 wrote:
| > Solution to what problem?
|
| Presumably, the 'oppressive' part of oppressive regime. Guy
| has my sympathies FWIW.
| Myrmornis wrote:
| What steps can maintainers of projects hosted on
| GitHub/GitLab/etc take to make their projects available to users
| in countries affected by this US policy?
|
| For example, is there an alternative git hosting site where it
| would be helpful for me to maintain a fork, so that the README is
| available and people can open issues and PRs?
|
| Similarly, where would be a good place to host the binaries built
| on each release so that they are accessible?
| dilatedmind wrote:
| I could be reading this wrong, but it looks like github allows
| open source contributions from sanctioned countries.
|
| https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-...
| Myrmornis wrote:
| OK, and from the article it looks like GitLab is blocking all
| access to their site. So is your understanding that GitLab is
| currently much more restrictive than GitHub in this regard?
| dilatedmind wrote:
| their readme there states
|
| > GitHub is committed to continuing to offer free public
| repository services to developers with individual and
| organizational accounts in U.S.-sanctioned regions. This
| includes limited access to free services, such as public
| repositories for open source projects (and associated
| public Pages), public gists, and allotted free Action
| minutes, for personal communications only, and not for
| commercial purposes.
|
| maybe someone can confirm how this works in practice?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >What steps can maintainers of projects hosted on
| GitHub/GitLab/etc take to make their projects available to
| users in countries affected by this US policy?
|
| If they are under US jurisdiction it is inadvisable to try and
| circumvent such stuff.
| Myrmornis wrote:
| I'm talking about something like keeping a fork on a git
| hosting website in a country where it's accessible by anyone.
| No individual open source developer is going to be prosecuted
| for doing that.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Once again for US citizen in US under US jurisdiction -
| testing what DoJ will consider violation of the sanctions
| is dangerous games with only downsides. As the Aaron Swartz
| case showed it is enough to get entangled.
|
| Especially if you maintain something that could be
| considered dual purpose
| da39a3ee wrote:
| You're so scared of the country you live in that you are
| publicly recommending to your fellow Americans that they
| don't host a project on a (gasp) German website like
| codeberg? You have completely lost perspective, or you
| are a mindless rule-follower, or a coward, or some
| combination of all of these.
|
| I also find the Aaron Swartz case extremely sad and
| depressing, but what he was doing was very different from
| using a European website in the way the website owners
| intend.
|
| > with only downsides.
|
| Of course there are upsides; that is the whole point of
| this discussion: the upside is that the resources will be
| available to all people in the world.
| scott31 wrote:
| Yeah, blame U.S. corporations complying with their law, while
| your country has not had a single step for resolution of the
| sanctions.
|
| Also if an Iranian developer is unprepared against losing their
| access to Gitlab, then sadly they are incompetent developers.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| > while your country has not had a single step for resolution
| of the sanctions.
|
| Uhm, it was literally the USA that withdrew from the signed
| deal without any wrongdoings from Iran. You might consider not
| being so tough on the internet when you are factually wrong.
| nguyenkien wrote:
| Why whining, just head over gitee.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Or host your own GitLab instance in Iran.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| GitLab (the company) are legally not permitted to export
| their product: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
| group/code-of-condu...
|
| According to them, that includes downloads.
|
| So no luck there either.
| Wronnay wrote:
| But I bet it is possible to run their own Gitea instance in
| Iran
| [deleted]
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's not like it's impossible to VPN into the US, download
| the software from there and then self-host it in Iran.
| landryl wrote:
| Of course they could have done that, if gitlab had at least
| given a prior warning...
|
| Some of the screenshot show them even trying to get a
| temporary account with support just to get what they've been
| locked out of to make a backup.
| sschueller wrote:
| Open source code, books and knowledge should never be blocked,
| until we learn this we are no better than the people we are
| trying to "punish" with pointless and ineffective sanctions.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| That is already the case [0]:
|
| [Excluded are...] Technology, technical data and software that
| is publicly available, meaning published in periodicals, books,
| print, or electronic media that is available to the public at a
| price that does not exceed the cost of reproduction or
| distribution; (...)
