Cyber Persia

The change we need

Sep 1, 2008 06:44

I wish there was a human rights activist or an organization that could defend the rights of Iranians as Netizens. There should be some sort of human digital rights declaration and online freedom of speech that all countries guarantee, especially wealthy industrialized countries like the US.

I know that under international laws, Governments are allowed to restrict the free flow of information to protect certain narrow interests such as national security or public morals, so I cannot and I don't look to change the filtering policy against Web sites and blogs inside Iran. What matters is why Iranian Netizens are disrespected by global companies and the laws of countries that carry the flagship of human rights.

To make it more clear let me give you some examples from some well-known companies:

SUN
Sun Java is a free and open source software platform. A crucial part of this platform is the JVM or Java Virtual Machine where you can execute Java byte codes, The Iranian Netizen goes to the sun.com Web site to download and install JVM. It downloads the installer and executes, but nothing happens because SUN has banned all IP addresses of Iranians and no further updates and downloads are possible.

The same story is valid for the FREE and Open MySQl Database Server since when Sun bought the European company, you see the following message:

GOOGLE
Google Web toolkit is a JavaScript cross compiler under the Apache 2.0 open source license and a couple of other open-source licenses like GNU, Creative Commons, and Mozilla public license.

You click to download the latest version:



Does it mean Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto?

There are similar restrictions on other services like adwords, adsense and Google apps on .IR domains.

CPANEL
This is the reply I got from one of my server providers after I saw the server license of my customer canceled:

Greetings,
The cancellation was initiated by cPanel because the Office of Foreign Assets Control determined the party (IP) is Iranian. cPanel expired the license before they even notified us about it.
We apologize for any inconvenience but there is nothing more we can do regarding this issue nor is there any further information that we have to provide.

Best Regards,
Director, Customer Relations/Billing

PAYPAL
This company blocked all Iranian accounts and kept their money. It has banned all access to this Web site from Iranian IPs, and the cool part of the story is that when you access this Web site you get a page from the Iranian filtering authority that says:

Respected Client:
Based on the Rules, Your Access to the Requested Website is Prohibited.
If you feel this is wrong, Please DO NOT Hesitate to Contact Filtering Department

A similar situation is valid for E-GOLD which is a digital currency provider. This Company blocked all Iranian e-gold accounts and never paid the money back to Iranians. It has been because of the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

MCAFEE:
You have bought a license for your McAfee antivirus or firewall product and you cannot update the virus database as all Iranian IPs have been banned. They have lost their market in Iran and have been replaced by KASPERSKY that is a Russian-based antivirus.

YAHOO:
This company once removed the name of Iran from the list of countries that you select while signing up to its free services and added later after lots of protests from Iranian users.

ONLINE TRANSACTIONS:
You get a 100 percent fraud rating from all fraud control systems when you want to use a credit card with an Iranian IP, even if it is your own Visa/Master card issued legally under your name. In that case your account is blocked or gets limited access automatically.

DOMAIN NAMES:
There is always a risk of losing your domain name if you have a US-based ICANN Domain Registrar and an Iranian address destination in your domain WHOIS data. Network Solutions, Godaddy , eNom have released domains owned by Iranians in the past.

These are excerpts of some sanctions against Iranian people and Netizens in an open media called the Internet.

I don't see any value investing on US$100 laptops by industrial countries to reduce the digital divide in Africa, while Internet big players in Silicon Valley are forced to ban smart, young and educated Internet users inside Iran.

-More to come
Reza

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