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GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

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191–200 of 336 posts

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#191
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's totally abhorrent that the US blocks people that would prefer they get wiped off the face of the earth. How dare they!!!

Have you considered that regular people that live under an oppressive totalitarian government have no control over said government and are actually just victims?

Have you ever lived in the US?

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#195
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and those companies are also having US clients, proving that it can be done. Proving they haven't been caught, or may not even know about the US Dept of Commerce entity list.

Yes, in a way they haven't been caught. However, I want to point out that only US companies and persons are obligated to follow the sanctions. The reason why foreign companies might also follow them is because they don't want to end up being designated themselves. And this is not realistically going to happen unless you are a large multinational, bank, or doing business in sensitive sectors. Not actively blocking acc…

Like a certain sized company, Microsoft? And that's why we're in this situation, because frankly Microsoft is big enough to get slapped hard if they didn't comply.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#196
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and those companies are also having US clients, proving that it can be done. Proving they haven't been caught, or may not even know about the US Dept of Commerce entity list.

Yes, in a way they haven't been caught. However, I want to point out that only US companies and persons are obligated to follow the sanctions. The reason why foreign companies might also follow them is because they don't want to end up being designated themselves. And this is not realistically going to happen unless you are a large multinational, bank, or doing business in sensitive sectors. Not actively blocking acc…

The real risk is to their US end users - if a US company is found to have commercial dealings with a company that has commercial dealings with Iran / N. Korea etc, the US company is in breach of the regulations.

So in this case, if Bank of America had a company subscription with this hypothetical Maltese GitHub, BoA would be in breach, and could face sanctions (and this would probably cause the Maltese GH to get on the entity list as well)

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#197

As far as I know, SourceHut[1] is still available everywhere. [1] https://sourcehut.org/ EDIT: I stand corrected.

Sourcehut is US operated and I cannot accept users from sanctioned countries. You can run your own instance if your legal circumstances differ, but you cannot use the official hosted version.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. There are already many non-US companies who are providing services to Iran in the same sense that Github is providing services, and those companies are also having US clients, proving that it can be done. Now, if a Maltese-Github were specifically designated by OFAC, then sure. But that's fairly unlikely.

So is it just a question of risk tolerance? Are the laws clear or are companies like GitHub in a grey area with out precedence?

The law is pretty clear, apart from what "commercial activity" is - GitHub has decided that it is accounts, but allows public repos, as they are explicitly exempted from some of the regulations.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#200
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't! The sanction is against the country, not nationals. So if you are a developer from the U.S. with U.S. nationality and move to Cuba the sanctions would also apply to you. Actually there is a very good wikipedia page "United States sanctions against Iran" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_agains... about this, if you want more info.

I don't mean to be flippant, but it will sound this way. I trust Oracles lawyers to know the law better than a wikipedia page. http://www.oracle.com/us/products/export/export-regulations-...

IANAL but it seems to me like Oracle's lawyers have taken a stronger position than required by law.

Nationality of individuals is primarily relevant for deemed-export under ITAR/EAR; not the OFAC sanctions on Iran.

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