|
| [0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/code-of-
| condu...
| manmal wrote:
| I fully agree. My guess is that this is targeted at hackers, to
| make it more difficult for them to influence the upcoming
| election.
| powersnail wrote:
| What kind of hacker cannot bypass an IP block, but is capable
| of hacking the election?
| jessaustin wrote:
| One wonders if the people who worry about election hacks
| ever worry about the fact that voting machines are closed-
| source, never audited by the public, and sold by people who
| make no secret of their strong political leanings.
| krspykrm wrote:
| We have learned this and we are better. Engineers are not
| responsible for this nonsense. It's the other half of the
| Randian universe that does this stuff.
| dsabanin wrote:
| What's your alternative to sanctions that's more effective?
| War?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| More effective in what goal?
|
| Antagonizing and radicalizing people? Yes, war is more
| effective in that.
| dsabanin wrote:
| Effective in a goal of disincentivising aggressive or
| hostile behaviour.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... Anything that is neutral towards that goal will be
| more effective.
| bb611 wrote:
| The collaborative process begun by the Obama administration
| appeared to be much more successful than sanctions or war.
| dsabanin wrote:
| Can you tell that to citizens of Ukraine and Crimea?
| sweeneyrod wrote:
| Iran is not Russia.
| dsabanin wrote:
| True, they do however have a very hostile stance towards
| US and NATO for a good quite a long time now. Them
| consistently looking to acquire nuclear weapons is not a
| good sign.
|
| Regardless, I was talking about sanctions in general.
| Dismissing them as a valid instrument of politics is, in
| my opinion, misguided.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Let people live their lives?
| dsabanin wrote:
| So, Russia under sanctions, for annexation of Crimea,
| should just be left alone to leave their lives? Next time,
| if they decide to annex some other part of Ukraine, or
| maybe Poland this time, they should also be left to live
| their lives?
|
| Sanctions are not punishments. They are just a way to say -
| you're an asshole, and neither us nor our allies are going
| to play with you anymore.
| fiblye wrote:
| I mean, taking steps to deter a country from annexing or
| triggering a war makes sense.
|
| But the sanctions against Iran are mainly based on old
| grudges. Pretty much nobody even knows why they exist
| beyond "they're bad."
| umvi wrote:
| I always thought it was because Iran hates Israel and has
| openly stated their goal to destroy and dissolve it. That
| paired with efforts to develop nuclear weapons =
| sanctions. It's probably more nuanced than that, but that
| was my basic understanding.
| dsabanin wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >On 1 May 2018 the IAEA reiterated its 2015 report,
| saying it had found no credible evidence of nuclear
| weapons activity in Iran after 2009
| sleepyhead wrote:
| The country that invaded the neighbouring countries of
| Iran and killed hundred of thousands of people is saying
| Iran is an asshole and needs to be sanctioned. Got it.
| Regardless of what you think of the regime in Iran,
| please do educate yourself and at least try to look at
| the situation objectively.
| dsabanin wrote:
| It's very hard to have compassion to a theocratic
| authoritarian dictatorship regime (Ali Khamenei is in
| power since 1981). It's also very hard to see them as
| victims or as the good guys. Sorry.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| No one is saying you should have compassion towards the
| Iranian regime. No one is saying you should see them as
| victims. No one is saying you should see them as the good
| guys. The only thing you should be sorry about is not
| trying to accurately understand the replies you are
| getting here or look objectively at the situation.
|
| BTW since you like whatabouism with your argument
| regarding Russia: Please do compare the Iranian and Saudi
| Arabian regimes for me; one is an enemy with sanctions
| and the other an ally. Internally they are not that
| different. Externally there is a major difference though:
| only one is engaging in a hostile war in another country
| which has resulted in civilian deaths and famine. While
| there are claims to be made about Iranian foreign
| interference it is nowhere near that level. So again
| please take some minutes to ponder objectively how these
| countries are treated.
| dsabanin wrote:
| I am quite familiar with the situation between Iran and
| US, and most of my life I've been on your side of this
| argument.
