US ISP Terminates Iranian News Website

grcumb writes "BBC News Online is reporting that the 'semi-official' Iranian Student News Agency has had its contract arbitrarily terminated by the US hosting service The Planet. Quoted in the Central Asian & Southern Caucasian Freedom of Expression Network, an ISNA spokesman said, "Eliminating the site of ISNA, a media outlet widely accessed around the world, is against informatics laws and runs counter to the rhetoric about the free flow of information and the principle of freedom to access information and news,". The BBC Reports that Iranian government officials were quick to accuse the US administration of pressuring The Planet to terminate the contract. So what should we make of this? Government conspiracy, corporate arrogance, or the proper sanctioning of the mouthpiece of an oppressive regime? " As the submittor says, details are virtually unknown about this - my research shows some calling the ISNA a 'bastion of freedom' to other saying it's run by flunkies of the old men of Iran; definitely not cut and dried one way or another.

Comments

"against informatics law"?

[HexRei]

Where exactly is this "informatics law" inscribed in US legislation?

Putting on the Tin-Foil Hat for a second ...

[bfree]

It's simply the "administration" shutting down the flow of information in advance of an attack. They don't want any pesky students posting photos for all to see of abuses to Iranians or leaking sensitive tactical information, or perhaps they have simply declared this site as a host for terrorists. Time to watch for other Iranian sites going dark to see if this is the precursor to the next round in "The War on Terror".

I wonder which war will take longer to admit defeat in, Terror or Drugs.

p.s. please read the subject of this post :-)

Re:Putting on the Tin-Foil Hat for a second ...

[windows]

Feel free to say I'm crazy, but I've got a slightly more sinister way to look at things.

Bush isn't using the war to keep people's minds off the economy so much as he's using it to affect the economy. The United States is an economic powerhouse -- we've got loads of natural resources, excellent infrastructure, and a large force of skilled labor. By all means, we've got the ability to produce enough for every American to live a life of luxury, far more than most of us live today.

War, however, is a means to waste economic resources and manpower. It's a way to funnel those resources away from the American people and away from improving the quality of life for people abroad. The more wars you fight, the more you keep the economy down.

If Americans lived in luxury, a lot of the class differences would disappear. It would take away a lot of power from people like Bush and his cronies. By fighting wars and wasting economic resources, the economy is kept in check enough to maintain the class differences needed to keep the wealthy in power. And it's all done under the disguise of patriotism and protecting America.

Re:Putting on the Tin-Foil Hat for a second ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget that it's the actions of the US and it's foreign policies, that have made Iran and Iraq what they are today.

In the fifties the USA funded the efforts that eventually resulted in overthrowing Mossadeq in Iran and bringing the Shah into power.

Too long history to recap in a post like this, but the US also greatly aided Saddam in his early years, since the coup in 1968 through the oil crisis in the seventies and the Iran-Iraq war in the eighties.

And many of the same people who were in involved on a lower level back then, are now in powerful positions in Pentagon and the White House and private defense industry today.

Gotta love the US of A.

Re:Just business

[MoThugz]

If that was the case all along... The Planet shouldn't have hosted them at all in the first place.

And from what Netcraft shows, they have been using the same hosting company (The Planet?) for quite some time now.

I doubt that this is about money as you so simply put it.

ThePlanet is supposedly trying to clean up its act

[Jay Maynard]

They're posting a bunch of messages in news.admin.net-abuse.blocklisting about how they've terminated a bunch of spammers, and would the blocklist operators pretty please de-list them? Maybe this is part of that effort, either deliberately or accidentally.

It's perfectly cut and dried

[Sycraft-fu]

Unless the US government influenced them to shutdown the site, I see no problem. ISPs (actually I think IPP is the term here, not sure) have a right to choose who they do and do not host. Some have blanket refusals of certian kidns of websites (porn sites are commonly disallowed), others make the decision on more of a case-by-case basis.

If they deicded that this particular site was unacceptable, either because it included content not allowed by their rules, or simply because the amount of money they made was less than money it cost them in terms of lost bussiness, support, complaints, etc, then it is understandable that they'd decide to terminate it.

From the speed at which their main site is loading (as in not at all) I'm going to guess this isn't a large hosting operation (the big ones like Pair will laigh of a /.ing of their main site). It's possible that it is as simple as the site using more resources than this particular host can or is willing to provide.

