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Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

ahmadhaghighi.com

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Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#81

Post by dsabanin »

sleepyhead wrote: post #65
dsabanin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#82

Post by dsabanin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #63
dsabanin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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 elephan…

Different levels of adversaries require different approaches? The attempted migration of manufacturing of US business from China to other countries I believe is ongoing?

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#83

Post by ahelwer »

Causality1 wrote: post #76
ahelwer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 Āmrikā" collective chant.

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.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#84

Post by dijit »

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.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#85

Post by Wronnay »

ThePadawan wrote: post #25
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or host your own GitLab instance in Iran.

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.

But I bet it is possible to run their own Gitea instance in Iran

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#86

Post by monkeybutton »

miracle2k wrote: post #67
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effec…

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.

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.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#87

Post by marcosdumay »

dsabanin wrote: post #39
marcosdumay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More effective in what goal? Antagonizing and radicalizing people? Yes, war is more effective in that.

Effective in a goal of disincentivising aggressive or hostile behaviour.

Hum... Anything that is neutral towards that goal will be more effective.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#88

Post by miracle2k »

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.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#89

Post by 542458 »

PestoDiRucola wrote: post #28

Gitlab blocked Iran's Access* This happened because of US sanctions[0]. [0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/code-of-condu...

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.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#90

Post by mirekrusin »

skrebbel wrote: post #4
doomlaser wrote: post #2

> 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

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.

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?
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