|
| World politics is very complex with lots of nuance,
| historical context and long-running grudges. It is also
| highly subjective, in a sense that every country / group
| of allied countries have their own view of the historical
| events and try to disseminate those views as wide as
| possible.
|
| As a result, I've decided to judge countries by the
| authoritarianism of their regimes and cruelty of their
| laws. If country's government is treating their own
| citizens like shit without rights, I do not expect them
| to treat people on the outside any better, regardless of
| how they present themselves. Thus, I do not, as an
| individual human being, want to see these countries /
| regimes to gain any more power externally.
|
| So far, this approach for me had made most sense.
|
| As a side note, look at the current list of best friends
| of a corrupt regime in Russia: Iran, North Korea, China,
| Philippines, Venezuela, up until recently - Turkey. Every
| dictatorship in the world is on their list of friends.
| Same with Iran. "When the character of a man is not
| clear, look at their friends."
|
| Regarding whataboutism and Russia, I want to remind you
| that my reply to the OP was not about Iranian sanctions,
| but was about sanctions as a political instrument
| overall. For me the most prominent case lately were
| sanctions against Russia, so that's what I used as an
| example. I'm very familiar with the situation in Russia
| and even though sanctions indeed antagonized the regime
| there, it did make them stop and think whether they want
| to keep escalating. It's hard to imagine what over
| appropriate response should've been to annexation of the
| Crimea, downing of the Malaysian Boeing and sending
| troops and equipment to create essential a civil war in a
| big region of Ukraine.
| xtracto wrote:
| Aah Pax Americana [1]. It feels so warm and cosy knowing
| that the benevolent regime has my butt covered.
|
| Look. I love the US (being a Mexican, I consider Mex/US
| relationship like a bug brother / little brother one) .
| But darn, it seems the pax-anericana epoch is getting
| weaker and weaker, and the US is just trying to cling at
| the last straws of influence that its left.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
| dsabanin wrote:
| Can't wait to see what Pax China is going to like!
| Dahoon wrote:
| Can't be worse.
| dsabanin wrote:
| I think Uighur, Tibetan and Hong Kong people might
| disagree.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| The unfortunate thing is, while no one's really that
| happy with how the US is running things, they've probably
| been one of the least bad empires in history. (Post-
| slavery) America Vs. say Britain? I know what I'd prefer
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I hate to see these politics discussions leaking into HN but
| I'll bite...
|
| Respect the deal that was reached between Iran, US, and EU
| members.
|
| The US unilaterally broke that, my guess is probably because
| the deal was reached in a pre-Trump era. Now they are
| deciding to further sabre rattle with sanctions.
|
| All other parties in the deal have pretty much politely
| decided to ignore Trump's administration and carry on the
| terms of the deal.
|
| This is more about the US administration desperately trying
| to look strong for their internal voters more so than
| actually having a plan or a coherent external policy.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| The implicit premise here is that we must somehow screw with
| Iran, and if you don't have some idea other then sanctions to
| do that, you should shut up. Well, I don't accept that
| premise. We should leave them alone.
| ahelwer wrote:
| The only thing Iran is guilty of is insufficient deference to
| US hegemony. Any other charge you levy can have its equal
| found in our so-called allies in the region, or even the US
| itself.
| christophilus wrote:
| You're not wrong, so far as I can tell. Not sure why you're
| being downvoted. Iran has some serious issues, but they
| don't appear to be worse than the Saudis or any number of
| other countries we (the US) consider allies.
| TheGuyWhoCodes wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-
| sponsored_terro...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| One of the things Iran's unambiguously guilty of is these
| same kinds of access restrictions. If you've ever wondered
| why Google's sanctions-related controversy was focused on
| Google Cloud, it's because that was the biggest Google
| service allowed at the time - search, Gmail, and Youtube
| had already been banned by the Iranian government.
|
| So while I share the skepticism expressed upthread that
| blocking websites is effective diplomacy, it's hard for me
| to look at the situation and see a one-sided problem.
