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Comment by Clewza313 | Hacker News Reader

Nice story, but GitHub is prohibited by the US OFAC sanctions regime from offering service to North Korea:

https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-and-tra...

Intentional violations of these sanctions can be punished with prison time.

There's currently one open source software dev / researcher in the US who's facing prison time after talking about open source software at a conference in North Korea. His name is Virgil Griffith. The speech he gave was nothing more than information that was already public.

He's also known for the WikiScanner.

More details here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/01/11/internet-...

His personal home page http://virgil.gr/

I mean I don't think he should be thrown in jail for that, but you can't just go do that and not expect to get in trouble. Sanction violations are something the feds take extremely seriously. It's one of the few ways to actually get the corporate death penalty if you're a company.

> Sanction violations are something the feds take extremely seriously.

This is just FUD.

While it's true, the level you would have to be at to have to worry about sanctions puts you into "too big to fail" territory.

The point of the above posts though is that Virgil Griffith is probably going to prison because he wasn't paying attention to sanctions though? Or, the case of Meng Wanzhou who is a Chinese citizen who avoided connecting flights through the US and was arrested in Canada anyway for violating trade sanctions with Iran?

That's a problem and likely isn't going to go away unless something big happens with the political system, like maybe a third party taking over.

Not surprising knowing Meng Wanzhou is daughter of a Huawei founder.

I think these provisions came after the patch was pushed to Github back in 2016.

I remember that when the Github rules related to US sanctions were first posted there was a lot of backlash here on HN from Iranian developers and it must have been 2017~2018.

Doesn't mean it wasn't illegal before but at least Github didn't seem to be enforcing it.

Also the class was likely at PUST (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_University_of_Scienc...) which is operated with US funds and likely had clearance to teach that sort of material.

This is why open source projects should not be on GitHub and not in the US.

The same applies to foundations, though some of them seem to have adopted similar tactics as the North Korean party anyway.

If you deal in US dollars, you're subject to US sanctions laws. Hint: if you ever convert between currencies, unless you're EXTREMELY careful, you're actually going X -> USD -> Y.

It took the EU multiple years to setup a facility so they could provide euros to Iran without falling afoul of US sanctions during the Trump admin.

Indeed - for any open-source project to accept contributions from North Korea risks opening up a minefield of problems.

Why's that?

Because of trade restrictions and embargos.

Why would trade restrictions or sanctions have any effect on people in those countries donating code to an open source project? No trade is taking place.

Chinese Gitee have mirrors of most (all?) of the open source projects on Github.

I would almost be more worried as a scientist to give a lecture in NK, I mean do you not need export control approval for that (although maybe he got the approval)

You do. Virgil Griffith is facing criminal charges for doing just that.

Aren't there additional issues with that like if you pay for a flight or hotel or restaurant, you're effectively "supporting the regime" with your dollars, and therefore it's illegal under sanctions too?

This was the case in Cuba. You could visit if you sailed yourself there and didn't spend any money, but as soon as you engaged in any commerce, you were violating sanctions. I believe the rules have been relaxed.

>GitHub is prohibited by the US OFAC sanctions regime from offering service to North Korea

Surely Github would have blocked the range of north korean IP addresses if it was illegal?

How would they put people from NK into prison?

Sanction violations are a crime for the people from the US involved.

Is telling NK people to use GitHub already a crime?

Wouldn’t it be the duty of the platform in this situation?

In that scenario, at least there would be some US citizens to put into prison.

I want everybody to stop, shake themselves, and realize how “absolutely insane” this situation is. True or not, we’re talking about prison time for helping people write open source code.

This isn’t normal, but everyone’s talking about it like it’s normal.

Anyway! Carry on. :)

That may well be true but consider going to the German's and teaching them about Radar in the lead up to the war - that's the logic at least.

When did the opensource begin to be considered a war tech?

This is the job of state propaganda: to look abnormal things look normal.

This is one of the reasons I wish there was more bigger European companies. Then we wouldn't need to deal with the bullshit US sanctions and cancel culture.

I'm not sure I've heard sanctions on enemy states described as "cancel culture" before, nor am I sure it applies

These 'enemies' are fellow humans too right?

I didn't say I agreed with them, just "cancel culture" is a bit of a trivialization

Those are not the same. I'm referring to two problematic things with US companies: in one hand sanctions, in the other political censorship based on "woke" biais. Some French politicians got/are being canceled by Twitter and Facebook for their political opinions. This is a big problem for democracy.

If your “political opinions” violate a platform’s terms of service, what do you expect should happen?

S/he is expexting exactly that to happen and thus is hoping for more European players so its not all US-values that are being pushed, i.e. glorification of violence and prudish shaming/banning of such normal things as breastfeeding.

I hate to say it: the same argument was made by the communist party. It is sad that people never learn from history. It does not matter who does it. It matters because it becomes widespread and it becomes the new normality and good luck fighting normality. In communism ( or nazism) the party was not always the coercive power. Sometimes your boss, your wife or your neighbour take this role.

> This is one of the reasons I wish there was more bigger European companies. Then we wouldn't need to deal with the bullshit US sanctions and cancel culture.

I'm afraid you'd simply get wound up in their own national policy and need to peep through keyholes.

Pretty wild on github to see national policy kinks worm their way through the system. What happens if it's hosted in a neutral country?

I wonder if moving HQ to Switzerland would have helped.

GitHub is owned by Microsoft which is a US company

Crypto AG. So no.

Neither political sanctions nor 'cancel culture' are unique to the US.

Large European and Swiss companies absolutely have to deal with US sanctions. Pretty much any large international company needs to in some way.

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