Update on hoder's status

October 22, 2009 4:38 PM

There is a bit of news about the status of MeFi's own hoder, the activist blogger jailed by Iranian authorities almost a year ago.

From BoingBoing:

"Fershteh Ghazi (@iranbaan) tweets that Hamed Derakhshan, brother of jailed Iranian blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan, just said on @bbcpersian his brother has been held in solitary confinement for 10 months. Hoder was first arrested on November 1, 2008.

"Yesterday, Hoder's father wrote a letter to Iran's judiciary to appeal for his son's release. That letter was published on the website of Salaam, a reformist newspaper. (both items via Cyrus Farivar). "

Previously.

My apologies for the slim post; I thought folks might appreciate an update.

posted by MonkeyToes to MetaFilter-Related at 4:38 PM (52 comments total)

Ten months of solitary confinement? That's insane.

And all there is to do is quietly wait for reform to come.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:46 PM on October 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

This is really unfortunate. Here's hoping there's better news soon.
posted by koeselitz at 5:03 PM on October 22, 2009

Wow, thanks for this update. I've been wondering about him. Is there anything we can do?
posted by iamkimiam at 5:03 PM on October 22, 2009

So is this how the Canadian government looks after most of its citizens?
posted by crapmatic at 6:37 PM on October 22, 2009 [3 favorites]

I think if you read the previous thread you'll see most of the Canadians weren't happy about this, and were pessimistic of how their MPs would deal with it.

But there was also some question as to exactly hoder was doing. Not saying he deserves this, but it's not like he was just going about his daily business.

Also, if this happened to an American I don't see it being handled all that differnetly.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:55 PM on October 22, 2009

Is there anything we can do?

Pressure on elected representatives to make the case a priority.

cjorgensen: it's not like he was just going about his daily business.

Um, really? I know he'd angered some other Iranian bloggers with a few statements they felt were too conservative, and didn't he visit Israel and speak positively of the possibilities for peace as well? Wasn't the main speculation about his arrest related to that visit? If there's anything else that you know about, I'd love to hear it, but stating "it's not like he was just going about his daily business" to hint that there was...what, exactly? What do you mean by that? I'm honestly curious what information you have that leads you to say that.
posted by mediareport at 7:18 PM on October 22, 2009 [4 favorites]

So is this how the Canadian government looks after most of its citizens?

No, this is how the assholes we currently have in government look after most of their citizens.

There are a lot of right-wing assholes in Canada, as evidenced in the comments sections of newspapers like National Post and CTV, and I am terrified that they may become the dominant voice in Canadian politics, simply because they are — like most loons and jerks — the loudest. It's disgusting and disappointing.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:22 PM on October 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

There's also this update at Iran Human Rights Voice. I don't know what that source is.

Is there anything we can do?

Basically, we can only write letters to let them know there are people out there paying attention. The standard format for this type of thing would be:

Your Excellency,

I am deeply concerned about the detainment of [name] since [date]. [Maybe insert some dispassionate details of what happened.]

I would hold you in high regard if you would [do good thing].

I urge you to release [name].

Sincerely,
You

And you would send it to:

Head of the Judiciary
His Excellency Ayatollah Sadegh Ardishir Larijani
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh / Office of the Head of the Judiciary
Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhouri,
Tehran 1316814737,
Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: [e-mail] (In the subject line write: FAO Ayatollah Larijani)

And copy to:

Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran
245 Metcalfe St.
Ottawa, Ontario
K2P 2K2 Canada

(And to your local Iranian representation, if any.)
posted by zennie at 7:25 PM on October 22, 2009 [19 favorites]

"it's not like he was just going about his daily business"

I could be way off, but if I remember correctly, he knew that he wouldn't be welcome in Iran, but decided to go there anyway.

And I retract my poor choice of words. What I was trying to imply is that many outside observers weren't surprised by this one. He'd held unpopular and public views that got him in trouble.

I support his right to say these things, and think it sucks, but unfortunately those involved don't agree with me.

But this is a bit too much of me blaming the victim for me to be comfortable with.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:53 PM on October 22, 2009

I just noticed his domain expires next month. Is there a way to renew something like that for someone else? I know it's not the greatest worry he has right now, but it would be nice to not lose anything over something like this. His hosting looks like it's gone already.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:59 PM on October 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

No, this is how the assholes we currently have in government look after most of their citizens.

Canada's shoddy record on Iran goes at least as far back as the Liberal government's abject failure to do anything about the murder of Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi in Iranian custody.
posted by Behemoth at 8:11 PM on October 22, 2009

I just noticed his domain expires next month. Is there a way to renew something like that for someone else?