Unless I see some proof of the US ogvernmetn being involved, I'm thinking it was a bussiness decision, and regardless of if it's a good or bad one, that's their right. ISNA is perfectly free to find another host, and this time hopefully they'll check more carefully to make sure they won't have the plug pulled on them. There are plenty of hsots out there, BLue Gravity being one I'm aware of, that for enough cash will let you host high bandwidth and contraversial things (including porn in the case of Blue Gravity).

Or maybe...

[GweeDo]

I used to work for a web hosting company. Any site that in any way pissed people off or even irritated someone a little bit often lead to someone trying to DDoS the stupid site. I can only image how many people are trying to break into/bring down this site because something they said made them mad. I am not saying that what they say is right or wrong, but it is sure to rub someone the wrong way.

It wouldn't suprise me at all if The Planet was just done dealing with the crap. I know we terminated more than one customers account due to that.

Censorship works best when it is voluntary

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

definitely not cut and dried one way or another.

Which is why it is sad if they got the plug pulled because of their content. Our liberty is defined by whether we err on the side of caution and shut down anything that makes us the least uneasy, or whether we accept the risk of things we don't understand/agree with. See Lee Greenwood fans vs. Flag-burning.

Maybe this is just a business decision, completely independent of politics. I doubt it. The US administration is growing increasingly hostile to Iran. Imagine a US ISP hosting a news service sympathetic to Iraq during the build-up to the war. Do you think that they would keep doing so? Do you think that, in the current climate of "sieze you and your assets with a secret warrant and haul you to Cuba where you never get a trial or even a lawyer", the ISP would even wait for the government to say anything?

Most likely, this web site seemed risky to business, and they figured it would just be best if they ended their business relationship. Understandable, but when we look at the history of human abuse and how it is institutionalized in society, we always ask, how could people just stand by and let that happen? Well, you're watching it happen. This may be a small thing, and not particularly oppressive, but it's a good example of how we've allowed ourselves to be intimidated by the threat of government attention, and how it affects many of the decisions we make every day.

Re:Servers are private property.

[rdc_uk]

Way to miss the point; I was replying to the parent comment about "y'all have no right to expect a contract to be honoured".

My caveats were there specifically to assuage pedants from making assinine "but maybe they had KP on their student news site" comments ... like yours.

Please tell me where in the constitution you have

[adzoox]

the right to free speech...

I have been discussing this in my /. journal and on my website:

Please read this with the emphasis:

Congress law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Where does it say, 'You have the right to say anything you want, the government has the right to remove religious symbols from the public, etc etc"?

Also, when people say, "separation of church and state" they use it as if it were in the 1st ammendment. It IS NOT!

Before many slashdotters reply to this... take into account that the way the 1st ammendment is worded, technically copyright law was a law restricting speech. Was it not?

So again, I ask you, how is this removal of this material a violation of the free flow of information?

Misconceptions

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

In actuality, Iran isn't quite as oppressive as the Bushies would have us believe. What they don't tell you is that the Iranian government consists of a semi- (or "illiberal") democracy, with a reformer as its current head, and that Iran probably has the most potential of any Mideast country to evolve genuine democratic institutions over time (aside from Turkey, obviously, which has already pretty much democratized.) The Iranian people have an extensive (for a Mideast country) freedom of expression, voting rights, and the opportunity to lay out more rights given time to work things out on their own.

Essentially the only thing holding it back is the infamous mullahs, who have oversight over everything that takes place in the government and can go so far as to declare a candidate for any given office "too liberal," thus taking him out of the running.

So, it seems extremely unlikely that this website was a "mouthpiece of an oppressive regime" unless the mullahs had something to do with it, which from what I can tell is a stretch at best. With that in mind, the only assumption that one can make is that the closing of this website has something to do with the fact that the Bushies have Iran in their sights for the next misguided invasion. And what do the Bushies do when they want to go to war? Spread lies and false information, and try to cover up the viewpoint of the other side. With that in mind, I would not be surprised if they were behind this. However, considering the lack of details, I'll just have to don my TinFoilHat for now.

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

After watching for a year, the US become more and more unfriendly towards the rest of the world, I decided they were not worth doing business with. I stopped visiting that country, transferred all my money back to Canada (I worked in US for a while and amassed quite a bit of money), and now avoid buying US products as much as possible. What I don't get... why are other non-Americans still doing business with USA?? There are much much better countries and entities to deal with: the EU, Switzerland, India, even Canada. Why continue to deal with a country that is so obviously hostile towards foreigners?

