Coursera blocks access to students in Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria(blog.coursera.org) |
Coursera blocks access to students in Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria(blog.coursera.org) |
Some faculty have chosen to release MOOCs under creative commons and other similarly permissive licenses, but those are few and far between.
To not try to counteract this political manipulation is almost more outrageous than the political manipulation itself.
Imagine a large cohort of reasonable, well intentioned, creative, knowledgeable and empowered people came together and asked each other this question:
How can we as Homo sapiens, organize society, design and deploy systems, create technologies that allow us to live and pursue the lives that we want on a day to day basis.
More urgently, how can we as well save ourselves from eventual but certain destruction, in the event that we are too complacent to venture outside planet earth, remaining fragile to cosmological scale events that other evolved animals couldn't survive?
--
Run a 1000 simulations in 2014 January, include whoever you think is smarter than you or Obama - say Gates, Page, Musk, Zuckerberg, Jobs - Snowden, Theil, Kurzweil, Hawking, Dawkins or anyone who you think is competent.
Solution: First - Invent the Nation State. Create ~200 Nations of random sizes, resources, people, but create a bureaucratic institution that nobody takes seriously called the UN. All nations will be treated equally. Then create armies, spend billions on mutually assured destruction. Create a fake crime called 'sedition', create concepts of espionage. Use the nation state to justify everything, like a modern religion. Inspire democides and dictatorships. Prevent access and create isolation. Prevent Spotify from running anywhere, make ibooks store in most countrues have only titles without book covers from the victorian era 'because they are in public domain'. Have people blocked or restricted access to BBC because they are not in britain so they can't appreciate a neuroscience documentary. Create visas and passports and foreign embassies and diplomatic immunities. Restrict movement on land air water and radio waves or optic fibres. Have people do paperwork to see Niagra falls or prove their nationality before they are allowed to apply for a ONLINEprogram...
Then finally restrict and kill access to knowledge, with NO paywalls.
Can someone please tell me if they think this solution would show up?
Common, we have to recognize that the best invention since the wheel was not a stupid technology like the nation-state. Even if it was, this is ample proof that we've lived with it to a point where it's maladaptive. I hope we can see the writing on the wall and convince ourselves that we need to dissolve and bury this human invention, like most religions.
Our survival is literally at hand.
Though for an ancient approach checkout Plato's Republic.
As we've seen in the Arab Spring or currently in Ukraine, extremist regimes have to replaced by bottom-up grassroot movements, by the will of the people.
Having said that, what could be a stronger weapon than access to education?
Tirelessly: indefatigably: with indefatigable energy; "she watched the show indefatigably" http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=tirelessly Two thoughts:
1) Does anyone really think that the word "tirelessly" can honestly be applied to any work done by the state department?
2) Tirelessly is one of those weasly pr words that I am promising never to use again. Usually when a business says they are "working tirelessly," it turns out that the real meaning is "We want you to feel like we're working towards a solution, but this is pretty much out of our control."
There´s too many ppl in America from those conuntries, so... they will feel it too.
That's a Solomon solution, I have to admit.
Udacity can be a good alternative.
If one of my favorite websites was blocked, I may have considered not using it anymore. When virtually all websites are blocked, I can either not use the internet or find a way around it. Of course I chose the second option. Most Iranians have been using proxies and VPNs for the past few years. This blockage would not affect us much.
P.S. Please stop using Google Code. Edit: Also App Engine. Udacity has been inaccessible to Iranians since the beginning because they use App Engine for hosting. This is what I get when I try to access Udacity: http://i.imgur.com/zUecPHk.png
P.P.S. I am curious what percentage of the internet is blocked in Iran. When you try to access a blocked website, the censorship system shows a page explaining that the website is blocked and some links to Iranian websites. Is it possible to write a script to scan all the internet (or at least the popular websites) and determine which ones are blocked? Here is what I get when I try to access YouTube: http://git.io/HG3nsQ
I have two questions:
1. Where can I find a list of all domain names, top 1000, top 100000?
2. Is it possible to conclusively determine censorship from headers only or do I have to load the whole page and compare HTML code with a sample? Bandwidth is very expensive here.
If you can find or make a list of websites you want to scan, you can script it. The biggest problem is doing it in a way that doesn't bring you to the attention of those doing the blocking.
1. Where can I find a list of all domain names, top 1000, top 100000?
Alexa's "top 1,000,000" list (~10.2 MB download) is at http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top-1m.csv.zip
2. Is it possible to conclusively determine censorship from headers only or do I have to load the whole page and compare HTML code with a sample? Bandwidth is very expensive here.
It depends on the method used to block you from visiting a website.
