Monday, 8 March 2010
According to a New York Times article yesterday, the Obama administration will permit technology companies to export online services like instant messaging, chat and photo sharing to Iran, Cuba and Sudan. These countries are considered closed because of their repression of their populations. And according to Treasury Department TG-577 “to ensure that individuals in these countries can exercise their universal right to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible.”
This new general license will allow exports from the United States and US persons to persons in Iran and Sudan of software that allows communications through the internet in those countries. The goal is to allow SMS, Social Networking, email, web browsing have a greater ablity in these countries to export infromation from the grass roots level. Companies Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and others will benefit from the ability to export more of their services.
The influence of Twitter during the days after the June elections in Iran help to push this forward as a response. North Korea and Syria are not affected by today’s decision because the sections applied to them do rule out Internet Exports.
