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According to their blog post, "If we didn't comply, they stated they had the right to block our website (and possibly all data transmission) between us and anyo

by clucas 5y ago

According to their blog post, "If we didn't comply, they stated they had the right to block our website (and possibly all data transmission) between us and anyone within Russian borders." They were were going to be blocked anyway. So the two options were "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government considers us law-breakers," or "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government does not consider us law-breakers." Even if there are no direct consequences that the Russian government can enforce on Fastmail, I can't imagine why they would want to choose option 1. Why do you think they should? What good would it do for anyone?

gpm 5y ago
They might also be aiming to preserve their ability to send mail to russian mail servers, and to serve existing russian users, and to let new russian users sign up by signing up with a IP address outside of russia. I.e. a choice between "russia is ineffectively blocked by us" vs "russia is effectively blocked by the russian government".
- teknopaul 5y ago
  yeah remember the block is because they don't have enough Russian customers to make complying with local data laws worth the cost/effort. They were not banned the were asked to obey the law and they weighed up pros and cons. Normal. Plenty of US sites refuse to let eu citizens view thier content because they don't want to comply with GDPR (which I consider a reasonable set of laws that protect me) Personally I use Yandex for email so the NSA can't get their hands on it and I don't have to continually fight changes in terms and conditions that want to sync my advertising id with Google or Facebook. Fastmail obeying local laws is the correct thing to do. There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > There is no malice in the law as it is written Please read what you have wrote now. Law say go spy after A and B, ESPIONAGE
  - ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
    > There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government. That is absolutely not the reason for this regulation existing.

by clucas 5y ago

gpm 5y ago

They might also be aiming to preserve their ability to send mail to russian mail servers, and to serve existing russian users, and to let new russian users sign up by signing up with a IP address outside of russia. I.e. a choice between "russia is ineffectively blocked by us" vs "russia is effectively blocked by the russian government".

teknopaul 5y ago
yeah remember the block is because they don't have enough Russian customers to make complying with local data laws worth the cost/effort. They were not banned the were asked to obey the law and they weighed up pros and cons. Normal. Plenty of US sites refuse to let eu citizens view thier content because they don't want to comply with GDPR (which I consider a reasonable set of laws that protect me) Personally I use Yandex for email so the NSA can't get their hands on it and I don't have to continually fight changes in terms and conditions that want to sync my advertising id with Google or Facebook. Fastmail obeying local laws is the correct thing to do. There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > There is no malice in the law as it is written Please read what you have wrote now. Law say go spy after A and B, ESPIONAGE
- ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
  > There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government. That is absolutely not the reason for this regulation existing.