Hacker News Reader

Comment by PopeDotNinja | Hacker News Reader

Unless you live in a place like Iran or Crimea.

That one isn't Github's "fault", though. That's going to happen if you use any service incorporated in the US.

Why is that? Is private business obligated to follow host country's foreign policy? My instinct is to hold the business responsible for these decisions.

Sometimes, yes. If the host's country's government applies sanctions to your country, they may have to stop allowing you to use their services.

Yes, a private business is obligated to follow the laws of any country where they hold assets that can be seized by the police of that country.

Censorship is a law in US now? Or, are you saying that it's law to follow its foreign policy? In that case you sure have a round-about way of saying that.

The Trading with the Enemy Act empowers the Office of Foreign Asset Control to come down very hard (million-dollar fines and years of jail time) on anyone dealing with a sanctioned nation (N.Korea, Iran, Cuba) or anyone on the list of Specially Designated Persons and Nationals. This is absolutely the law, yes.

The accounts were closed because they were business accounts from sanctioned countries? I didn't realise that. I had misunderstood that Github was enforcing the said countries' censorship.

Most of us don’t.

My point is that it sucks to discriminate against people just based on where they live. One day you're in Sevastopol working remotely for some company that uses GitHub. The next day some politicians decided your in a "bad" place and your permanently banned. It sucks, and hopefully it won't happen to you or me, but it totally could.

You act like this is arbitrary. "Politicians" with radically opposed worldviews, and from multiple countries, have endorsed this policy, including all recent presidents.

If you live in Iran, not having GitHub is a problem, but not your biggest one.

These are international government sanctions - the companies cannot choose to ignore them without severe consequences.

Sure, but that's a consequence of international war.

The war (and the warmongers) is your main problem. The rest are a large pile of details. When the tanks roll in I'm not worried about my GitHub issues.

This comment, perhaps unintentionally, does imply that the people in those countries deserve less, are less than, us. That's a morally reprehensible position to take, imo. Is that your position? Are you aware of that implication behind your comment?

No, the comment implies that risks that only apply to people in two countries don't apply to people not in those countries. This doesn't in any way suggest they deserve less or that their risk is morally irrelevant. Simply that the risk to them is not something I need to factor into the risk assessment of my own account.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com