If DNS-based blocking is used, you can use very small DNS lookups to identify whether or not a website is blocked — all of the hostnames of blocked websites will probably resolve to the same IP address. (You can check this with "nslookup www.website.com" in Windows or "host www.website.com" on Linux, OS X, etc.) If this method works, it's probably the best way — DNS requests are less likely to be logged than HTTP requests, and DNS requests and responses are small.
If the blocking uses a transparent proxy instead of forged DNS records, you could use HTTP HEAD requests and match against the "Server" header in the reply:
Server: Apache/2.2.12 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.12 OpenSSL/0.9.7d mod_wsgi/3.2 mod_perl/1.29 PHP/4.4.1
I think this is a HUGE issue that should not be taken lightly. A guy scanning certain websites from Iran IS going to attract some attention no matter how benign his motives. It just won't be taken lightly. That attention can land you on lists you don't want to be on.
I'm not saying that I don't sympathize with his/her situation... I just think that certain actions can be viewed by people with a security mindset as hostile. Indeed it may only increase the number of sites being blocked. As well as, SEVERELY restricting his/her ability to travel without being arrested. And if you attract enough of the right attention... you may find that being arrested is the least of your worries.
And all of this doesn't even take into account what Iranian authorities may do from their end.
Advice like this, given on a public forum via easily identifiable pseudonyms, should be taken with a BIG grain of salt.
I would not recommend you to do a mass censorship scan from your own IP. It's a given that one or more of the top 100,000 sites triggers some kind of flag, apart from the fact that such activity itself may mark you as a person of interest.
Another thing to consider is that the government can likely link your YCombinator account to you because there are few YCombinator users in Iran, and from that subset, only a small number (maybe 1) matches your posting timestamps. I'm of course assuming that they keep such traffic logs. Syria's surveillance system did/does.
Something similar from China, but with a different hotlist.
If Github gets blocked we should get something on, If only blocked governments took this issue seriously and had these essential services covered, but I guess something as amazing as github takes real starters and not some lame government founded dev group.
Anyway, just saying, we blocked people should hang around more often.
Alexa http://www.alexa.com/topsites could provide you with data which is for the "top 500".
Facebook is censored in Iran, yet it is very popular. If you want to roughly estimate how many people circumvent censorship on a daily basis, just find out how many Iranians actively use Facebook. I guess it would be possible to find a number with Graph Search.
I, personally, was always very skeptical about the VPN services sold in the wild. Who knew what machine you were routing your data through was not controlled by the government themselves?
Why?
Google in particular has been one of the hardliners when it comes to restricting access to users with Iranian IPs. There are other big US companies (like Microsoft, for instance) that are much less active in banning IPs.
Thus, this seems less a case of the US trying to stop citizens of Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria from being educated, and more a case of the law not keeping up with the times.
It would be nice if the US Justice Department, or whoever is in charge of enforcing such sanctions, could give a clear waiver to education-related companies. I doubt that this will happen, though.
Yeah, in academia we've generally been told (at more than one university) that educational contacts with individual students and researchers at universities in these countries are ok, barring a bunch of exceptions. Exceptions include: there must be no financial relationship (we can't hire someone in Syria, send them equipment, etc.), no relationship with business entities in those countries (no assistance to spinoff commercial research, etc.), the contacts can't involve certain "sensitive" subjects that are subject to technological export controls, and the contacts can't involve "specially designated nationals" who are specifically blacklisted. Oh and you should probably forget it if your lab has any DARPA contracts and/or any staff with security clearance. A bit of a minefield, but I know people who have worked with individual students and professors on research without complaint from the university legal department (or the U.S. government). One common angle recently is that individual Syrian students will try to find a non-Syrian academic collaborator to publish a paper with, in order to build a CV that can get them into a graduate program abroad (and thereby getting a visa to get out of Syria).
If not, I guess we once again feel the pain of universities selling out their knowledge to commercial gatekeepers.
Guaranteed they're not "open" in any way.
The kids in these countries are already suffering under oppression/war/famine/ you name it.. things you won't want upon yourself, much less on your kids.I know a guy who plays a rpg with me who is from Syria, he is 14 year old, and his school is defunct. Just few months back I recommended him Coursera and EdX.. and now this..? This is shit!
Whats next? Edx, Khan Academy follow course!?
This is almost like that rule that was imposed back in 2003-2007 era.. when all rpg players with name Osama/Usama were banned, or forced to change their usernames. People who had their legimate natural name as Osama/Usama way before 9/11.
Talk about overkill!
Power projection at all levels of an ordinary human's life, from privacy to education.
