The Enemy of My Enemy Can't Be Hosted

Matt Welch | January 24, 2005

American Web hosting companies The Planet and GoDaddy have been refusing service to some in Iran's thriving weblogging community, citing (in the latter case) "U.S. government policies." Expat blogger Hossein Derakhshan, better known as Hoder, is following the story.

Comments

|1.24.05 @ 1:20PM|#

Um, I can understand laws against providing internet services to the Iranian gov't. But why a ban on internet hosting for Iranian bloggers? Anything that results in more information flowing despite the Ayatollah's attempts to stifle it sounds good to me.

Wouldn't it be nice to have the Iranian state media outlets subjected to the scrutiny of people who know what the Farsi equivalent of a proportional font is?

The Lonewacko Blog|1.24.05 @ 2:28PM|#

I was considering registering some domains with godaddy, but now I'm 1% less sure about using them.

On the other hand, almost every contract has something in there about re-export or similar to "terror sponsoring countries" including Iran.

For instance:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/license.html
The export and re-export of Adobe software products are controlled by the United States Export Administration Regulations and such software may not be exported or re-exported to Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, or any country to which the United States embargoes goods. In addition, Adobe software may not be distributed to persons on the Table of Denial Orders, the Entity List, or the List of Specially Designated Nationals.

|1.24.05 @ 2:52PM|#

...Table of Denial Orders, the Entity List, or the List of Specially Designated Nationals.
?How do you know if your on these list, who's on these list or are they "secret". If you won't tell me who not to deal with how am I suppose to know if I'm dealing with some suspected terrorist.
?where is the line i should not cross!!!