(iii) the exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of any goods, services, or technology to the Crimea region of Ukraine;

See: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/D...

If it doesn't extend to Russia, then it's easy to conclude the sanctions are irrational. Crimeans are, for the most part, powerless to the actions of Moscow. At least that's what I feel. Only the submitter truly knows the support or lack thereof of the populace towards the actions to which the international community is responding.

If there is support for Moscow, then s/he should write to Putin and demand that something be done to placate Obama and reverse the situation. If there is no support, s/he should write to Obama and ask how s/he can help action against Moscow. Anything else is simply being ignorant to the fact that the situation is really war by any other means, irrespective of how life may seem to go on normally wherever s/he may be living.

It's not as good for the consumers, but it has made it a very good time to be an entrepreneur in Iran. I wonder if it was not for all the sanctions and censorship, would we have what we have now.

But as I said it on HN elsewhere[1], please stop using App Engine for your projects. Simplenote, Udacity, etc. have been inaccessible to Iranians not because they chose to, but because they use Google as their hosting platform.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142783

    the Internet and technology should be above politics.

Yes, youtube and github were blocked for some hours, maybe 1 day, because of strange decisions of some strange people. But it was fixed. Now, I am blocked from another side of the world, and it seems - for a long time. I don't know what will happen tomorrow - everything is possible, but my message was not about this. It's about tools, that are looks like an open, or free - but at any moment they can become inaccessible.

The Android documentation has always been a point of consternation for me. As far as I'm aware, it is not open source. It might be licensed as such, but I haven't been able to find a repo to clone that has all of the docs in it, or more importantly a place to submit back patches. You an open issues against the docs on AOSP, but it would be nice if they would just take gerritt changes for it. That would help everyone, and then in your case you could just clone it and have a local copy.

Majority of people do not want any sanctions, no matter what side they are on. It's the government and politicians that want it, not the people.

But antibiotics are better than most other options. That's why we use them.

> Majority of people do not want any sanctions, no matter what side they are on. It's the government and politicians that want it, not the people.

The people do not want war. Sanctions are a way of bringing pressure without threats of violence.

Also preventing someone from accessing a public information or from doing business is already a form of violence :( I wouldn't call it a form of 'pressure'.

I'd suggest you direct that towards Russia then. You can't have it both ways. You can't vote to join Russia, and then complain that you can't use your US services. As common as it may be to think here, the internet and internet services are products. America doesn't ever have to let you use its products. The idea that you are now entitled to them because you've ever had them is a fallacy, and your anger is misplaced because of it.

I personally watch http://liveuamap.com/ every day. I think it's scary that a person could be trapped in their home by an invader. But it's Russia doing that, not America.

I don't think many people would agree with that statement.

Instead, completely innocent people on Crimea are banned from doing any business with Europe. I don't think Russian politicians care - they live from taxes!

I think the question (I am not a lawyer) revolves around exporting of goods/technologies. It feels wrong to me to consider a website `resident` anywhere and thus subject to export embargos. I suppose that code lives on US servers, though? Hmm.

When I worked in internet infrastructure, we actively monitored and blocked sanctioned countries from using the service. I don't think a lot of companies do, e.g. AFAIK Amazon for AWS is supposed to. (I may be wrong and I'd love if someone with more knowledge would share.)

I'm happy that at least Tor works for you. I might use a router to route all traffic through tor, pay for a VPN service or setup my own OpenVPN server.

From what I understand you can access websites like Digital Ocean or Linode or any other US corporation and I also assume you can purchase services online with CC from crimean/russian banks.

I guess I'm asking, what makes them a "US" company vs. a US/HK/GB Company?

And on the https://code.google.com/ I see "Project Hosting on Google Code provides a free collaborative development environment for open source projects.".

I'm sorry you're in a bad situation, but the reality is that technologies grant power, and some nations don't want their citizens empowered, while other nations don't want their power through technology used by enemy nations against them. In order to have some rule that governments can't do that, you would require a higher, metagovernment, which would then have the same sort of power and require the same oversight, requiring and even higher metagovernment, and so on. Hence why government is always a scam...it promises safety and justice the way the mob does, through violence and threats.

I think that it probably is about a technology company acting because of politics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html