Modifying the U.S. sanctions on Iran
Certain sanctions or interpretations of the sanctions have seriously damaged the ability of Iranians to access the Internet and need to be modified.
1) Software download is blocked to IPs from Iran: Many of major companies such as Google and Microsoft block downloads to people in Iran in fear of sanctions. For example, Google Talk or Google Chrome, one of the safest web browsers, is not available for download to Iranian users. All mass-market software that is useful for publishing, communications, and education should be exempted from the sanctions.
2) Online advertising is not allowed for Persian websites: Many companies such as Google or Facebook do not include Persian (Farsi) as a supported language for online advertising websites or allow targeting users with such a language. This is problematic when activists want to use such advertising tools to reach out to Iranians in Iran. It also prevents many of the human rights activist websites from making small amounts of money on advertising that can help them to pay for their server costs.
3) Iranians are not allowed to pay for domain purchase and related issues. In result, Iranian government-sponsored hackers stole many of the domains belonging to Iranian human rights activists because such activists have difficulties registering such domains under their names and have to do this through proxies. But, there is no way to verify their location or identity when…