| miracle2k wrote:
| A couple things to note here. Youtube is blocked, but
| Google Search or Gmail or not.
|
| Secondly, this is not a question of they block our
| services, so we block their services. In both cases, it
| is Iranians who lose access to services.
|
| If anything, it highlights the hypocrisy of pretending to
| care about Iranian freedom.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Since you know that Google search isn't blocked in Iran,
| can you tell me if there are any ads displayed in the
| results? It's something I've been curious about for a
| while.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Interesting, you seem to be right. I don't know how I
| managed to read the news about Gmail being blocked but
| miss that it was unblocked like a week later.
| Siira wrote:
| As an Iranian, I have to say that while your last sentence
| might be true (Saudi Arabia sucks after all), I'd still
| rather live in a world where the opposing superpower would
| pressure my country to respect human rights and stop
| funding terrorism, fundamentalism, and misinformation. (See
| what North Korea's effective foreign immunity has brought
| its people.) This, of course, is hypocritical on the US
| part, but hypocrisy is better than complacency.
| Udik wrote:
| Come on, didn't you understand yet that the US doesn't
| give a damn about Iran's respect for human rights? Do you
| think Israel is respecting Palestinians' human rights? Or
| is Saudi Arabia respecting human rights? Of course not,
| and yet they are the US's best buddies. The US even had
| an agreement that put a stop to Iran's nuclear program
| and soothed the tensions with the West, allowing Iranians
| to improve their living conditions and hopefully at some
| point ditch radicalism. They threw it in the bin, because
| what the US fears is ultimately a non-aligned country
| with the strenghts to stand against external aggression.
|
| What the US really wants is not respect of human rights
| or better living conditions for the people (see Libya,
| see Iraq, see Palestine, see the bloody civil war in
| Syria). What they want is to reduce every non-aligned
| country to either vassal or rubble.
| tensor wrote:
| I wonder when the US will get sanctioned for its support
| of terrorists, fundamentalism, misinformation, and human
| rights abuse. It has a long history of these things, and
| they are getting worse and more blatant at an alarming
| rate.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| > hypocrisy is better than complacency
|
| This is a great phrase, I'm going to borrow that and use
| it.
| [deleted]
| jlgaddis wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your perspective as an Iranian, I find
| it quite interesting.
|
| I'm curious if:
|
| 1) you still live in Iran and/or have immediate family
| who do?
|
| 2) is your opinion common amongst Iranians (and/or
| Persians)?
|
| 3) do/would you still feel the same way if the sanctions
| brought extreme economic hardship on the people of Iran?
|
| (Considering your remark about North Korea, I'm assuming
| the answer to the latter is "yes".)
| dsabanin wrote:
| Well, I think the sanctions exists because of the nuclear
| program.
|
| NATO is not going to trade and help technologically a
| country that's trying to develop nuclear weapons in order
| to threaten to NATO and their main officially stated enemy
| - United States.
|
| Why would you buy oil from a country or give access to your
| tech to them when they are using these resources to ramp up
| their military against you?
| godelzilla wrote:
| Maybe Iran wouldn't need to defend itself if they weren't
| being attacked.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Why would you buy oil from a country or give access to
| your tech to them when they are using these resources to
| ramp up their military against you?
|
| Does the US sanction China like it does Iran? The only
| difference is that China is a larger market than Iran and
| is close to power parity with the US.
|
| These sanctions are ineffective and disproportionately
| punish your average Iranian citizen, while we ignore the
| elephant that is China, which is far more dangerous as an
| adversary [1] [2].