I'm dumbfounded they are self proclaimed defenders of freedom. How can such cognitive dissonance run rampant within the US.
>Federal regulations prohibit U.S. businesses from offering services to countries subject to economic sanctions -- a list that includes Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan
On this message board, I can imagine that "U.S. businesses" includes a substantial number of us. You're all blocking those IPs, right?
The State Dept. set a dangerous precedent when it didn't immediately respond to edX and Coursera with an "Of course a web application filled with educational content doesn't constitute doing business with the enemy."
It leaves those of us without a legal team in a real pinch.
I doubt the Government of Cuba (the true target of the sanctions) would get material benefit from free courses for their populace. Certainly only the most indirect and limited military benefit.
Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, the treasury and state restrictions aren't so specific. IANAL though, particularly not an export-compliance lawyer.
Maybe if our government didn't threaten other nations with annihilation, this sort of shit wouldn't happen to us. Who knows.
We already lived in fear of that sort of thing once before:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/061399china-chips-revi...
yes, you can blame our government, even when US is putting the pressure on our people, not the government. it makes prefect sense.
"I've got it! Let's go after the studious ones by blocking their access to online education! Let's force them to overload their VPNs and proxy servers while chasing their aspirations to improve the social and political climate in their countries of origin! That'll show them."
Coursera, please investigate such avenues of bypassing this nonsense.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_in... [2] http://www.myce.com/news/Elby-announces-that-CloneCD-emigrat...
A few things to think about: -What if students try to access once from a blacklisted IP? Is their account now blacklisted? -Does Coursera need to comb its logs for past accesses from those countries? -What if a student mentioned their home country on the message board? -What if the person claims to be an American working in Sudan?
> Until now the interpretation of export control regulations as they relate to MOOCs has been unclear and Coursera has been operating under the interpretation that MOOCs would not be restricted. We recently received information that has led to the understanding that the services offered on Coursera are not in compliance with the law as it stands. Accordingly we have instituted a restriction...
I don't understand such a proactive respect of the law. Why don't they wait to get sued instead?
Laws are not always meant to be respected; they're meant to be broken and challenged in court.
The same law applies to selling weapons to terrorists, basically.
More generously, it could also be construed as a proactive manoeuvre to get the law changed by upholding it to the letter. They did say they were working with the State department.
So for example if your superiors, some official from some agency, or the President, asks you to torture suspects, or to monitor the private conversations of every citizen, or to keep so-called "National Security Letters" secret, and they say you have to do it "because it's the law", you can either hide behind authority or try and think for yourself.
It doesn't mean you have to break every law; when thinking for yourself you may arrive at the same conclusion as the legislator, that torturing suspects is indispensable to get the information you need, for example, and that, in your opinion, there is no better option.
But it does mean you lose the excuse of doing something morally objectionable just because someone told you to do it; from that moment on, you do it because you want to.
The reason you don't go around shooting people should be because you find killing human beings repellent, not because you fear getting caught.
The other countries on that list I'm more skeptical too especially when they are not fully peaceful as knowledge can be miss used.
I guess US brass disagrees and would rather put a nice "rogue" label on things and replace governments with worse governments over and over instead of supporting generic change that comes from the people.
Seriously, instead of starting projects like Google Proxy (to help people in these countries bypass their government blocking), it would be better to start a project that actually helps changing those ridiculous US laws.
Maybe offer some educational courses to those officials behind these laws.
I think a workaround doesn't necessarily preclude a "real" problem solution; rather, it could serve as a prototype.
By the way, unlike Coursera, they even offer free college education to other third-world countries. Something to think about.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reverse-policy-whi...
"Coursera has implemented an IP address block that prevents users in sanctioned countries from logging into a Coursera account. When attempting to sign in, these users will see a message explaining that we cannot allow them to access the site due to U.S. export control restrictions. In rare instances, students with IP addresses bordering on but not geopolitically within the bounds of these countries will be affected. Our engineers are working to mitigate this issue while pursuing a broader solution to the restrictions."
Translation, the USA gov is acting kinda stupid, we can't help it. Use a proxy and you're fine.
NOTE: A link to TOR would be nice :-)
I wonder what is the process how those restriction are being applied to the company and what are the consequences if you not follow this (law)?
edX is, however, working on opening its doors to anyone who wants to learn:
> Tena Herlihy, edX’s general counsel, said the company has since last May worked with the U.S. State Department and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and has so far applied for and received company-specific licenses for its MOOCs to enroll students in Cuba and Iran (a third license, for Sudan, is still in the works).
source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/28/state-dept-blo...
Open2Study - Australian universities alliance MOOC platform.
