Microsoft Blocks Messenger In Five Embargoed Countries

Spooky McSpookster writes "Microsoft has turned off its Windows Live Messenger service for five countries: Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. Users in these countries trying to log in get the following error: '810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.' Why now, since this flies in the face of the Obama administration's softening stance on Cuba? This isn't the first time the US trade embargo has had questionable outcomes. US-based Syrian political activist George Ajjan created a web site promoting democracy in Syria, only to find GoDaddy blocked anyone inside Syria from seeing it. The article argues, 'Messenger is a medium for communication, and the citizens of these countries should not be punished from such a basic tool because the US has problems with their governments' policies.' What does this say for the wisdom of non-US citizens relying on US companies for their business or communication?"

Comments

First post!!

[moj0e]

Without reading the article, I would assume that M$ makes advertising money with its IM. Because of that, it might be construed that it is doing business with countries that it has no business doing business. (that was really an excuse for first post...)

About the same

[OpenSourced]

What does this say for the wisdom of non-US citizens relying on US companies for their business or communication?

About the same as the wisdom of US citizens relying on US companies for their business or communication. The ones are about as likely as the others, to end up with a strange feeling on their backsides.

Microsoft does what is good for Microsoft

[MickyTheIdiot]

They don't do what is good for "people" in general and they don't claim to do so.

This is true of every big corporation. It's probably true of any group where liability for actions are taken away.

wow, pretty biased

[deft]

I'm not a lover or hater of MS, but I know when a article is biased.

Right after the writer says "it's not clear that Microsoft was ordered to make this change, so what made the company decide that US-embargoed countries aren't worthy of Messenger? Why now?".

If it's not clear, why assume they chose? Why say they aren't worthy... clearly MS thought they were for some time. MS gets no good from blocking it, they just want users. Maybe their lawyers had been arguing with the government and finally there was a decision.

Noone knows... which means don't conclude anything. More info needed.

Let's generalise...

[TheRaven64]

What does this say for the wisdom of non-US citizens relying on US companies for their business or communication?

What does this say about the wisdom of anyone relying on a single provider for their business or communication? The idea of a second source isn't exactly new. If you adopt a technology from a single provider, with no interoperability, then don't be surprised when you realise that their interests are not the same as yours. If you use MSN Messenger and Facebook instead of XMPP and email then you are subject to the whims of these two companies and their legal obligations.

Re:Let's generalise...

[pisco_sour]

The reason many people (myself included at some point) decide to use US-based services for different purposes is, in my view, quite reasonable. First of all, there's a matter of access: I can have access to much cheaper and better services via the web (i.e. web hosting) by choosing a foreign provider than a domestic one. Similarly for domain names - a generic .com domain hosted abroad costs about a tenth of what a similar domain would on my country's TLD.

The second possibility I see is more legally/politically concerned. It's much simpler for governments you may be trying to criticize to shut down your operation if it's based on a local provider than if it's based abroad - even if it's something as simple as it will take them longer to get it down.

So there's a reasoning behind using services abroad for your business or communication, and it is not necessarily "unwise". As for your comment - some very small scale operations will really have a hard time arranging for secondary providers and so on, so this might only be reserved for larger scale ops. I do agree with you in that it's very important - just perhaps not an option for anyone.

Why now? why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is a corporation, not some grand giving entity with the mission to help humanity. If they saw it more in their interests to turn this off then deal with the consequences of leaving access open, who cares. It is not MS's charter to provided uncompromising and unending access for communication to all the poor oppressed peoples in the world. Their charter is to generate profit for its owners and share holders.

Cheers.

Re:Why now? why not...

[MickyTheIdiot]

Corporations doing what is best for their owners and share holders is a MYTH. This is one of the biggest myths of the corporate era of history.

Corporations move first to promote the interests of the *corporation* itself. The interests of shareholders is a very. very distant second.

If the shareholders where higher on the ladder you wouldn't see the rush to declare bankruptcy where the common shareholder gets nothing out of the deal.

Re:Why now? why not...

[Anne Thwacks]

Corporations move first to promote the interests of the *corporation* itself.

On which planet? Here on planet Earth, corporations act in the best interest of one or two board members on a good day, and on the supposed, but completely erroneously assessed, best interest of same board members the rest of the year. The shareholders and employees get shafted regularly. The American and British motor industries appear to act consistently against their own best interests.

Mergers are almost always to the benefit of a few board members, and to the complete detriment of the corporation and its shareholders.