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-
| Strategy-Replac...
|
| [2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-
| chaos/2020/09/04/w...
| dsabanin wrote:
| Different levels of adversaries require different
| approaches? The attempted migration of manufacturing of
| US business from China to other countries I believe is
| ongoing?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Iran funds terrorism and is developing nuclear weapons and
| has a history of imperialism. Should Saudi Arabia be
| sanctioned too? I'd say so. Should we stop sanctioning Iran
| until then? no.
| opnitro wrote:
| So does the US? Should everyone be sanctioning us?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Afaik the U.S. no longer sponsors terrorists. I'd love a
| link if I'm misguided. Further, elimination of zionists
| is still a stated goal of the Iranian government. I'm not
| saying Israel is guilt free of course, but afaik they've
| never threatened nuking anyone. Again, feel free to
| correct me if I'm wrong.
| opnitro wrote:
| Link on current US
| funding:https://theintercept.com/2019/10/26/syrian-
| rebels-turkey-kur... As other comments saying, this info
| always lags a few years. But there's never been any
| official reckoning when these details come out, so no
| reason to assume it has stopped. See also US promotion of
| Elliot Abrams, despite his connection to the EL Mozote
| massacres.
|
| On your second point, I want to be clear that I'm not
| defending the Iranian gov't. I disagree with the use of
| sanctions that disproportionately effect the least
| powerful in there society, by design. This is compounded
| by the fact that the reasons for these sanctions are not
| moral violations, as the US and its allies behave in much
| the same way, but instead about international power.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Thank you for the link. I think there's an argument that
| the syrian rebels were fighting terrorism before they
| were themselves terrorists, but I agree that the US
| should not be involved in the conflict, and definitely
| shouldn't fund paramilitary groups with the potential to
| become terrorists. The U.S. now admitting it was a
| mistake is important though, because the point of
| sanctions is to force a government to change its
| policies.
|
| Geopolitics is messy. In the end I don't see any other
| strategy besides war that could force Irans hand. If the
| choices are 1. Show the world that purposefully funding
| terrorism goes unpunished 2. war, or 3. sanctions I think
| sanctions are the choice that provides the greatest
| amount of utility, even if they do harm many.
| opnitro wrote:
| Purposely funding terrorism does go unpunished, if you're
| a US ally. This is my point, that our sanctions against
| Iran have nothing to do with "morality". They are about
| power.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| The US still supports the Mujahideen-e-Khalq which is a
| terrorist organization.
|
| They were very recently fighting alongside actual ISIS
| and ISIS offshoots in Syria...
|
| Elimination of Iran is a goal of the US government (they
| call it the "regime" the same way the Iranians do but the
| intent and action is still the same)
| jlgaddis wrote:
| > _Afaik the U.S. no longer sponsors terrorists._
|
| I find that very hard to believe, considering the
| activities of the CIA -- just the ones we know about --
| over the last several decades (or, really, since its
| beginning).
|
| --
|
| Side note:
|
| Does selling billions of dollars worth of arms to Saudi
| Arabia count as sponsoring terrorists?
|
| cf. Jamal Khashoggi, et al.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| A state killing a political opponent, however
| unacceptable, isn't terrorism. The point of terrorism is
| that it effects unsuspecting bystanders. I already said I
| think we should sanction the saudis though, because they
| actually are sponsoring terrorism. See the Yemen war and
| their funding of al queda as well as their infiltration
| of twitter.
| ahelwer wrote:
| "No longer" is doing a lot of work here, because by its
| nature none of this stuff comes out for a number of years
| after it occurs. We might also ask whether the "rebel"
| groups the US arms in e.g. Syria are terrorist
| organizations from another perspective, where four years
| ago DoD-funded groups were fighting CIA-funded groups:
| https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-
| pentagon-...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The US has sponsored terrorists covertly for decades now.
| Just because they stopped publically sponsoring
| terrorists doesn't mean much when most of the last
| century was spent covertly sponsoring them too.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Ok but if Iran stopped publicly sponsoring terrorists and
| trying to nuke Israel they wouldn't be sanctioned. The
| public support is an integral part of why they're
| sanctioned.
| ahelwer wrote:
| This is, basically, naive and your view of the world
| would likely be greatly expanded by reading
| _Manufacturing Consent_ or _Inventing Reality_.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I'm in complete agreement that most of our "allies" in the
| region are fairweather friends and as morally bankrupt as
| anyone else.