I'm not certain you can do that for someone else, but anyone could buy and hold it for him.
posted by zennie at 8:35 PM on October 22, 2009

I've written to my MP, Denise Savoie, three times about this and have recieved no reply. And she is NDP. I'll write her a fourth time tomorrow, harshly, copied to Jack Layton. Oh yeah, I hear Denise Savoie is in bed with Big Pharma and supports the Oil Sands Project and that she doesn't like cats.
posted by Rumple at 9:35 PM on October 22, 2009

I'm not certain you can do that for someone else, but anyone could buy and hold it for him.

Could we make that a mefite project?
posted by lunasol at 10:54 PM on October 22, 2009

"Also, if this happened to an American I don't see it being handled all that differnetly."

One of the nice things about being bellicose, nuclear-armed lunatics is that other bellicose lunatics at least respect our potential to just go off and bomb the shit out of a country that has nothing to do with an attack on us.

On the down side, we don't have health care and our economy is in shambles. Kind of like the mean drunk down at the local, shivering from diabetes, endlessly ranting about those damn colored kids taking his job, and liable to just smash a bottle on anyone who looks at him funny.

USA! USA!
posted by klangklangston at 11:06 PM on October 22, 2009 [5 favorites]

So is this how the Canadian government looks after most of its citizens?

The U.S. has our citizens arrested and held over there as well, however they'll usually get some politicians taking up their cause in some way, like Roxana Saberi. On the other hand we havn't heard anything about those hikers who were hiking around in Kurdish Iraq, and got lost and wandered into Iran.

I just noticed his domain expires next month. Is there a way to renew something like that for someone else?

Maybe you could contact godaddy. I'm sure they would let someone else pay for the domain if they knew what was going on.
posted by delmoi at 11:43 PM on October 22, 2009

I called godaddy at their Live 24/7 Sales & Support number [phone]. The billing department told me that they are unable to do anything at all to domain, including accept payment for renewal, without either the account number and password or the last six digits of the credit card that was last used to pay for the domain.

I've emailed Warren Adelman the president of GoDaddy via the contact information on the CEO's page explaining the situation and requesting intervention to allow me to pay for a renewal.
posted by Mitheral at 3:31 AM on October 23, 2009 [6 favorites]

10 months in solitary? That's... that's disgusting. A month in solitary is enough to wreck a human. 10 months is essentially murder. 10 months in solitary plus whatever abuse they're heaping on and you'd wish for murder.

That's just unconscionable.
posted by loquacious at 3:37 AM on October 23, 2009 [2 favorites]

thanks for the news, monkeytoes.
posted by msconduct at 5:58 AM on October 23, 2009

Mitheral: Good on you. I think this might be something that Matt, Josh, or Jessamyn could help with, if that doesn't work. Even if they don't know Adelman personally, I'm sure they know someone who knows him.

It might also be good if we can get his hosting back, if we could get more information. I'm sure the folks at Dreamhost or wherever he was hosted would hate to be in even accidental cahoots with the Iranian government's attempt to silence a critic.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:18 AM on October 23, 2009

I don't know anything about how to read a whois, but it looks like he was hosted by 1and1.fr... is that right?
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:23 AM on October 23, 2009

Thanks, Mitheral.
posted by lunasol at 7:57 AM on October 23, 2009

So is this how the Canadian government looks after most of its citizens?

Well for starers, he's not White. And with this government, i'm not even sure that would buy you much.
posted by chunking express at 8:10 AM on October 23, 2009

Thanks for the information, zennie, I've written a letter.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:06 AM on October 23, 2009

I don't know anything about how to read a whois, but it looks like he was hosted by 1and1.fr... is that right?

Possibly... that's a huge company though. May be a good place to start anyway. Their headquarters are in Germany, though they do have a US office in PA. Annoyingly, no direct contact info (kind of makes me feel like driving up there and walking in).

Mitheral, do you think you might edit your email to GoDaddy and send it to their press contact and see if anything happens?

US Headquarters:
1&1 Internet Inc.
701 Lee Road, Suite 300
Chesterbrook, PA 19087
Phone: 1-877-GO-1AND1
Fax: [phone]

Press:
Christine Skiffington
US PR Associate
1&1 Internet, Inc.
701 Lee Road
Suite 300
Chesterbrook, PA 19087
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

(There's always the option of copying from the Internet Archive.)
posted by zennie at 9:14 AM on October 23, 2009

One of the President's assistants has got back to me with the same restrictions.

Office of the President Response
Dear [Mitheral],

Thank you for contacting the Office of the President.

