Well… I was afraid of this happening and I got shut out by my host. But finally I’m back up and running after ten days. I received the pink slip from Bluehost on February 21st and was among the many that went down when they decided to pull the plug on sites owned by people from sanctioned countries.
I have no qualm with Bluehost. I can’t argue with them for upholding the law as I have told them on several occasions. But I think given the circumstances they could have been a little more considerate and given us time before actually suspending the sites and notifying us afterward. A notice about adding section 13 would have been nice. Or maybe they could have been less stingy about giving information related to the laws in this case. It would have buffered the shock a little. But it was okay in the end. Fifteen days was good enough I guess.
“Section 13. PROHIBITED PERSONS (COUNTRIES, ENTITIES, AND INDIVIDUALS)
01. Sanctioned Countries. The government of the United States of America, through various of its offices and agencies, including but not limited to, through one or more Executive Orders of the President of the United States, through rules and regulations of the United States Department of State, Department of the Treasury, and Department of Commerce, has determined that, with respect to all or certain commercial activities that would otherwise occur between i) the United States, its citizens or residents on the one hand and ii) the governments, citizens, or residents of certain other countries (“Sanctioned Countries”) on the other hand, said commercial activities are to be prohibited, embargoed, sanctioned, banned, and/or otherwise excluded.”
The news got some coverage as well. Some of the early ones came from 1fathi, Kamangir and Mydailyclarity – check this one too.
As I was looking for a new host, this time communicating clearly with several candidates about what kind of monster I am and from what depths I connect from, I wanted to know what was going on. What surprised me at first was section 13 of their terms of service that was suddenly thrown at my face. When I signed up with Bluehost, which was only four or five months ago, this section didn’t exist. In fact I read through a lot of terms of service documents from US hosting providers at the time just for such a section (I had been bitten by this sanction business before) and must have found none on Bluehost’s. Maybe I’m mistaken, I’m human, but they weren’t bothered with the fact that I was signing up from an IP in Iran’s address space either. After getting suspended I asked three different departments at Bluehost to tell me when section 13 was added to the terms, but each time they sidestepped the question. I know Bluehost has the right to change its terms, but I just wanted a sanity check. Unfortunately the Internet Archives go up to April 1, 2008 for Bluehost, so no luck there either. But their terms were completely different and not on the home page footer like they are now.
Iran is definitely one of the “Sanctioned Countries”. We’ve known this for ages. But going with the fact that Bluehost just started enforcing the law, and on the assumption that section 13 was recently added to the terms of service, I thought of looking into the Executive Orders, just to know to whom I should direct my late night profanities: Bush, or Obama. I also saw someone’s post on Friendfeed about Bluehost saying “A United States Executive Order was recently activated by our former President Bush restricting the ability to conduct business with certain countries around the world.”
So…Obama was cleared quickly, but Bush has taken me a lot longer. I’m no law man though and maybe I’m missing something. I looked at some more detailed sources, here and here, and perused the midnight regulations too. Unfortunately it seems like he will be acquitted as well. Maybe these repositories are not up-to-date? Getting tired of sifting through this stuff, I asked Bluehost to tell me what documents they are referring to in section 13. Sidestepped again. A few days ago I wrote to their CEO, Matt Heaton, to see if he would provide any help – maybe tell me directly or nudge an employee or a department. I am still waiting for his response.
Bluehost kept reiterating the law. Once, they explained that their only basis for suspending accounts was the IP address the account holder had signed up from. This seemed very silly and inadequate. Is it okay to sign up through a third party or a proxy server, but then report news from Iran? Why is site administration not a basis for suspension also? Should I use a proxy server for that too? It doesn’t seem like this is exactly adhering to the law.
By reading through some of the related documents, it seems to me there are provisions for businesses to get around these laws in certain cases. Section 560.538 of the transactions regulations for Iran might be one of them (this is the whole document if you’re interested). But these cases might be difficult to prove. I also read somewhere that they would need to obtain permits on a case by case basis. Given the hassles, it is easier to get rid of the many and not bother with protecting the few. But I wonder how much this has cost Bluehost and how many accounts they lost. It must have made business sense.
Anyway, I’m glad for being up and running again. Good luck to all the digital nomads out there. If you have more information, or are better at reading law language, drop a line. Sorry for the long post.
Just to make it a little longer, I’ve been watching Bluehost on Alexa and found some of the statistics amusing. Please click on them to actually see something.
Tags: censorship, hosting, sanctions