|
| However, I'm also in favor of blanket sanctions against any
| nation whose parliament takes up a literal "Marg bar
| Amrika" collective chant.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Even a cursory Wikipedia-level glance at the US's actions
| in Iran over the past century should bring understanding
| of why people might feel that way toward us. The solution
| is not to punish such sentiments but address our
| historical misbehavior and demonstrate it won't continue
| in the future. We are doing neither.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| So because they chanted "Death to America," you are in
| favor of imposing sanctions that will cause the death of
| Iranians?
| Causality1 wrote:
| If someone communicates that they want to kill you, I
| think refusing to do business with them is an incredibly
| subdued response.
| gdy wrote:
| That's ironic, that you have a problem with casuality.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_
| rel...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_
| rel...
| Causality1 wrote:
| Yep, the US did terrible things to Iran 67 years ago. How
| much time has to pass before it's no longer appropriate?
| Would it have been appropriate for the US congress to
| chant "death to Japan" in 2008? The Islamic Revolution
| was 41 years ago. Should the South Korean parliament be
| chanting "death to China"?
| vikramkr wrote:
| no sanctions may[0] be equally effective as sanctions.
|
| [0]
| https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd201803_e.pdf
|
| The literature isn't conclusive either way, there's evidence
| in both directions. But sanctions definitely tend to hurt
| everyday citizens more than they hurt the targeted
| governments. Dictators and cronies aren't going to have to
| worry about increased prices of goods - they get whatever
| they want - that's sort of the point of being dictator
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| The point of doing this is to make the citizenry unhappy
| with the government causing the mess for them. The ideal
| case is that they force change so that the sanctions go
| away. But depending on local propaganda, that may or may
| not work.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Almost universally, the citizenry will actually be even
| more angered towards the Americans too. From what my
| friends tell me, this is largely the case in Iran. It
| doesn't help that the US is sanctioning alone.
| sepisoad wrote:
| That's so lame, basically it has nothing to do with free software
| and open source, you can still use them if you wish. in fact it
| is the corporations who are blocking us not the software!!!.
|
| Moreover we have to point our fingers toward Iranian corrupt
| regime because they are bringing misery to the the people. We
| have to be asking this question every day: why on earth countries
| like japan or korea never get sanctioned. I guess the answer is
| simple
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| firekvz wrote:
| Talking about over-compliance, you should check out Transferwise
| blocking access to every venezuelan in their system + IP block
| the access of every venezuelan IP [1], just cause sanctions
| against few individuals [2].
|
| And then you have to read their BS ads that state: "We're
| building money without borders"
|
| As reminder, Venezuela is under a heavy economical crisis, where
| more than 6 millions citizens (9 millions as per unofficial data)
| out of the 30 million total had to run away, this is more people
| than syrian refugees numbers (5,6m).
|
| What role transferwise had on venezuela? well, some of those that
| left, were using transferwise to send money to their families and
| friends still in venezuela, helping them feed themselves and buy
| medicines and cover their needs. Note that most of the money
| sent, wasnt even touching venezuelan banking system, as most
| venezuelans already have US bank accounts, money was just moving
| from lets say argentina (common country for a venezuelan to
| immigrate) to US, not to venezuela
|
| But transferwise decided that is better to block 20millions
| possible users in need of humanitarian help [4], because they
| didnt want to check if those users were in the OFAC list that is
| not even 100 people long.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/26h0u2W.png
|
| [2] https://www.state.gov/venezuela-related-sanctions/
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis
|
| [4] https://disasterphilanthropy.org/disaster/venezuelan-
| refugee...
| [deleted]
| jjgreen wrote:
| Are there alternatives outside the reach of the US?
| zimbatm wrote:
| Probably https://codeberg.org/ since it's hosted in the EU.
|
| https://sr.ht/ might work due to its small size but it hosted
| in the US AFAIK.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I'd not heard of those -- thanks!
| deepsun wrote:
| Install your own GitLab -- it's on-premise.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Sourcehut is self-hostable too, right?
| cosmin800 wrote:
| TL, DR; is the Nth time I read the same story, someone losing
| access to something they think they owned. I don't want to sound
| too heinous or else ..but please don't be so naive to trust
| github, operated by microsoft,an usa company, with your life
| work. You own what you can defend. Your github account is not
| yours. Sober up. Using any service inside USA is a priviledge not
| a right.
