Slashdot Mirror
SourceForge Clarifies Denial of Site Access
Recently there were some complaints from certain users outside the US stating that they were no longer able to access SourceForge.net. SF.net (who shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has outlined the reasons for these bans, and until someone with sufficient power to alter US law or the lists governing who is allowed to access what data from where, there is unlikely to be a change in these bans. It is worth noting that SF.net is not alone in these difficulties, as the same problems have been reported from other repositories, like Google Code. "As one of the first companies to promote the adoption and distribution of free and open source software, and one that still puts open source at the center of its corporate ideals, restrictions on the free flow of information rub us the wrong way. However, in addition to participating in the open source community, we also live in the real world, and are governed by the laws of the country in which we are located. Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place."
can use a proxy to get at SourceForge.
Best Slashdot Co
Would moving the servers, or serving certain countries from another one (Canada? Europe?) help at all? This is obviously incredibly shitty.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore
With any luck this will force Bin Laden to have to use Windows O.S. and programs from downloads.com to do his twisted interpretation of Allahs will.
There could be some justice in this yet.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The reality of the world is that picking up and moving a company overseas (from a US perspective at least) is not easy, nor cheap.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Dollars and cents. It's easy to sit back and say SF should stand up for their ideals, but the cost to move their operations along with the risk probably (er, apparently) aren't worth it. It's not a great idea to use a multi million dollar asset as a pawn to reinforce your principles. Especially when it's publicly traded.
Whale
Because they are based in the US, and they are owned by a company that is based in the US. US export laws apply to both the parent company as well as the child, and sanctions for violating the export laws are severe. Relocating to another country is a possibility, but they would have to start over. The company taking assets (or assets under corporate supervision) to another country would also fall under the same law. So, there's the chicken and the egg problem. Also, most of the countries on the US list are also on similar lists in the rest of the world due to treaties, etc. I'm sure there are some countries out there that would be happy to have you host there and export without limitation (and possibly break copyright laws too). But as the Pirate Bay is finding, those places are fewer and fewer these days.
Oh, and if you're planning on staying in the US and not moving to the country you host in, you're still under the US export laws, as your location is in their jurisdiction. Even if you can find a lawyer to make the argument, plan on spending a ton of money on the defense. And if you have that much money to start with, you wouldn't be reading this :)
Fond memories of the form that came up for 128-bit browsers back in the 90s. They always used to ask you to provide your information, and certify that you weren't from a bad country. I wish that was a joke; but no. They really did that. Cuz, you know... somebody who was up to no good would actually be deterred by that. Sheesh!
Any 5 year old can tell all you need is 1 guy to come over and get an ISP account. I'm quite sure that all the countries on the list not only have state-of-the-art OSS/FS encryption software, they have pirated closed-source software as well.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What exactly is the point of ideals if you don't stand up for them?
At least with SF.net we know it's a popularity contest. Make enough noise and they'll do something about it.
I hope you're not living in the US, nor in a treaty signatory. Hosting location does not equal legal liability freedom.
I don't think it has any problems with connection to any of those countries....
Maybe you can swap servers with Google...:-)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Well according to them the US is limiting their ability to 'to make our community as inclusive as possible'. So that would seem that the US is not a 'country that affords them the gretest opportunity to succeed.'
I realize it isn't just as simple as moving to Finland. But what you said makes less sense.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Yeah, I was looking for a better word than hatred but it does outline one of the main causes of bad international relations. Plus you're a douchesock.
...with more Internet censorship. This is ridiculous. Export laws are what they are, but if we're trying to help open up the Internet in these countries, banning them from accessing knowledge hosted on our servers isn't helping one bit.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Furthermore, it’s a direct violation of the freedoms of Free Software and section 5 of opensource definition:
I hope sf.net reconsider their decision. And at least to stand positively to defend the basic principles of FLOSS.
The US doesn't want to face up to the fact that the only way to keep very serious, proprietary technology out of the hands of hostile states is to severely punish those in the US who facilitate the transfer. So instead, it adopts security theater here much like it pretends that it is fighting child exploitation by posting cops all over chat rooms to entrap people who have a passive interest in jailbait at best instead of actually hunting for real, serious child molesters. This allows the national security hawks to believe that we're "being tough," when in fact if we were tough, we wouldn't give a shit about SF.net, but would instead be executing men like this (just read it before attacking me, it was the first Google search result) without a second thought.
This won't do **anything** except deter some students in these countries who don't know how to find a foreign proxy. It certainly won't stop foreign intelligence officers who try to get actual weapon systems and other serious munitions.
It rubs pretty much everyone at Slashdot the wrong way so why don't we all chip in to create a mirror site or something based outside the US?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
You should seek political asylum in Europe the land of the Real Free. Not bound by legal enslavement or crooked intelligence agencies, yet.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
They look good on paper. And powerpoint presentations.