In light of the unfortunate circumstances we can certainly understand your desire to pay for your friend's domain name renewal, however please be aware that we do require account security validation of the existing account four-digit shopper PIN or the last six digits of a payment method already on file.

Should you be able to successfully gain this information for proper account validation, perhaps from the family of your friend, once validated you could then make payment with your own payment method. The security validation cannot be circumvented however, and we greatly appreciate your understanding of our need to maintain security within our systems.

We do hope this information has been helpful. Please feel free to contact our office should there be any other matters with which we may assist.

Kindest regards,
Karen Gaydos

So that leaves a few options as I see it.

1. Contact Hossein's Dad, see if maybe he has this information. No idea how likely that is (I know my parents wouldn't) and it seems kind of intrusive at a difficult time.
2. An EECB. This situation is so obviously outside the goals of the security policy that I'd bet lighting the right fire would get some action.
3. Try and use one of those reservation systems to snap up the domain when it becomes available after expiration

I'm reluctant to do 1 though if someone knows the Derakhshans I'm willing to pay for the renewal if they have the information. I'm going to start accumulating the addresses for 2 and hope for some success there. However if it fails has anyone any experience with reserving a soon to be expiring domain? Any other options I've missed?

zennie writes "Mitheral, do you think you might edit your email to GoDaddy and send it to their press contact and see if anything happens?"

Will do; couldn't hurt. Hope they could pull from tape as WebArchive, if I'm doing it right, only seems to have his first page. At any rate I'd imagine hoder has a backup and here's hoping he's in a position to access it soon.
posted by Mitheral at 9:30 AM on October 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

Today's NYT update and HRA 17 Oct
posted by adamvasco at 10:45 AM on October 23, 2009

I want a particular domain.

The above askme was not about this URL. I just want to point out that two months after asking that question is't still in "redemptionPeriod [sic]." I check daily on the one I am looking at. It's not easy to get something like this. And looks like hoder has had his for 10 years.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:51 AM on October 23, 2009

The other option, Mitheral, is to brute-force the code. 9999 MeFi users, 9999 attempts...
posted by five fresh fish at 11:09 AM on October 23, 2009

I thought about that and the fact that customer support is a toll number instead of toll free lends a certain amount of anonymity to the attempt. However I'm having a hard time imagining GoDaddy not tracking invalid attempts at accessing an account and it is technically an indictable/felony offence in both Canada and the US to attempt access like that.
posted by Mitheral at 11:21 AM on October 23, 2009

I think if you read the previous thread you'll see most of the Canadians weren't happy about this, and were pessimistic of how their MPs would deal with it.

****

I've written to my MP, Denise Savoie, three times about this and have recieved no reply. And she is NDP. I'll write her a fourth time tomorrow, harshly, copied to Jack Layton.

I've written to Jack Layton (my MP) about this and have also received no reply. Too busy crawling across the Parliament carpet trying to hoover up a few more crumbs of power, eh Jack?
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 1:22 PM on October 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

I hardly ever use twitter but I made a few posts about this with #ndp which if I understand the system, so drone somewhere in NDPland might be subscribed to.
posted by Rumple at 1:27 PM on October 23, 2009

I'm pretty sure I got a reply from Silva, the MP in my riding. He's pretty useless more often than not, but seems to be interested in Human Rights. Of course, Hoder is still in jail 10 months later, so ...
posted by chunking express at 1:34 PM on October 23, 2009

Also: holy shit BoingBoing has some shitty comments. That site kind of sucks.
posted by chunking express at 1:43 PM on October 23, 2009

Is anyone else mildly baffled that GoDaddy aren't pleased to take money from anyone who offers it?
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:40 PM on October 23, 2009

They make at least twice as much from a expiration auction and maybe several orders of magnitude more.
posted by Mitheral at 4:54 PM on October 23, 2009

Is anyone else mildly baffled that GoDaddy aren't pleased to take money from anyone who offers it?

Yeah, for the record, any of you feel like paying any of my bills go right ahead.

It's too bad hoder is listed as admin and tech contact too. Someone with power-of-attorney might be able to do this, as I believe the right faxed documents will work.

I read about a case where a man died and his parents wanted to keep his site live, so they managed to get it transfered.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:25 PM on October 23, 2009

OK, so, I have a backorder credit with GoDaddy, because the domain I was after has been renewed for another year (meaning I didn't get it). No guarantee, but I could have a crack at getting hoder.com if it isn't renewed....
posted by zennie at 11:28 PM on October 23, 2009

I'm sure it's not actually true that they need the security code to renew a domain. Godaddy usually at least tries to call people when a domain is expiring, and they don't require a security code at that point.