| belltaco wrote:
| This is Gitlab not Github.
| cosmin800 wrote:
| oh, so sorry, indeed, gitlab, other company. Gitlab Inc. San
| Francisco, United States, must obey us law.
| tryauuum wrote:
| (slightly offtopic) imagine running "docker pull hello-world" and
| getting 403 because you were born in a wrong country
|
| I would be mad at the US if this happened to me
| grishka wrote:
| I've came across websites that return a 403 to ANY IP located
| in Russia for some reason. Official website for NSA's Ghidra is
| one example. Had to use a VPN because I was having none of that
| bullshit.
| tryauuum wrote:
| yes, still doesn't work from Russia -- https://ghidra-
| sre.org/
|
| I once had a different story -- some openstack Q&A website
| wasn't unavailable from Russia. Turned out it wasn't the
| website who was blocking russian ips -- it was roskomnadzor
| carpet-blocking whole IP ranges of cloud providers.
| grishka wrote:
| > it was roskomnadzor carpet-blocking whole IP ranges of
| cloud providers.
|
| Oh yeah, forgot about it. RKN block is usually an SSL
| error, a timeout, or a page from your ISP saying "this is
| blocked by the government, sorry". Never a 403.
|
| Thankfully, smaller ISPs are terrifically terrible at
| complying with this.
| excieve wrote:
| What many don't seem to understand about Crimea, is that Crimea
| is an occupied territory of Ukraine [0] (as understood by UN, as
| well as most countries except the Russian Federation and several
| of its affiliated states).
|
| As an occupied territory, it doesn't have any legitimate
| institutions (such as a recognised government, banks, courts,
| etc.) -- only a foreign occupation regime. Same way as Germany's
| Reichskommissariats and Reichprotektorats during WW2 were never
| legitimate entities despite being de facto governed by Germany.
|
| This means than no contract (private or public) with a Crimean
| entity can be internationally recognised and will be easily
| contested by any court/arbitrage outside of the RF.
|
| In addition to this, there's a moral concern of giving legitimacy
| to a foreign occupation. There's just no way to justify this
| unless one supports the mentioned occupation, with following
| systemic abuse of human rights, change of ethnic composition and
| militarisation.
|
| [0]: https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/71/205
| dijit wrote:
| There are many examples of occupied territories which are not
| treated the same though.
| arp242 wrote:
| On the other hand, many of the people living there are not at
| fault for any of this. They just ... live there.
|
| This is why I have such mixed feelings about these kind of
| sanctions: sure, I don't really disagree with what you're
| saying, but on the other hand in practice it means hurting
| normal people just building a life for themselves.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I read an opinion piece by Margret Meed (I think, memory may
| be off). Her claim was sanctions don't work. And all the
| burden falls on the powerless. All you end up doing is
| harming people that can't do anything and are blameless.
|
| I haven't seen anything in the last 35 years that contradicts
| that.
|
| The worse thing I've seen is the US is now so schizophrenic
| that countries under sanctions can't trust that making a deal
| with US to get sanctions lifted won't prevent them from being
| reimposed because some other fraction gains power.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886573.
| 0xy wrote:
| FWIW the people of Crimea overwhelmingly support Russian
| occupation according to independent Pew surveys. Any sanctions
| only serve to punish Crimeans, presumably to appease the
| Ukraine government (which is just as corrupt as Russia).
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| My opinion, Crimea is a geopolitical nuance. Any cunning plan
| cooked up by a western leader that has to do with Crimea
| blows up in their face.
| ohmaigad wrote:
| It is not a nuance, it is a terrible precedent showing that
| Russia can just come and take away a sovereign states
| territory. It is like a bigger tougher person coming into
| your home and starting to live there and there is nobody
| who is going to help you.
| bjg2 wrote:
| it's not a precedent, kosovo was a precedent. there can't
| be two precedents. international law got fucked up back
| then.
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