Actual Censorship in Iran

[TheSync]

Iranian Blogger Arrested

20 Iranian Bloggers and Journalists Arrested

Iranian President calls for Investigation of Blogger Torture

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's president called Sunday for an investigation into journalists' allegations they were tortured into confessing to charges such as insulting sacred beliefs and endangering national security after publishing articles critical of conservatives in the government.

Re:Please tell me where in the constitution you ha

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

You seem to be working off of the assumption that a government must expressly dictate what rights are, when the opposite is true. A "right" is essentially anything that the government does not make a law against. This statement only goes for personal rights, though; the State, being an artificial and bureaucratic institution, must explicitly set out what rights it has (in other words, which laws it can enforce.)

To explain, consider that Man, in his/her natural state, has no Man-made laws governing him/her. Laws, like government, are an artificial creation, and they are not the natural state of mankind. Therefore, the burden of proof is on those who would take away our rights, not those who would restore them to their natural state.

So it does not matter that the Constitution does not explicitly say "you have the right to etc., etc." What matters is that Congress shall make no laws restricting speech, which essentially means that we *maintain* our right to freedom of speech in the face of the State.

By extension, the separation of church and state is also in the Constitution. Instead of "you have the right to separation of church and state," it states, "Congress shall make no laws linking the two." The reason for this is that the State is a compulsory organization, whereas a church is a voluntary one. Linking the two would make whatever church is endorced by the State a de-facto compulsory organization. State religion was not part of our social contract with the State (in which we essentially give up power for protection in an artificial body.) Both the Church and the State are artificial institutions, in other words, but while we collectively allow the State to exist as a compulsory organization, we made no such contract with any church. Mankind in his/her natural state has no religion except that which is invented or passed down, and therefore we have a right to be free from religion unless we voluntarily give that right up (say, by joining one of our own free will.)

I hope I've helped to answer your questions.

Ominous implications

[Baldrson]

An ISP censors at its own peril. Common carrier status provides freedom from liability for content carried. Common carrier status is abrogated by censoring content carried. The Planet is risking undermining its own legal status while at the same time undermining, via court precedent, the common carrier status of all ISPs due to the immature nature of the law governing this new regime of media.

As I wrote 23 years ago:

The question at hand is this: How do we mold the early videotex environment so that noise is suppressed without limiting the free flow of information between customers?

The first obstacle is, of course, legal. As the knights of U.S. feudalism, corporate lawyers have a penchant for finding ways of stomping out innovation and diversity in any way possible. In the case of videotex, the attempt is to keep feudal control of information by making videotex system ownership imply liability for information transmitted over it. For example, if a libelous communication takes place, corporate lawyers for the plaintiff will bring suit against the carrier rather than the individual responsible for the communication. The rationalizations for this clearly unreasonable and contrived position are quite numerous. Without a common carrier status, the carrier will be treading on virgin ground legally and thus be unprotected by precedent. Indeed, the stakes are high enough that the competitor could easily afford to fabricate an event ideal for the purposes of such a suit. This means the first legal precedent could be in favor of holding the carrier responsible for the communications transmitted over its network, thus forcing (or giving an excuse for) the carrier to inspect, edit and censor all communications except, perhaps, simple person-to-person or "electronic mail". This, in turn, would put editorial control right back in the hands of the feudalists. Potential carriers' own lawyers are already hard at work worrying everyone about such a suit. They would like to win the battle against diversity before it begins. This is unlikely because videotex is still driven by technology and therefore by pioneers.

The grace period may be about over.

Re:Lets face it

[log0n]

First they put away the dealers,
keep our kids safe and off the street.
Then they put away the prostitutes,
keep married men cloistered at home.

Then they shooed away the bums,
then they beat and bashed the queers,
turned away asylum-seekers,
fed us suspicions and fears.

We didn't raise our voice,
we didn't make a fuss.
It's funny there was no one left to notice
when they came for us.

Looks like witches are in season,
you better fly your flag and be aware
of anyone who might fit the description,
diversity is now our biggest fear.

Now with our conversations tapped
and our differences exposed,
how ya supposed to love your neighbor
with our minds and curtains closed?

We used to worry bout big brother,
now we got a big father and an even bigot mother.

And still you believe
this aristocracy gives a fuck about you.
They put the mock in demockracy
and you swallowed every hook.

