I think some people live in a fairy tale world. North Korea, for example, recently sunk a South Korean ship killing 41 people. There really are bad people in the world.
Personally, I think the Cuba issue is legacy and it's probably time to resolve it. The fear of communism is long gone. Now I think it's just a matter of a bunch of rich voters in Florida who want their nationalized land back, which probably isn't going to happen.
I agree, it's a law and they're following it. Sourceforge and Google are not responsible for that.
As far as North Korea, um... so, when the US kills 25 Afghans at a wedding ("oops! my video-game like predator drone readout made it look like they were definitely terrorists") what does that mean? I guess France should stop exporting Notepad++ to the US. Correct?
No, the issue is whether 'exporting' a text editor to N. Korea would REALLY make any difference. Perhaps the clueless, bribed, caviar-stuffed and prostitute-sucked morons in Congress think so, but most of them can hardly even send an email.
"No, the issue is whether 'exporting' a text editor to N. Korea would REALLY make any difference. Perhaps the clueless, bribed, caviar-stuffed and prostitute-sucked morons in Congress think so, but most of them can hardly even send an email."
Think about this for a few milliseconds before ranting. How would you write a law that blocked the bad "exports" while allowing the good "exports" through? It's much less work to write and administer to just to block them all to countries like North Korea.
I'd wager it's even less work not to block anything. Answer me this:
1) Can you point to scientific evidence, or even a carefully-reasoned argument, that blocking U.S.-hosted free software from "rogue" states like North Korea, Syria, or Iran either A) is a meaningful deterrent to the governments of such states or B) has a desirable effect on the citizens of those states?
2) Do you think it's likely that the people with power to make decisions about this actually thought rationally about any evidence or reasoning?
My provisional answers are 1) Not likely and 2) Fat chance.
I'll have to agree with you here. Banning physical exports may make sense - if North Korea can't import plutionum it's not very likely they'll get it. Or at least it's posssible to police the ban.
If the North Korean regime really wants to download notepad++ it's as good as impossible for anyone to stop them. All they need is a proxy in another country. Or someone travelling with a USB stick, or just two people using dropbox on either side of the border. Code is very different from physical good in this regard.
People in power, or anyone else for that matter, really don't have the time to debate the finer points of the export laws (which includes free software), so it's probably better that they just made a simple law that even developers can understand.
The reason I made point 1 is because our default decision should always err on the side of freedom. Why would you bother restricting anything unless you can identify some benefit to restricting it? It's more work, and maximizing freedom often results in positive results when the freedom turns out to be useful in a way you didn't expect.
For all I know, not a single man in North Korea knows what the hell Notepad++ is. Maybe no North Korean citizen would have any use for any U.S.-hosted software at all. If that's true, then isn't that yet another reason not to restrict it?
Is it really too complicated to say: "Data is not subject to export control laws, unless it's in category X or Y (like cryptosystems are, under current law) in which case the following rules apply: so-and-so." I think it's disingenuous to suggest that officials writing export laws "don't have the time" to make any distinctions on such a large class of exports. Our federal laws are rarely guilty of having insufficient detail.
Additionally, I'd reiterate what other people have already mentioned, which is that if the (yet to be justified) goal is actually to stop these entities from using all this software, the goal is impossible. The law burdens U.S. hosts as much as it burdens foreigners, who can just use a proxy or a mirror in another country.
After reading through the other posts, I don't think Notepad++ was ever restricted by export controls. Sourceforge initially didn't allow them to specify that the software was not restricted by law so they restricted everyone.
So, other than software that contains encryption, what software is restricted?
It's impossible to block open source software exports. Anyone in the entire world can download anything from anywhere; an attempt to block by country reflects a lack of understanding of how the internet works.
Blocking export of closed source/commercial software is more realistic, but still, the targets can always pirate or obtain what they want through a third party.
I wouldn't. I'd just take all of the open source projects like notepad++ and host them outside the US giving non-US hosting companies business, and leave all of the text editors using super-secret hi-tech military encryption on US hosting servers.
So, it's safe to assume it will happen again in every current and future war.
The point is that wars are very ugly and imprecise. Now, I'm pretty sure that it is a war crime to intentionally kill innocent civilians, so yes, if the US starts doing this, I expect the rest of the world place embargos.
At any rate, you are free to leave your comfort zone and make the world a better place. It's easy to complain and have all the answers. It's an entirely different matter to effect change. I'm sure at least half of those morons in Congress would have nailed you to the wall for making such a flawed case trying to prove your point.
[Edit]
I guess I only focused on his first statement. I addressed the common statement "Why does it hurt to allow the export of a text editor" in another post. In short, it's easier to make a blanket law. gcc, for example, could be used for weapons software development. Emacs? Well, it can run a version of Lisp! :-) Notepad++? Never used it. Anyway, who has time to evaluate every piece of software for export restrictions. Yes, people can get around them anyway, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be speed bumps.
Ugh. We should forbid political posts on Hacker News. Such a time suck...
I don't think the point was to attack your example. I think the point was that some governments might be doing bad things, but why does this have to condemn the people?
The point we should all take away from this is to avoid inflammatory comments that segue into the point you actually want to make. They serve only to distract and weaken the opinion.
A simpler statement would have sufficed - say, "I believe these laws are too broad and should be rethought, as the impact of violating it in this case would be negligible." Civility is key.
If North Korea (as a government) wants something from Sourceforge's site, will blocking access to the site really prevent them from doing so for more than a second?
Meanwhile, if a North Korean wants something from Sourceforge's site, why are you blocking it? Similar to above, they can still get it, but all you're doing is punishing the civilians, most of whom have little to nothing to do with the government. How is this helpful?
Now, which of those two is the US Government at war with?
They were implying the law is ridiculous. Complying is the cost of existence in a nation.
Even if are any "civilian" internet users in North Korea (unlikely since using the internet requires government approval), I think it's safe to say that being stymied by US export restrictions on Sourceforge is the least of their problems...
You're also in a fairy tale world if you think that 'axis of evil' countries are not going to get their hands on whatever opensource software they like. Most of this stuff is mirrored all over the place and so there is little one can do to stop this (assuming it is worth stopping them in the first place).
Open source developers working at the one, heavily monitored, most likely site-restricted cybercafé in Pyongyang?
Syria, Iran and Cuba are different matters entirely, but people in North Korea are limited by having no Internet connectivity in the first place, than by being blocked by sites in the US. You may as well ask why the civilizations of Andromeda are stopping us from selling our wares there.
I can't speak as to the policies of the US government, but aren't blocks like these related to the more typical physical sanctions of delivering products to a country? With the Internet, you can just VPN around these blocks anyway, so anyone in NK who wanted to access this stuff and had a connection could do so.
That said, since the only people in North Korea who are likely to access the Internet are the people in charge (who we "don't like"), it doesn't seem unreasonable to block their access to software they might use even if it's easy to circumvent anyway.
From section 5 of http://code.google.com/projecthosting/terms.html: "regulations require that all postings of open source encryption code be simultaneously reported by email to the U.S. government"
Makes me want to organize a protest where everyone posts an implementation of ROT13 on GitHub and sends email to the govt. Of course, it would probably fall on deaf ears...
http://code.google.com/projecthosting/terms.html
Pretty ridiculous in this day and age.