[liberationtech] Coursera to join censor club by blocking Iran IP space

[Joanne Michele]

I'm forwarding the letter from my professor to the Constitutional Struggles
in the Muslim World class (how lovely for those very same students to get
kicked out in the last week of the course).

He makes it clear that Coursera had no control over the decision, but I
read it as if they knew it was coming. I am disappointed that they haven't
publicly fought for their students, though maybe that's forthcoming due to
all of the attention.

I'm also curious as to what the list thinks of his suggestions for proxies,
especially what Colin and others think of the future risks to students in
Iran.

Thanks,

Joanne

Dear All,

I write this email under protest and with a considerable degree of anger
and sadness. Few things illustrate the bone-headedness, short-sightedness,
and sheer chauvinism of the political structure of the United States better
than the extent to which its ideologues are willing to go to score cheap
domestic political points with narrow interests in the pursuit of a
sanctions regime that has clearly run its course.

You might remember the Apple ad from a few years back, in which the company
proudly announced that their machines were now so powerful that they fell
under export restrictions: "For the first time in history a personal
computer has been classified as a weapon by the US government ..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4dDuocAXTY

Well, that was a tongue in cheek quip at their Wintel competitors, but a
few years after that same company decided that also an iPad apparently
could now a weapon, in a rather cowardly anticipatory cow-tow to an ever
expanding and aggressive sanctions regime, when they stopped selling any of
their products to anyone who happened to SPEAK Persian in their stores (the
company has since lifted that idiotic policy):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18545003

But you will now be interested to hear that also my course (and anything
elseCoursera offers) has been classified, if not a weapon that could be
misused, then at least a "service" and as such must not fall into the hands
of anybody happening to live in the countries that the United States
government doesn't like. I have thus been informed that my students in
Cuba, Syria, Sudan and my homeland will no longer be able to access this
course. I leave it to you to ponder whether this course is indeed a weapon
and if so against what and what possible benefit the average American
citizen could possibly derive from restricting access to it.

Be this as it may, I invite those students affected to use services such as
hola.org or VPN routers to circumvent these restrictions.

Let me reiterate that I am appalled at this decision. Please note that
no-one atCoursera likely had a choice in this matter!

At any rate, rest assured that these are not the values of the University
of Copenhagen, of its Faculty of Law, and most assuredly not mine!

Let me end on a personal note: as a recipient of a McCloy Scholarship
created to foster trans-Atlantic friendship and as someone who spent some
of his most formative years in the United States, I have to admit that I am
worried about the path this country is descending to. Blocking teaching
(and medicine) from people whose government one doesn't like is a fallback
into the darkest hours of the last century. As my teacher at MIT, Prof.
Stephen Van Evera would have told the people responsible for this: your
mothers would not be proud of you today.

Your instructor,

Prof. Dr. Ebrahim Afsah
Faculty of Law
University of Copenhagen

PS: Below an excerpt of the communication I received from Coursera; I know
from previous engagements that there is absolutely nothing they can do in
the current legal climate in the United States:

"As some of you already know, certain U.S. export control regulations
prohibit U.S. businesses, such as Coursera, from offering services to users
in sanctioned countries (Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria). The interpretation
of the export control regulations in the context of MOOCs has been
ambiguous up until now, and we had been operating under one interpretation
of the law. Last week, Coursera received definitive guidance indicating
that access to the course experience is considered a service, and all
services are highly restricted by export controls.
In particular, the notion of "services" includes offering access to human
grading of quizzes and assessments, peer-graded homework, and discussion
forums. Regrettably, Coursera must therefore cease offering MOOC access to
users in certain sanctioned countries in order to ensure compliance with
these U.S. laws and to avoid serious legal ramifications."

PPS: I don't think it is very constructive to voice your opposition to
Coursera, as they can't do anything about it anyway. If you feel you must
voice your discontent, direct it at the political representatives who are
responsible for this situation, i.e. your congressman or -woman if you are
a US citizen or the local US representation if you are not.


On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Collin Anderson
<collin at averysmallbird.com>wrote:

> For what it is worth, I have an appreciation for the manner that Coursera
> proceeded with this, being that they have been open about the process that
> led to the restriction, that they are apparently reaching out to bloggers,
> and since they seem to be pursuing a legal remedy. That is far better than
> some companies, whose new product launches are followed by a need to check
> if its even available in sanctioned countries or who still won't take
> action even when their product was specifically named in a Treasury
> Department document (I hate you Adobe). On top of that, their announcement
> essentially instructs the public to use a VPN and to not give them reason
> to know about location -- that's imperfect yes, but it was respectful.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Collin Anderson <
> collin at averysmallbird.com> wrote:
>
>> My hypothesis has been that Coursera, in the midst of raising venture
>> capital funds, had a broad compliance risk evaluation and this was raised
>> by outside counsel. Based on their blogpost, I suspect they
>> took voluntary action and then reached out to State (or vice versa), who
>> likely informed them of the Syrian General License and are probably working
>> on specific licenses for other countries (this will take months in the best
>> case). While no one would ever likely go after Coursera for continuing the
>> way things were, no one would ever advise them to ignore legal concerns
>> either. Myself and others read into the Iranian and Sudanese exemptions as
>> liberally as we can, and it was clear that this was an unfortunately
>> reasonable interpretation. The law simply has not anticipated the rise of
>> virtual, for-profit, non-accredited, non-degree-granting educational
>> institutions; as such, it falls outside of General Licenses 1 (Sudan) and E
>> (Iran). Hopefully, what will come out of this mess is a new General
>> License, which was the reaction to problems on sport exchanges with Iranian
>> officials last summer, since MITx has been pulling similar moves lately as
>> well.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 12:17:00PM +0000, Amin Sabeti wrote:
>>> > The main point is Coursera has done something that it's not legitimate.
>>>
>>> They were (apparently) forced to do this.  It's not like Coursera
>>> staff woke up one day and suddenly decided to block those countries
>>> because they had nothing better to do.  Please read:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://hummusforthought.com/2014/01/29/us-bans-students-from-blacklisted-countries-from-getting-a-free-education/
>>>
>>> ---rsk
>>> --
>>> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations
>>> of list guidelines will get you moderated:
>>> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech.
>>> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at
>>> companys at stanford.edu.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *Collin David Anderson*
>> averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *Collin David Anderson*
> averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.
>
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations
> of list guidelines will get you moderated:
> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech.
> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at
> companys at stanford.edu.
>



-- 

*Joanne Michele *
*Advocacy & Research Coordinator and Mideast Correspondent*
*Safe World International Foundation*


*Email: *joanne.michele at asafeworldforwomen.org<andrew.sampson at asafeworldforwomen.org%0d>

*Web:  www.asafeworldforwomen.org <http://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/>*

Dalton House
60 Windsor Avenue
London
SW19 2RR
United Kingdom

Registered in the UK.
Company no: 6712633
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20140130/de10b759/attachment.html>