The sad truth is you would rather
follow the school into the net
cuz swimming alone at sea
is not the kind of freedom you actually want.

So go back to your crib and suck on a tit
go bask in the warmth of your diaper.
Youre sitting in shit and piss
while sucking a huge pacifier,
a country of adult infants.
A legion of mental midgets
all regaining their unconsciousness

-- Fat Mike

Get your site out of the US

[J'raxis]

Firstly, if this is a "semi-official" (government-run or -connected?) news site, why isn't it hosted in Iran proper?

If for some reason that's not possible, the best thing one could do if they run a site like this is get it out of the "Land of the Free" United States and host it in a country that actually respects political* free expression. For example, the Iraqi resistance website is hosted in the Netherlands. I've come across a lot of similar sites run by organizations like HAMAS or the Hizballah, and IIRC they were hosted in the Netherlands, too. The Chechens used to have their website hosted in Lithuania, until they posted a communiqué from Shamil Basaev after the Beslan incident, whereupon they got temporarily shut down (probably under pressure from Russia); now the site appears to be in Sweden.

So your best bet if you're running some site like this is to look at Europe, particularly Scandinavia, and ignore any claptrap you hear about "Constitutional" protections in the US (much like the government itself does).

--
* In the US, you can get away with some of the most blatant racism and the bizarrest pornography, all under the ægis of freedom of expression, but anything that comes a bit too close to pissing off the State will quickly find you shut down.

How do you figure?

[megalomang]

My ISP has this clause:

Subscriber acknowledges and agrees that Operator shall each have the right to monitor Subscriber's "bandwidth consumption" (i.e. aggregate volume of data that may be sent or received) at any time and on an on-going basis, and to limit excessive bandwidth consumption by Subscriber (as determined by Operator) by any means available to Operator, including suspension or termination of Service.

And this one:

Subscriber shall use the Service for lawful purposes only, and in accordance with this Agreement and any Terms of Use. Subscriber shall not upload, post, transmit or otherwise make available on or via the Service any material (including any message or series of messages) that violates or infringes in any way upon the rights of others, that is unlawful, threatening, abusive, obstructive, harassing, libelous, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, that in the circumstances would be obscene or indecent, that constitutes hate speech, that is otherwise offensive or objectionable, or that encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any law.

And so on and so forth...

Essentially, they can revoke my contract for many subjective reasons. They would of course refund my money, and I would of course take it to another ISP. However, I can't imagine any ISPs would not have similar clauses in their contracts, and I can't imagine that any responsibly ISP would enter a contract with an iranian student news agency without some very creative flexible exit clauses.

So... how do you figure it was a breach of contract?

Re:ISNA has well-known links to terror

[laird]

Whether you support or oppose the ISNA site, ISP's aren't responsible for the content of the sites that they host, and should (IMO) make their decisions based on business issues. For example, hosting spammers is bad because those people abuse the internet, violating the ISP's Acceptable Use Policy (and aside from the moral issues, attracting counter-attacks that are a PITA for an ISP to deal with). The idea that an ISP would terminate a site's hosting due to the site's content (assuming it's not illegal to host the site) is pretty creepy.

That being said, the ISP can accept or reject customers for any reasons that it wants, so long as it's not violating its contracts and isn't discriminating illegally (sex, race, religion, etc.). (This is all assuming US law -- I have no idea what Iranian law requires of ISP's, etc.) And, on the flip side, ISNA should be able to freely move their site to another ISP, transfer DNS, have adequate notice from the ISP before termination to manage a transfer, etc. That should all have been covered by their contract.

What I can't see is why this is a big deal. If one ISP doesn't want to host ISNA, they can terminate them but should be required by their contract to give them adequate notice, and access to the servers, to move to another ISP. If the ISP didn't give them that, ISNA should sue them. If ISNA had adequate notice and didn't move their site, they're being lame.

Re:Lets face it

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus my point is made, Americans will not be satisfied until their freedom is taken away from them. This post is a shining example of the atrophy of the American mind. It is obvious that the shock and awe paranoia campaign by the current administration against its own people is working like a dream. The difference is that people were willing to fight against these abuses in the past, today everyone just sits in their split-level watching their 500 channels of paranoia ridden television and say "what can I do about it?". This is the exact same tactic used by both the Nazi's and the Stalin regime to "whip" their people into shape.

Re:+5, Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

In all of those cases it is protected, not enforced. A subtle, yet important difference.