Futurelearn - UK universities alliance MOOC platform.
Iversity - European coursers.
Content is still limited as these platforms are younger, but they are getting more courses and polishing their platforms.
This university wasn't based in the US, but was threatened with sanctions: US based companies and institutions would have been banned from doing business with this Europe based university if they didn't comply. The irony is that US based universities are not restricted in this manner.
Just a nitpick. Maybe in the other three countries this is true, but Cuba is pretty well off in those respects. Especially education wise.
Not at war right now, and not suffering famine, but also right now there isn't war or famine in Iran.
The sanctions exist for two reasons: to directly prevent "enemy" nations from gaining weapons (or economic infrastructure) to use for bad purposes, and to put pressure on the foreign government (directly on members of the government, and indirectly through the population) to provoke change.
Sanctions which are directly targeted against weapons are pretty obvious -- don't sell chemical weapons to middle-eastern dictators with a history of gassing parts of their own population (oops, Iraq and Libya...).
Sanctions which are targeted to dual use technology, e.g. not selling advanced routing and firewall equipment to countries which are engaged in repression and murder of their own populace are more of a grey area (oops, Syria and I believe Libya...); selling to the government directly is generally out, but it's often ok to civilian businesses as long as you're able to document that it's not going to end up in the hands of the government.
General "punishment" economic sanctions are a lot more rare, and even then they generally try to weight them so the leadership is disproportionately affected (I believe the ruling cadre's favorite brands of cognac, etc. are embargoed to North Korea, which wouldn't affect normal people; regular food is not restricted.)
Arguably the fall of the USSR would have been an ideal time to end this, even with Cuba remaining communist. Certainly a healthy Castro stepping down would have been a major favor in the 1989-1992 period toward this. I wonder if there was any effort at the time.
Hell, I have trouble paying for stuff in the EU with a US card...
Anyway, VPN providers are NOT your friend for privacy and escaping surveillance/censorship. They actually cooperate with the authorities!
Hidemyass and Astrill used to openly state they will provide any and all details of your identity and activities if the authorities request it!
There's no need for honeypots when all these companies give up your identity with a single call from the police.
They also discriminate against automated tools and robots for whatever reason, as if paying a human to do the work is better :-)
The best info that politicians can get on this sort of thing comes from polling, and people only poll on electoral issues. If you want specific policy change you need to help bring it to the attention of elected officials and electoral candidates.
It isn't, of course. But that's not the topic on hand.
this is actually something that we should contact our elected officials on
what has to happen here? someone at the State Department has to sign off on it?
that sounds like the sort of thing the right congressman or senator making a phone call could make happen
that also sounds like the sort of thing that many congressmen and senators would enjoy bragging about accomplishing
In Iran with the censorship, could the same thing be happening? Someone created it, the government sees some uses for it, an organization was tasked with enforcing it but since there are a lot of ways to circumvent it and everybody knows how, that might show this organization does not actively care enough to update it's filter. That is, it's there because someone someday had the stupid idea of creating a big firewall, but there is less and less support to actually make it real and effective?
Would I be right in assuming this much?
When internet became popular, the government monopoly got threatened. Since then they did everything in their power to restrict the use of internet. First they passed regulations that forced private ISPs to buy their bandwidth through a government organization and deployed a censorship software (rumored to be Chinese) on all of it, so blocking is national not per ISP. The they passed a law restricting home users to 128 kbps (yes, kilobits per second not even kilobytes). Then they criminalized providing anti-censorship solutions (but not using them, although it is debated). In some occasions (like after 2009 election), they make the internet so slow it is virtually impossible to use. HTTPS traffic is always slower than HTTP and occasionally completely blocked.
It is all about maintaining power to control the narrative. As I said, it hasn't worked as well as they have expected. Now they are building something called National Internet. They say they don't plan to block access to the internet but I am not so hopeful.
It has been a decade-long battle between government and freedom of information and speech. Most people who are affected aren't dissidents, but simply people who want to update their Facebook status.
It is sad because we are a fairly developed country. There is no war or famine, our healthcare system is good, we have powerful industries, good universities, big cities with good public transportation and interstate highways, etc.
The problem is that over the years since the Islamic Revolution our nation has become more liberal in general while the government remains rigidly conservative. It will be a long answer to describe where we are and how we got here, but I think this short comment is enough to answer your question.
Pretty sure most coursera vids and materials are ripped and avail via torrent too. If not could wholesale rip the site and mirror it free on yandex cloud. Russia laughs at US petty sanctions
Probably the best way would be to build a solid network of non-english speaking Universities and then, once the kinks are worked out, have them also publish their english-language courses.