I hope the domain does get renewed.
posted by delmoi at 1:47 AM on October 24, 2009

I really don't think that hoder's family would want to accept foreign donations to keep his blog going, in light of the ongoing situation. If you read the letter they sent to the judge, they're emphasizing their non-involvement with the West.

I'm also guessing no legal framework exists for buying a domain for someone else. If GoDaddy does not follow their own procedures for domain ownership transfer and the person who actually paid for the domain decided to keep the domain for himself, not only would they probably be in their legal right to do so, it would call into question other GoDaddy domain transfers. Conceivably, if there was an unrelated dispute this could be used against GoDaddy as an example of ownership transfer that did not use the security pin procedure. I've seen similar things happen, our best bet with GoDaddy is that they renew it themselves or keep it in some sort of receivership. The worst possible outcome would be a third party (one of us) having claim to the domain. This might all be not true at all, but working with large, bureaucratic institutions this is usually how things like this work out, or at least how they're enforced by the middle managers and assistants in the trenches.

Our best bet, in light of all this, might be to simply purchase the domain outright when it goes up for auction. Does anyone know how this works, how much we'd be spending? I can't imagine those domain squatters would battle for a somewhat obscure domain name. I don't even know the price range for this type of thing, but I can't imagine it would be much. If hoder ever gets released a transfer would be trivial.
posted by geoff. at 8:55 AM on October 24, 2009

Godaddy usually at least tries to call people when a domain is expiring,

I think by security code what they actually mean is the legal entity who owns the domain. Obviously by possessing the security code you don't have power of attorney, but I think what they're telling us is that the call center worker who renews domain only needs the security to do so and this is the easiest way for us to do it. I have no doubt that with a formal power of attorney letter we would be able to circumvent this, but I doubt the family would go through all that for a bunch of internet strangers.
posted by geoff. at 8:58 AM on October 24, 2009

I agree with what your saying geoff. There is a bit of a difference though in that I don't want to transfer or in anyway change the registration information (which would indeed require and should require some kind of power of attourney); merely pay the renewal fee so the already existing information doesn't get first dropped and then hijacked by squatters.

I hope I didn't give the impression I disagree with GoDaddy's policies. They are obviously well though out and seem wholly sensible as long as the registrant has been whisked off to a years solitary confinement in an Iranian gaol without even charges being filed.

In fact this kind of shows I should spread my information around on my registrations. My domains all are set up like hoder's with me being the technical, admin, and billing contact. I could change at least one of those.
posted by Mitheral at 9:16 AM on October 24, 2009

So my EECB has had a couple days to percolate with basically no result. Someone from marketing sent me a form letter trying to drum up hosting business and the president's office (or from what I've been seeing on line the call centre who handles his front facing mail) sent me the same letter as before.
posted by Mitheral at 6:26 PM on October 26, 2009

Can one purchase a domain in someone else's name, using one's own account... as opposed to renewing on the other person's account?
posted by zennie at 10:55 AM on October 27, 2009

To do this without the other person's co-operation you have to wait for the domain to expire at which point it becomes an open season for who ever wants it and can get a registration in first. In theory backorders will handle this for you but in practise they are far from guaranteed and can be quite expensive. If for example GoDaddy is successful in acquiring an expired domain in your name they don't actually hand it over to you instead putting it up for auction where, even though you paid GoDaddy a backorder fee, they hand it over to the highest bidder.
posted by Mitheral at 12:22 PM on October 27, 2009

Hm. Will have to see then. Thanks, Mitheral.
posted by zennie at 7:59 AM on October 28, 2009

NPR is doing a news segment about him right now.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:23 PM on October 28, 2009

The CBC just posted an article about him as well.
posted by benign at 8:46 PM on October 29, 2009

I've attempted to send a message via CBC's contact form to John Nicol, the writer of the latest CBC piece in the hope that he can get a message to the family on this as he appears to have talked with Hamad, Hossein's brother. The form isn't really set up for this purpose I don't think, more for complaints on programing so we'll see what happens.
posted by Mitheral at 11:03 PM on October 29, 2009

Meanwhile I'll see if I still have any media connections in Toronto. I'm sure we can contact him eventually.
posted by zennie at 7:47 AM on October 30, 2009

Mitheral writes "So my EECB has had a couple days to percolate with basically no result."

Maybe I was wrong. Hoder's domain has been renewed by GoDaddy.
posted by Mitheral at 10:07 AM on November 4, 2009

If anyone would like to continue working on the "Mefi's own hoder" situation, please email/memail me. We'll organize a bit more.
posted by zennie at 6:21 PM on November 11, 2009