Re:+5, Funny

[Rei]

Postwar Germany and Japan were really exceptions. Proportionally, very few democracies in the world were formed by outside force of arms (generally not even from internal force of arms). Democracies, historically, are formed through steady changes within, either by reformist leaders in the government or by popular dissent. Military force creates anger, counter-movements, and tends to spawn repressive regimes to counter it.

There have been a lot of theories proposed as to why the exceptions of Japan and Germany worked out so well, but the main one is that people there were just plain sick of violence. Their whole countries had been torn apart. In America, we look at the scale of our losses as huge and tragic, but Japan lost 4 1/2 times as many people, while Germany lost a staggering 12 times as many people. And lets not even get into infrastructure. Their nations were literally in pieces, so pretty much any semblance of order was grabbed onto.

In the past century, the US has attempted to enforce democracy 18 times. It was successful only in 5: Germany, Japan, Italy, Panama, and Grenada. That's a 28% success rate - the latter two aren't exactly bastions of democracy (and are proportionally tiny), while the first and third already previously had democracy. The only truly significant success story was Japan.

Our lack of success wasn't due to lack of trying, btw. We were in Haiti for 19 years, Nicaragua intermittently for 24 years, etc.

Re:Lets face it

[Anonymous Coward]

First they killed the Olympic athletes in Germany, but I did nothing because I wasn't an Olympic athlete.

Then they killed those Marines in Beirut and I did nothing because I wasn't a Marine.

Then they killed the people in the USS Cole and I did nothing because I wasn't in the Navy.

Then they crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and I couldn't do anything because I am dead.

Re:+5, Funny

[SomePoorSchmuck]

If knowledge is power, ignorance is slavery.

Re:+5, Funny

[einhverfr]

How can "having freedom" mean "no longer being yourself"? Is "lack of freedom" their defining characteristic?

One thing I would take issue with here though is that "American-Style" democracy is not necessarily synonymous with liberty (the two can exist independant of eachother). The right to self-determination is a very powerful right, and I don't think we can talk about liberty in Iran without acknowledging this. I.e. liberty cannot be imposed, for if it is, it is not liberty.

Iran is moving slowly in a direction of popular democracy with a strong religious aspect. It has strong democratic institutions though those would largely be unrecognizable to many Americans as there is no separation between church and state. Indeed the only thing that keeps Iran from really being fully democratic is that the Council of Guardians (an unelected body) remains the head of both an executive branch and the judiciary. This means that they have effective veto power over anything the elected bodies do.

I would be afraid that American intervention in Iran might undermine those who seek to limit the power of the Council of Guardians. The invasion of Iraq already has undermined the reformists quite admirably in Iran and elsewhere.

Re:Freedom is slavery

[dajak]

Suppose you lived in a prison state. Every aspect of your existence was enforced, however, that enforcement was in perfect accord with your own wishes. Are you still free?

There is no difference. You are free, because you are allowed to do everything you want. All major political ideologies want to free people, but they differ in their beliefs on what most people want, and whether people know what they want (revealed preference vs. motivating preference).

As far as Iraq is concerned, in as much as the people didn't break the bonds of Saddam's rule by themselves, but had democracy foisted upon them; I would agree with you. It is just another form of slavery.

I believe most people in Iraq wanted something better than Saddam.

There is another, more fundamental, issue: In the late 19th century, Kuyper (you will not know him unless you happen to be Dutch) argued that a people, by virtue of numbers, is always able to remove its elite as long as you ignore cross-border effects. You cannot oppress a majority. So a people that is sufficiently autonomous (from outside interference) gets the government it deserves.

In reality a weak country cannot remove its elite if that elite is supported with the money and technology of a strong country. In much of the world 'government' is a battleground (or beauty contest) for western money and technology.

The Soviet Union collapsed because the people stopped supporting it. In a small country this does not happen as long as the elite has weapons the people cannot produce for themselves.

The 'invisible hand of democracy' will only work if countries respect the sovereignty of other countries.

Invaders sometimes leave a stable democracy behind, but only because they didn't impose it and left and the people happened to be ready. Germany and Japan after WWII are bad examples for imposing a democracy. There the people did it themselves. Germany and Austria after WWI ARE examples, and they went terribly wrong.

What happens if the people vote to have Saddam installed back in power?

Then Iraq would prove Kuyper's point. I wouldn't dare to speculate what happens in the US, but it probably has a happy ending because the American people are autonomous by virtue of their number and wealth.