There are quite a bunch of Universities out there that already publish lectures, and I'd imagine that with time there will be more and more. A particular example of quality is TIMMS[1], which has been around almost as long as MIT open courseware.
Interesting, wasn't the US an ally of Iraq in the past, and completely closed their eyes on the gassing of Iranian populations during the Iraq-Iran war, as well as the gassing of Kurds living in Iraq ? Should the US sanction themselves? :)
They do, you can't export from the US to the US, can you? ;)
Remeber this? http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870411730... >>Google Defies China on Web. Search Giant Stops Censoring Its Results
Did you know the excuse "I was just following orders" is no longer a valid defense 100% of the time? That means you need to consider sometimes not following rules/orders if it seems unethical.
Also, if you're protesting something you believe is unethical there can be situations[1] that breaking the law on purpose brings about progress. I think Google alm
1. http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/11/jackson-ms-sit-in.jpg
____
P.S. I don't understand how anyone doesn't already know this. The law is not absolute. You don't just follow it unquestionably & unthinkingly. There are countless examples of people breaking laws that are unethical to bring about progress in a society. I suspect you're just trolling.
As quoted from parent.
So if I ask the OP to explain, that is trolling? What do you define as discussion?
And my question still remains, who decides what is good or bad?
I don't think it is probable that Oracle, Xilinx or Google change their policies. Yet it is in the developer's power to decide where to host a project.
I like to ask everyone who has a project hosted on Google Code or is thinking about using it for future projects to use another service if possible.
I think you were talking about Coursera's "specialisations," which are essentially a grouping of "signature track" courses with a project or exam at the end. All of the courses can be taken for free if you don't care about the special certificates, but the project is just for paying customers.
Udacity is running some "pay only" courses with Georgia Tech for its online masters program, too. Not sure about their other offerings, or about edX.
[Edit: Can't reply to message below so I'll clarify here - my intent was that instead of arguing with politicians, they could consider options that wouldn't even involve politicians. Coursera could close their US business and move to a country that does not have the same restrictions. Doing so may also help persuade US politicians that their policies are having the reverse impact of what they want.]
You just don't go port scanning and probing willy nilly in the US. That's DOUBLY true if you are port scanning and probing sites that the US government has blocked... AND you are doing it from inside Iran.
You're just BEGGING for Homeland Security to take a closer look at you. It's very foolish.
You may know your Government... but I know mine. I can tell you that an Iranian probing sites whose access from Iran is blocked by the American government for security reasons... that's not bright. Authorities here will not take kindly to it.
گر حکم شود که مست گیرند
در شهر هر آنکه هست گیرند
Sorry, I couldn't help citing this particular piece of Persian poetry. Trust me, it's relevant.
What I don't know is how you inferred I did think in that way from my comment.
That is, unless you're Cuban. In that case you can go to the US and they'll welcome you to Miami with a red carpet and fool you with what freedom and cars and big houses and laptops you'll be able to have.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Now, not every issue has to be everyone's fight, and for some things for some people, maybe skirting the issue is the best bet. We all owe a debt of gratitude to those who stand and fight, though.
http://www.governo.it/Notizie/Presidenza/dettaglio.asp?d=690...
We're not really satisfied with the new law, but it is a small step in the right direction, and we continue to work to improve things:
It's kind of a minor issue, and low hanging fruit, but still, I'm proud of it.
You are right on about writing letters. Go ahead and do it, but know that it's not enough.
Look at the civil rights movement in the US. I'm glad they didn't just decide that, having written a letter or two, and not having seen any change, that it was impossible and to give up.
EDIT: ok, so you were apparently right. The specialization courses stay free, but it's not so obvious when you are looking at them from the specialization page.
Anyway, I'll try to be stupid and mean next time so there is no ambiguity.
Edit: Never mind, you already answered it in another comment.
Do you understand what this picture is? http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/11/jackson-ms-sit-in.jpg
Do you understand the good that comes from Google disabling censorship in China even though it was not lawful under Chinese law to do so?
I'm not going to get into some silly pedantic debate about who gets to decide right & wrong. If you don't undestand those 2 examples and what the OP is saying, then ....good luck to you.
1. Not always means that you have to make a decision, the question is on what principle do you decide to challenge a law in court, and why that principle will be superior than somebody else principles.
2. I did not discuss this with you at all, I am asking bambax, so if you want to jump into a discussion, and suddenly decides to throw a tantrum, good luck to you.
3. Google censorship or radgeek does not add to this discussion, all I want to know is what makes bambax decide when to challenge the law and on what principle.
But you're welcome to challenge both in the courts of justice and public opinion.
