« "We're all going to be ok." | Main | Tagsonomy and "out of control" » US bans Internet for Iranians (and others)Evidently the U.S. government is requiring domestic ISPs to deny service to clients in states deemed to be sponsors of international terrorism – see godaddy's statement on the subject. This means that, if you're a blogger living in Iran, for instance, you can't get service from the U.S. – and you can't get decent service in your own country, either. Does this make sense? I suppose the thought is that some will be terrorists sending coded messages? I don't know how likely that is, but Hoder makes a very good point: "I wonder whether this is what president Bush considers standing with a nation for their freedom. Who else is using these websites other than mostly secular, freedom-loving Iranian youth?" jon posted this at 12:42 PM |
read weblogsky! latest posts: |
Comments
GoDaddy's statement just says that they're doing it, not that the government is requiring it. Is there any indication that the government explicitly requires U.S. ISPs not to do business with Iranians? (Or is it just subtle pressure and intimidation tactics, like threatening to hold ISPs liable for what their Iranian customers do?)
In any case, anyone with a friend in Iran who is blocked from accessing certain U.S. sites (or, for that matter, who is blocked from accessing any sites that the Iranian government itself is blocking), can go to www.peacefire.org and download and install our Circumventor software. This will turn your home computer into an Anonymizer-type Web browsing service, and you can take the URL and email it to your friend in Iran so they can use your computer to surf freely.
Posted by: bennett_haselton | January 23, 2005 4:43 PM
Bennett, thanks for the info. FYI at GoDaddy's site, they say they're doing it "due to U.S. government policies," which suggests that the government is requiring it. I didn't dig deeper, though.
Posted by: Jon Lebkowsky | January 23, 2005 6:50 PM