Hi Liberationtechers,
I just realized Coursera has recently joined the censor club by blocking
access to Iranian users[1].
Meanwhile I quote the very first line of their About page[2]:
"We believe in connecting people to a great education so that anyone
around the world can learn without limits.
http://blog.coursera.org/post/74891215298/update-on-course-accessibility-for-students-in-cuba
-Original Message-
From: Nima Fatemi
Sender: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:22:33
To:
Reply-To: liberationtech
Subject: [liberationtech] Coursera to join censor cl
5298/update-on-course-accessibility-for-students-in-cuba
> -Original Message-
> From: Nima Fatemi
> Sender: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu
> Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:22:33
> To:
> Reply-To: liberationtech
> Subject: [liberationtech] Coursera
wasa bee
> *Date: *Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:04:40 +
> *To: *; liberationtech<
> liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu>
> *Subject: *Re: [liberationtech] Coursera to join censor club by blocking
> Iran IP space
>
> Iranian users are very aware of proxies to access internet due to
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 12:17:00PM +, Amin Sabeti wrote:
> The main point is Coursera has done something that it's not legitimate.
They were (apparently) forced to do this. It's not like Coursera
staff woke up one day and suddenly decided to block those countries
because they had nothing bett
My hypothesis has been that Coursera, in the midst of raising venture
capital funds, had a broad compliance risk evaluation and this was raised
by outside counsel. Based on their blogpost, I suspect they
took voluntary action and then reached out to State (or vice versa), who
likely informed them o
For what it is worth, I have an appreciation for the manner that Coursera
proceeded with this, being that they have been open about the process that
led to the restriction, that they are apparently reaching out to bloggers,
and since they seem to be pursuing a legal remedy. That is far better than
We ran a piece on this on Tuesday -- not sure if Global Voices' post
had any impact here, but some hours afterword, they removed the block
for Syria, under OFAC's exception for "support of nongovernmental
organizations’ activities in Syria, particularly as they pertain to
increasing access to e
