Matt Jones's List: Source Forge

• In late January, on the same day as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech on Net freedom, open source community SourceForge blocked access to users from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, in an effort to keep in line with U.S. Treasury export restrictions on those countries.

   

  Ordinary netizens were outraged, and Syrian users fought back, blogging about the restrictions and calling for entrepreneurship in the community. Now, two weeks later, SourceForge has announced a change in restrictions that would allow greater autonomy for projects hosted on the site.

• Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we’ve ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month’s change.

   

  We at SourceForge are fully committed to the ideals of free and open source software, including the principle of free exchange of information. We recognize that, for some people, the recent site changes called into question whether your support of us is justified. The changes that we deployed today are intended to empower our projects and reward your continued trust.

• I wrote a blog post a while back about location based profiling on the web. Many websites do it, particularly television and movie sites and financially sensitive websites. The reasoning I can often gather from looking at the terms of service and other language is that these sites are simply trying to ‘protect’ their users who happen to usually be primarily North American or European. They can’t rely on foreign authorities to police the hackers, phishers, and scammers coming from those countries, and since it’s not cost effective to do anything else, they blindly classify anyone who happens to born in the wrong place as not being able to use the their services AT ALL.
• But today, I think I died a little inside. As a champion of open source as a way for people to stop depending on aid, and to improve their own education and resources to empower themselves as digital citizens, I was more than surprised to read that SourceForge (one of the leading hubs of open source activity) has begun denying access to ANY IP addresses identified as originating from the countries of Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba.
• Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited certain persons from receiving services pursuant to U.S. laws, including, without limitations, the Denied Persons List and the Entity List, and other lists issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. The specific list of sanctions that affect our users concern the transfer and export of certain technology to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list. This means users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, may not post content to, or access content available through, SourceForge.net. Last week, SourceForge.net began automatic blocking of certain IP addresses to enforce those conditions of use.
• this action seems to imply that any software hosted on U.S. soil is therefore on U.S ‘property’ and thus subject to U.S. jurisdiction. That stands against the very idea of the internet and the world wide web. Hell, it’s hypocritical of everything the current U.S. administration has said about internet freedom and digital rights and about providing access to information to all.

• I realize that there are national security measures that must be taken against the people in certain countries who wish to do other countries harm. But is the neighbor of a terrorist simply guilty by association? I truly hope that’s not the global digital future we’re headed for.

   

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• For six years, Syrian users have been affected by U.S. government trade sanctions that exclude certain goods from the Syrian market.
• n the past year, the fact that the sanctions against Syria include software has garnered significant attention.  Last year, in an attempt to comply with the sanctions, LinkedIn unintentionally cut off Syrian users entirely (the sanctions require that sites block software downloads, not general access), a decision that was quickly reversed.  Web-hosting companies have also kicked off Syrian, Iranian, and other users, some of which were not actually prohibited from use.
• The discussion recently reached a fever pitch when, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a free and open Internet, Syrian users noticed they could no longer access open-source software community SourceForge.

• As some of you may already know… SourceForge.net has suddenly blocked Syrian & Sudanese users on the basis of being compliant to US law.

   

  This has obviously opened up the debate (again) about how ‘Open', ‘Open Source' really is… and how susceptible it is to the shackles of Politics and National laws. I'm not looking to open any political debate… but there must be a way to help.

• In an excellent analysis on Syria Comment, guest blogger Idaf questions whether or not the sanctions against Syria are helpful, and questions who they serve:

   

  Does this serve American interests? It is hard to see how. The stated objective of the policy is to “stop US technologies from reaching terrorists.” The only problem with this lofty goal is that all the  “terrorist” organizations that America accuses Syria of supporting are based outside Syria:  Hamas is in Palestine; Hizbullah is in Lebanon; and Iraqi insurgents live in Iraq. The US sanctions none off these countries. On the contrary, US IT corporations pour money into these three countries under CSR, development and market expansion plans. And besides, the technology of these companies reaches Syrians through third parties. Of course, the restriction make the technology more expensive and it annoys us, but we get it. Cisco routers can be purchased in Damascus; they are brought from Lebanon. Cheap Chinese knock offs are also easily obtained in the Syrian market. One can also argue that Washington’s policy is also counter-productive because it will cause long term damage to US businesses in these region.

• On the Middle East Journal's Editor's Blog, Michael Collins Dunn shares the sentiment, remarking:

   

  US restrictions have been used to limit open-source software access in countries under US sanctions, sometimes harming dissidents more than governments. Nations are still trying to understand how to regulate (or not regulate) new media, and in general it would seem greater access is normally a good thing. Sanctions that in effect help regimes control their populations unintentionally should be reconsidered.

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