>Prominent examples disagree with you. Gmail for example. They even allow accounts! Now maybe Google wants to argue that Gmail qualifies for the personal communication tools exception. But wait, GitHub doesn't block Iranian IPs either! They allow free accounts as well! Call in the feds!
Both Google and Github block accounts by Iranian IPs, and this is easily verifiable if you know anyone who lives in Iran and can access a website - attempting to use Github functionality for anything other than viewing repositories right now is currently blocked, and enterprise accounts are entirely blocked.
Personal Gmail accounts are the exception to Google services available in Iran, and some functionality is also blocked by IP - if you live in Iran currently you might know that almost all other Google services and enterprise accounts are outright blocked by IP too:
Your own link from the Github docs has this to say:
> GitHub is committed to continuing to offer free public repository services to developers with individual and organizational accounts in U.S.-sanctioned regions. This includes limited access to free services, such as public repositories for open source projects (and associated public Pages), public gists, and allotted free Action minutes, for personal communications only, and not for commercial purposes.
They do not ban Iranian IPs from accessing their site on a network level, and they do allow Iranians to have accounts to work on open source projects. These are both things that Gitlab is accused of doing here. This leaves us with a couple of options:
1. Github is not in compliance.
2. Gitlab, not allowing any Iranian to access their accounts, and blocking IPs, is over-complying.
3. It is not clear what is required to be in compliance, and Americans think that having to fear prison time in the face of such uncertainty is normal.
>Personal Gmail accounts are the exception to Google services available in Iran, and some functionality is also blocked by IP - if you live in Iran currently you might know that almost all other Google services and enterprise accounts are outright blocked by IP too:
Google services in Iran are not blocked by Google or the U.S., they are blocked by Iran. It's the Iranian regime that seeks to block the use of things like Google's search engine, not the U.S.
Iran is blocking some things (though not search), but here we are talking about the opposite, and Google is indeed blocking a huge amount of their stuff, say, for example, the entirety of developer.google.com.
Both Google and Github block accounts by Iranian IPs, and this is easily verifiable if you know anyone who lives in Iran and can access a website - attempting to use Github functionality for anything other than viewing repositories right now is currently blocked, and enterprise accounts are entirely blocked.
Personal Gmail accounts are the exception to Google services available in Iran, and some functionality is also blocked by IP - if you live in Iran currently you might know that almost all other Google services and enterprise accounts are outright blocked by IP too:
https://support.google.com/a/thread/4870330?hl=en
https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-...
Here is a non-comprehensive list of sites that block Iranian IPs, most outright disallowing access to websites:
https://gist.github.com/alibo/dfd7c258bcc44a0e8c9f7c5bfd3bd2...
Please do not pay attention to this fellow, he is spreading legal misinformation that is dangerous.