US Treasury Departments Shuts Down British Travel Agent’s Web Sites On Cuba
STEVE Marshall is an English travel agent living in Spain. As the New York Times reports, he offers trips to Cuba.
But his business is being damaged by the United States government. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, sites like www.cuba-hemingway.com, www.cuba-havanacity.com and www.bonjourcuba.com.
Says Marshall: “I came to work in the morning, and we had no reservations at all. We thought it was a technical problem. Wrong. It turns out that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been placed on a Treasury Department blacklist.
His American domain name registrar, eNom Inc. closed Mr. Marshall’s sites without notifying him. To compound his pain, the company has refused to release the domain names to him. His sites are, he says, hosted in the Bahamas.
Mr. Marshall says he does not understand “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.” And, “these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials.”
Susan Crawford, a visiting law professor at Yale and a leading authority on Internet law, said the fact that many large domain name registrars are based in the United States gives the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, control “over a great deal of speech — none of which may be actually hosted in the U.S., about the U.S. or conflicting with any U.S. rights.”
“OFAC apparently has the power to order that this speech disappear,” Professor Crawford said. The law under which the Treasury Department is acting has an exemption, known as the Berman Amendment, which seeks to protect “information or informational materials.” Mr. Marshall’s Web sites, though ultimately commercial, would seem to qualify, and it is not clear why they appear on the list. Unlike Americans, who face significant restrictions on travel to Cuba, Europeans are free to go there, and many do.
Having engaged in protestionism to sink British online gaming companies in the US, maybe the Government in the Land fo the Free is gearing up for the post-Fidel Castro era.
If you’re going to buy a holiday to the Havana theme park, then buy one from a US site…
Posted: 6th, March 2008 | In: Reviews Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
