website: not available to Iranians

[semekh]

Unfortunately golang.org is not available to Iranian users. Trying to access any resources on the domain will result in a GCE 403 page. Is this behaviour intentional?

[semekh]

Please note that this includes all packages hosted on golang.org as well as the website itself.

[jbuberel]

@semekh Thank you for the report. This is a known issue related to the hosting configuration of the *.golang.org websites. We are working on a solution. I will update this issue when updated information is available.

[jbuberel]

@semekh We're sorry, but golang.org content isn't available in your country at this time due to cryptography libraries contained in the standard library.

[semekh]

@jbuberel Thanks for the followup, but how does that mean golang.org should not be available in my country? AFAIK that could only mean go itself, due to including standard librariy, shouldn't be downloadable from Iran. That doesn't have anything to do with the docs, and the packages hosted on golang.org, right?

I'm aware of the fact that it's easier to block the whole website just to play it safe, but it'd be great if there was a way to keep Go's ecosystem a "free" (as in freedom) one, without violating the law. Thus, I'd like to ask if it would be possible to have Google's Legal Team take a closer look at this.

[jbuberel]

@semekh This is due to legal restrictions outside the control of Google. For additional details, see https://epic.org/crypto/export_controls/itar.html

[remohammadi]

@jbuberel Based on this old advisory I think golang isn't restricted by EAR from publishing its binaries, and even its pure cryptography libraries, to the public.