The alternative is to end up like Prof. John Ross of the University of Tennessee, convicted of export control violations and sentenced to 4 years in prison -- at the age of 72.
What few in the US recognize is that the rules are even more stringent than indicated by SourceForge. To be convicted of an export violation, one needs merely to discuss a controlled technology with a foreign national on one of the lists -- which means, in addition to many other individuals, entities, and countries, any citizen of China or Iran. Sending anything overseas is unnecessary to violate the law -- merely speaking to a group containing one such person in the audience (like at a private industry consortium meeting) is all that is needed. And the list of controlled technologies is incredibly long: See the Commerce Control List, especially Category 3 - Electronics, Category 4 - Computers, Category 5 (Part 1) - Telecommunications, Category 5 (Part 2) - Information Security, and Supplement No. 2 to Part 774 - General Technology and Software Notes.
Moving your entire company to another country is not the only way to stick up for your ideals. Another way is to fight to change the system. Many people with far less power than the sf.net overlords have been able to do this and succeed.
Not everyone has the power to simply pick up their ball and run away every time they run into things they don't like. Sometimes you have to compromise and sometimes you have to try to work the system to improve it.
Couldn't SF.net just incorporate in a country other than the US, using non-US citizens as the principals in the incorporation? Then they wouldn't have to deny access to people just because the US says they should.
That's one of the ways lots of US corporate "citizens" manage to avoid US laws.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Since when was there a sea between the US and Canada?
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
That doesn't exempt you from the laws of the country where your company is located.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
There is not a single land without any restrictions, because every country has laws. However, there are countries that don't have trade embargo's or restrictions in distribution of software with cryptography (both which probably effected SF). In addition some countries value privacy and freedom of speech a lot more. Sweden being a perfect example.
If you are an open source coder (as I am), and you are involved with a project on sourceforge (as I was until a couple minutes ago), just ask the principal maintainer to move it to a different site. If they don't, stop contributing. Or, if you really don't care, then just go on with business as usual.
12. No Surrender of Others' Freedom.
If conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot convey a covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not convey it at all. For example, if you agree to terms that obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
the wise thing for sourceforge to do is simply agree to whatever the usa demands. and then its business as usual. which is: everything is available with no restrictions to anyone remotely familiar with a proxy server
enforcement is impossible, even for the usa within its own borders, so who fucking cares what the lawyers and bureaucrats and diplomats say? they've already been routed around
i'm not saying you shouldn't get upset at the arrogance and the audacity of the american demands, i'm saying a bully making demands without any actual ability to follow through on his threats is nothing you have to pay any respect to, and therefore nothing you should waste much effort or emotion on
you simply pay the asshole lip service, put a big smile on your face, say "yes" to whatever the asshole wants, and then its business as usual, which is: these laws mean nothing. all of the posturing and threats and demands mean nothing. there's NO ENFORCEMENT POSSIBLE
they can't enforce any of it. its the internet age. this is not about exporting video game machines, which can be intercepted, its about the internet, which routes around everything
people: stop getting upset at idiots trying to enforce legal understandings from a previous technological era and just ingore them and their petty demands without any muscle behind them. they can't stop technological change. they are defunct, they just don't know it
don't waste your time getting upset at a paper tiger
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If this rubs SF.net the wrong way so much, why do they continue to operate in the US?
That's a great idea. You want to pay for them to relocate? They're a business. They were established in the U.S. by U.S. citizens. To pick up and relocate isn't exactly something they can do overnight. Nor is it something they can do inexpensively. They're not exactly a huge profit-center. Not to mention, they're owned by another U.S. company, which must also adhere to U.S. laws and would likely have to relocate with them.
As SF.NET said in their post, they live in the real world. You might want to try joining them there.
The US has shown before that they'll arrest employees of foreign companies that are in the US for things the parent company did in other countries. E.g. Skylarov/Elcomsoft.
IANAL, but I think it would be very hard for any company that does any kind of business in the U.S. if they flout U.S. law. So GeekNet (SF's parent company) would have to move every single U.S. employee over the border. (Which includes the staff of Slashdot. How about it, Rob, Pudge, you guys willing to do the Phillip Nolan act?) And there's still the problem of selling services to U.S. customers.
Come to think of it, since all this comes under the category of "export controls", it would probably be illegal to move the servers across the border. You'd have to start over from scratch, using only software that's legally available outside the U.S.
All in all, a lot of trouble to protect the rights of a few Libyan hackers.
I agree that the laws on this issue are stupid and cause pointless hardship. But SF is in no position to disobey them.
