Re: Problem serving one-click installer to Syria

On 19/06/2010 03:12 م, Dave Page wrote:

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 1:07 AM, M. Bashir Al-Noimi <admin@mbnoimi.net> wrote: 

Hi again,

I just want to know is there any progress in blocking issue?

until now I noticed that you didn't get a solution for it, is it true?   

I had a conference call yesterday with a lawyer who specialises in
export control and had worked with us in the past on such issues. He
basically said that regardless of any crypto related restrictions, it
is illegal to export, or facilitate the export of anything from the US
to any embargoed countries, which are currently Syria, Iran, North
Korea, Sudan and Cuba.

In practice, this means that:

- No one from a US company such as EnterpriseDB can make the
installers available to you, no matter where they are based, without
putting the company and possibly themselves at risk of prosecution.

- No community members in the US can make the installers available to
you without putting themselves at risk of prosecution.

- No community members outside the US can intentionally make the
installers available to you on any servers in the US (which includes
the postgresql.org mirror network), without putting themselves at risk
of prosecution should they travel to the US.

- No community member with the ability to prevent it (i.e. because
they are a sysadmin) can knowingly allow the installers to be made
available to you by another person on servers within the US, without
putting themselves at risk of prosecution either in, or when entering
the US.

- Anyone giving advice or otherwise suggesting how you might get hold
of the installers may be facilitating export, and thus liable to
prosecution in or upon entering the US.

So unfortunately the advice we've received is essentially identical to
what Josh found when working for Sun, which is that there is nothing
that EnterpriseDB, or the community running postgresql.org can do to
help without risking severe penalties.

I don't agree that this is in any way morally right, but I'm sure you
understand that I and many others with ties to the US cannot take the
risk of helping you download the products. 

Oh my god, the rules deal with community such as enterprise companies! I've some info about that before but I didn't expect that the rules are so strict.

I'd like to thank you a lot for your efforts you deal with situation in effective way so from my side I think you absolutely did what you've to do and more than that... thanks again.

Before ending my message I want to tell the following breaking news from yesterday which you may benefit from it in this issue.
All Syrian media talked about the an extraordinary visit of largest US companies to Syria
http://www.aitnews.com/news/12976.html

Unfortunately the article available in Arabic but I can give you the summary of it and you can translate it by Google translate service for full text translation.

Mr. Obama's administration will give the biggest US companies special exceptions from US embargo on Syria (Microsoft, Dell, CISCO, Symantec, Frieser and many others) so representatives of these companies met Syrian administrations and elite of Syrian businessmen from Aleppo (north city in Syria known as biggest Syrian city in industrial producing).

Although this situation is absolutely in the right direction but it forms many question marks about the reason of the embargo which basically done by Bush administration in the past.

How Obama's administration allows these companies to work while they blocking US community websites? why that companies got the except while other companies can't?

Bby the way Microsoft website -for example- never blocked at all while OpenOffice blocked as soon as Bush administration released the embargo! and all Syrians can update their Windows editions directly from Microsoft.com without any problem even we can visit Microsoft support system with community forums too.

Depending on that news I think you -maybe- find a solution for blocking issue specially if you compared your installer with Microsoft installers (you may ask the lawyers how Microsoft found a solution for that).

-- 
Best Regards
Muhammad Bashir Al-Noimi
My Blog: http://mbnoimi.net