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Iranian Players Blocked From World of Warcraft Due To Trade Sanctions
cold fjord writes "Is this the end of the world . . . of Warcraft? Maybe for Iranian gamers who are undergoing a forced morale check due to tightening sanctions cutting access to their game of choice. From the article: 'Iranian players of "World of Warcraft" ... have found themselves frozen out by Blizzard Activision Inc., the American company behind the game. Iranian role playing enthusiasts have spent much of the past week peppering Blizzard's message board with complaints about how they weren't able to log on to the service — only to be told recently that U.S. law was to blame. "United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran," the company said in an email sent to players last week...'"
Thanks to the sanctions, they can't get refunds either.
The Bureau of Industry and Security, US Department of Commerce, is the place to go to see the appropriate regulations. See, especially, the Export Administration Regulations, the Commerce Control List (especially), and the Lists to Check list. (Yes, there are so many lists that the lists themselves have a list.)
Police can detain you for any reason for 24 hours.
... and strip search anyone and everyone they 'detain.'
Nope, no police state to see here, move along Citizen...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There have been no recent changes that would require them to no longer provide WOW in Iran.
Its a widely held, but completely wrong, belief that US companies can't do business with/in Iran. Totally false. We mostly export "bad stuff" to them like tobacco products, corn, soy... the kind of stuff we use to sicken and poison our own walmart-ian underclass. So thats kind of weird. We also export stereotypical medical stuff to Iran. No one wants TV stories about how the state dept slowly killed a cute little Iranian kid by denying export of some obscure medical pill. Well, maybe it would play at the republican convention but in general it would be bad PR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-United_States_relations#Economic_relations
It is, however, expensive with endless forms and licenses to fill out. All you need is a PHB to decide, "The paperwork isn't worth the profit" and its done. If there were a million profitable subscribers I'm sure they'd still be playing WOW right now, but if the legal compliance costs exceed gross revenue from just a couple gamers (which sounds extremely likely) then ....
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
>>>I recently crossed several state borders without being stopped by police for papers. So no, we are not the USSR.
It all depends WHICH states and of course timing. A few years ago I was sightseeing the perimeter of this country. I had no problems in the north, no problems along the west coast, and no problems along the southern border until I decided to go see the Gulf of Mexico. On my way back the DHS pulled me over and demanded to search my car. No warrant. Just a demand. I refused. So they detained me for an hour in the hot summer sun, giving me a nice sunburn, and then finally said, "The judge refused to give us a warrant. You can go." And I'm not the only one..... there are lots of similar incidents documented, with video, on youtube. Including cases where people were drug from their car and beaten. There's no reason for the police to detain a tourist for an hour w/o cause. The Supreme Court has already ruled, again and again, that such detainments are a violation of the 4th amendment but the DHS and Executive Branch doesn't give a shit. ("The justices made their ruling. Now let's see them try to enforce it.")
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Of course it is possible.
But then again it is pretty easy to believe the worst of a country that punishes female infidelity by stoning.
yeah, i remember hearing all that bullshit about russians having to wait in line for food, paying outlandish prices for western goods like jeans and vcr's b/c they weren't available there, being afraid to speak out b/c the police would throw them in jail and afraid their neighbors would turn them in as dissidents if they weren't seen vocally espousing their true loyalty.. I always assumed it was completely biased propaganda in a cold war US vs THEM style.
Fast forward 20 years. I married a Russian woman and learned that what was happening was generally much _worse_ than what I had been taught. Just recently read Archipelago Gulag which again confirmed this for me. What I was hearing about russia wasn't nearly as bad as Russia really was.
Now, I don;t like the direction American laws and politics are heading one bit, and I will continue to fight against the tide. But false equivalences like the parent post show nothing so much as a lack of perspective...
Don't forget you had to formally declare the place of your residence and if you wanted to stay somewhere else for an extended period of time, you had to declare that as well, with local authorities and provide a reason for your stay. Secret police pretty much had access to any place at any time. I remember very well a group of bachelors thrown in jail because a local cop saw through a window them watching pr0n (a no no under communist rule at the time), called in a raid, raided the apartment and they all got sentences. It made news and the state media spun it as "see what happens if you don''t follow the rules? you end up in jail". :)
Americans putting down America have yet a lot to learn. As they say, you think THIS is civil liberties violated? you ain't seen nothing yet..
I would require Blizzard set aside the funds so that if/when the sanctions get lifted they can either process the refunds or reinstate the accounts. Otherwise how much money has Blizzard "gained" by doing this??
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Iran had a secular democracy in 1953. The CIA helped overthrow it and installed a dictatorship. Then the US puppet's security arm, Savak, worked with the CIA to kill off, imprison and exile the left. By the late 1970s, the only independent bodies in Iran were the mullahs, and the informal relationships bazaar merchants formed. Thus when the economy collapsed, and repression intensified, the mullahs and bazaar merchants were at the forefront of the revolution, they were the only independent bodies the CIA had not wrecked.
Then Americans have the gall to stick up their nose and whine about theocracies. Of course, Iran is a secular paradise compared to somewhere like US puppet regime Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, women are not even allowed to drive cars. So why do we hear this theocracy stuff for Iran but not Saudi Arabia? Would it have something to do with the government (which has popular support, and some democratic forms - much, much more than Saudi Arabia) not asking "how high" whenever the powers that be in the US say "jump"? The gall and hypocrisy and rose-colored glasses of imperial-happy Americans seems unlimited, only planes flying into their war-planning pentagon buildings seem to wake them up from their stupor for a short bit.
Not due to superior American-ism, but due to: 1) learning from Russian mistakes (they went first almost every time), 2) better luck.
NASA killed plenty of people, in space and on the ground. Space exploration is dangerous-- in the 50s and 60s space exploration was insanely dangerous-- for every country attempting it. That's just a fact.
You also have to remember that during pretty much the shuttle era, Russian space travel was on average far more safe than US space travel.
I will say that the Russians seemed to lose a lot more automated probes due to stupid mistakes (giving bad instructions, bad change control, etc.) But those were just robots. And the US has lost probes due to stupid mistakes, too.
Comment of the year
When I was a kid, I lived in a country called USSR. It being the last years of its existence, we also thought that America was free, and we shall soon be like them in that respect, as soon as we get rid of those pesky commies.
And, yes, a lot of that turned out to be BS. But, having lived in USA for a few years now, I can assure you that it's definitely much more free than the USSR or Russia ever was. I'm not going to claim that USA is the "most free" country in the world or some such. But it's definitely reasonable to broadly call it "free", alongside a few others.
For a personal example, I know someone who grew up near Moscow in the 1970s who had become interested in Judaism. She joined a group of people who were reading and studying old texts. After a few months, it reached the attention of the government, and one time they went to their regular meeting, she was stopped by KGB people and asked where she was going, and told that it was an unwise thing to do. At the next meeting, they were raided and all arrested.
On an unrelated note, I recall reading on one of Russian Jewish websites covering religious obligations and such that they had problems studying Torah in the USSR partly because they knew that the KGB would likely be recording them, and this (the use of a recording device) is prohibited on Saturdays - and their rabbis disagreed on whether they were affected by this or not, given that they knew that they were recorded, and that the recording was enabled explicitly because of them being there (i.e. they were the "trigger", so to speak). Go figure.