[OSGeoJapan-discuss] U.S. Trade Embargo and OSGeo

["Toru Mori (森亮)"]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you very much for the information.

Since our local chapter is not regal entity and not registered affiliate of OSGeo Foundation, I think Japan chapter is "independent" entity and should not be restricted by the U.S. low.

Anyway, we will be careful of it and see what happens.

Mori

On 2010/02/05, at 15:57, Jeff McKenna wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> Last night at the OSGeo Board meeting an interesting topic was discussed: very recently (25 January?) the U.S. Obama administration has put pressure on Sourceforge.net to enforce their trade embargo on its users[1] - meaning users in Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Iran are no longer able to download files from Sourceforge (their IPs are now blocked).  Sourceforge has stated[2] that it is registered in the U.S. and therefore has no choice but to follow U.S. laws[2], even though they disagree with it.
> 
> OSGeo is also registered in the U.S. so there a lot of concern about this issue.  OSGeo does have to follow U.S. export restrictions, and its statement is visible here[3]
> 
> Arnulf Christl (OSGeo President) believes that the embargo can only be applied to 'collaborative work' - and since all OSGeo projects are collaborative, this new enforcement should not apply to OSGeo users. However the OSGeo Board will now look into this (we may have to modify the 'US_Export_Restrictions' wiki page to clarify how the embargo does not affect our works).
> 
> I thought the Japan community should know about this recent issue.
> 
> [1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=5698
> [2] http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of-site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/
> [3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/US_Export_Restrictions
> 
> -jeff
> 
> 
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Toru Mori