The GPL doesn't force you to distribute the code, or prohibit you from selecting recipients according to any criterion you wish. It only prohibits you from placing restrictions on what the recipients can do with the code after they get it from you. In other words, the GPL doesn't require SF-hosted projects to directly distribute their code in Syria. It only prohibits the projects from forbidding downstream recipients from distributing to Syrians, or from forbidding Syrians to run the code.
Which would be more successful for SourceForge: near-universal accessiblity, with some politically imposed limits, or universal accessibility to a site that can't handle the load because they can no longer afford the servers and connection they need?
Imperfections don't preclude the US from being the best place for SourceForge to be hosted. I'm sure that if they can find a way to cheaply migrate to a country where the political climate isn't likely to produce this kind of problem in the foreseeable future, then they will. But until you can suggest how this might be achieved, I think it's a safe assumption that the US is the best place to base an English-speaking open-source community site that needs lots of servers, fast internet connections, and major financial backing.
Mod parent up, just because your assets are hosted in a neutral country, does not make you free from us law if you are a us company.
More over, suppose you move your servers and company somewhere else. Now, you are on the state department's hate list for doing business with US enemies, and have to deal with that. Worst case, your company could get blacklisted from the US and other western countries. Also, who is to say that wherever you go won't have similar restrictions? People don't like each other the world over.
Wouldn't the best plan be to host where you will reach the widest audience, and just be smug in knowing that the Internet has a tendency to rout around censorship? Let's be honest, just blocking a few IP ranges is just playing lip service to US law...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Why wouldn't this be considered a violation of the first amendment? (Not SF.net blocking, but the laws which that censorship is based).
"What exactly is the point of ideals if you don't stand up for them?"
Host the content yourself if you are so ready to expect sacrifice of others.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Sometimes, you have to pick your fights carefully. In this day and age, all the inJustice department need do is say the word "terrorism" or "9/11/01" to get an indictment and conviction.
I disagree with some - hell, MOST - of the embargoes, but what's to be done beyond protesting? I can point out that with proxies, anyone in the world can download any code that's available on the web. There's no need for me to SUPPLY a foreign national with anything, is there?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
I never said it would be peaches and cream for them to pick up and go to Finland. I merely pointed out that there is direct conflict arrising between operating in the US and their stated objectives.
I realize it isn't just as simple as moving to Finland.
I think you and I have different definitions of 'simple.' How do you propose they move to Finland? Lay off everyone (like Malda and the other fine folks of Slashdot) and rehire Finns? Or pay to move everyone to a foreign country? That's not a false dilemma, those are the only two options. Neither one of which is anything remotely approaching the common definition of 'simple.'
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That shifts the burden to developers in the US, who would be unable to contribute to projects hosted outside of the US.
That having been said, source code is not a product. It's a blueprint of a product at best. It can also constitute as speech. IANAL, and I haven't read the law in question, but I think restricting binaries is sufficient to comply. On the other hand, nothing short of an outright firewall still might bring the authorities knocking, and result in a costly legal battle, win or lose.
But it's a stupid restriction anyway. If you post something to the internet, you'd expect anybody and everybody to be able to get to it. The internet was designed to know no borders. Laws like those are analogous to laws that mandate the Great Firewall of China.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
You don;t have to pick it up - SF hosts free software, so incorporate a new business in Sweden or similar that just happens to host a mirror of SF's software. Then sf can happily block anyone (assuming that Sweden's not on the list of terror countries, which is possibly is given the US's idiocy and servile pandering to corporate interests) and provide a link to the Swedish mirror.
SF continues as normal, sf.sweden downloads a nightly changeset, job done. In fact, go one better and federate the mirrors around the world.... as long as the 'evil citizens of terror states' don't access the USA mirror, all's good.
These sure look like seas to me...
The "Gulf of Misunderstanding" has definitely been there as long as I can remember.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Not all speech is protected, and just because it's in paper form doesn't mean the 1st amendment will be applied by the courts. Protected speech is primarily political in nature. (like it or not)
Our government has decided that certain algorithms are weapons, and thus claims control on exporting them. Within the States, it seems to be a fuzzy combination of 1st and 2nd amendments that protect us. (from my layman's understanding)
Personally, I think such laws are outdated. The enemies of the US surely use proxy servers here to download whatever public code they wish. If proxy servers didn't exist, they'd find another way to smuggle the information across the Internet. I don't know who they think they're fooling.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Some years back, US law was changed so that the export of "technology" was controlled, not just the export of physical goods. You can be convicted of an export control violation by speaking privately to a foreign national about a controlled technology, even while both of you are on US soil. Note that this same conversation with a US citizen is perfectly legal -- we aren't discussing espionage here.
In that sense, export control regulation is directly linked to freedom of expression -- in an inverted way.
How ironic that to be free to the world they'd have to move away from the free world.
USA != The free world.
Most countries in Europe and many other countries are still pretty darn free, although American lobbyists are working hard to change that.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.