Step one: Aim at foot.

[vivaelamor]

How pointless, hopefully everyone will switch to something non commercial like Jabber and the only ones to suffer will be Microsoft.

And nothing of value was lost

[ickleberry]

More power to decentralised protocols like XMPP where anyone can run a server, even if all internet access is cut off to that particular country

They should grab open sourse software

[bogaboga]

I believe these countries have gurus who can grab open source software and end up build a versatile system. Who the hell needs Microsoft?

It could be Jabber all the way.

Best weapon is trade and communication.

[reporter]

Tyrannical regimes operate best by minimizing the exchange of information or reducing its accuracy. For example, Beijing often covers up both disasters like sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and brutality like torturing Tibetan monks. Chinese citizens who live in an area affected by SARS or witnessed the torture of Tibetans but who have access to non-Beijing-controlled communication systems can then use such systems to spread the truth to other citizens. An example of a communication system is Windows Live Messenger (WLM).

Also communication systems like WLM enable folks trapped in tyrannical regimes to communicate with the outside world. The ability to communicate with Europeans is an important mechanism for spreading Western values -- human rights, democracies, and simple compassion -- into brutal societies.

... and trade

[reporter]

I forgot to add that trade -- i. e., economic trade -- is important for spreading those Western values. Trade facilitates the transfer of information from the West to brutal regimes and maximizes exposure of their citizens to Western ideas.

Compare China today to China before 1980. The difference is night and day. China is freer today because trade injected numerous Western ideas into the country.

For that same reason, the economic sanctions against Burma starve its people of Western ideas.

Trade and communications are the best weapons against tyrannical regimes.

I don't understand this reasoning.

[mbone]

I don't understand either the reasoning here, or why they feel that blocking web service is either desirable or required under US law. (Obviously, it's different if you want to sell something there.)

We do Internet broadcasting (in English) and have a steady audience in Iran, Syria and Sudan (the largest of these being in Iran). It's early evening right now in all three places, and people there are watching TV from the US. Seems to me that that is a good thing.

Re:Slashcode's lack of characterset support

[Anonymous Coward]

In Iran, they would actually get the localized message, "Dirka dirka Muhammed jihad"

I don't know whether to rue your comment, or the mods who moderated it "Funny". It seems like /. is giving more and more mod points away to 14 years olds these days. Is it really "funny" when the instinctive association for any Islamic country is "muhammed" and "jihad"? It's not really amusing when people in other countries put on a cowboy hat and do a Bush impersonation of Americans, and it's not really amusing when Americans do a turban/jihad/terrorist impression of Muslim countries. How the hell can there be any constructive dialogue when a large percentile of the populace is busy acting like 14 year olds?

Re:What alternatives?

[Blakey Rat]

Ah! The typical open source supporter: instead of just admitting we can't meet your need, we'll just pretend your need doesn't exist.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Faylone]

Don't bother. A quick Google search shows this as Linus Torvald's work number. It also shows his web page where he says "If you're looking for Linux information, you'll find more of it somewhere else, because I'm hopeless when it comes to documentation."

Idiots

[PPH]

The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing in our government.

Letting these countries use IM would seem to be an excellent way for our intelligence services to keep tabs on their communications (assuming they're stupid enough to use a system based in the USA).

Re:Why now?

[bigman2003]

Good point- money...

Is it possible that Microsoft does not sell their products in those countries, therefore anyone using their software is using a pirated version?

If so, then this could be a business plan- not a censorship issue.

Re:Slashcode's lack of characterset support

[Anonymous Coward]

While the main spoken language of Iran is Farsi, Arabic is the second language. After all The Holy Q'uran is written in Arabic.

Re:Slashcode's lack of characterset support

[iamhigh]

Well Islam is the official religion of Iran, so the Muhammad part is right. The Jihad have quite a few supports from Iran, and no doubt get quite a bit of money from there, so that is probably not too far off. Besides, it was a joke... jokes mix reality with fantasy in a way that makes it comical.

I'll just say what I feel... if Muslims really *really* didn't like Jihad and Hamas, they would eventually lose some power. But somehow these people are getting money, guns, bombs and training. It really doesn't seem that the Muslim community as a whole *really* wants them to stop.

Now as far as cowboy hats and southern accents to impersonate Americans... they are probably attempting to portray stupidity. The part of the country you live in may not wear Wranglers and cowboy hats, but trust me, there are plenty of idiots in every corner of America.