Domains Blocked By US Treasury 'Blacklist' 525
yuna49 writes "Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports today about the plight of a Spanish tour operator whose domain names have been embargoed by his domain name registrar (eNom). They pulled his domains after they discovered the tour operator's name on a US Treasury blacklist. It turns out he packages tours to Cuba largely for European tourists who can legally travel there, unlike Americans. The article cites 'a press release issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said Mr. Marshall's company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was "a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people." It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.' The only part of the operator's business in the United States is his domain name registration; all other aspects of his business lie outside the United States."
So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
*gets out his eraser and starts removing that "Land Of The Free" line from all the songbooks...*
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, that's also illegal.
j/k
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cuba trades with Canada, Europe, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil... but an AMERICAN embargo will force them to change. Yeah. That's working well, after four decades of communism, tourism, cheap gas, and free technology.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are "Americans" who have suffering relatives IN Cuba, (I believe there are permissions with limits on how much US citizens can send annually to Cuba), and it ought to be criminal to expect people to put on a uniform to potentially go and kill or threaten to kill relatives in OR outside the country.
I think the US government and some wealthy are just royally pissed that Fidel, like Kim Jong-Il, didn't just 'vanish' or 'die". Castro outlived MULTIPLE US presidents... must be an embarrassment to the USA...
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
The South African Apartheid regime collapsed due to pressure from sanctions. But the reasons were psychological, not economic. The regime saw itself as an unacknowledged part of the West, the rejection had real and visible effect. Once it became clear that the US was also on the brink of rejecting it, the regime crumbled.
The Cuban situation is exactly the reverse, the only thing keeping Castro in power was the fact that he had successfully stood up to the US when it had acted as a big bully.
The human rights issue is not likely to be very effective when the US is running the best known gulag and torture house on the island.
This is a case where trade can have a positive effect and every policy maker in DC knows it, even the Republicans. The only reason that the embargo is kept in place is to pander to the Cuban vote in Florida.
Thats the way ethnic politics are played in the US. While mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani would attack terrorism over lunch in Brooklyn, then head off for dinner to give a 'humanitarian award' to the leader of the terrorist group that has caused by far the most deaths in Europe. Different constituencies, different positions. I don't think he was pro-Israel or pro-IRA, he just wanted the votes and would do anything it took to get them.
The people the politicians pander to are your usual expatriate irredentists, they can afford to refuse all compromise, they don't live with the consequences.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Informative)
So what exactly is the difference (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just because their cost of living, and thus production, is much lower than in the US doesn't mean they can only make junk.
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Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it still attempts to tell the world how we should follow [i]their[/i] example. No thanks, I actually like my freedoms.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
So Cuban will not be accepted as a democracy by the US until, they turn themselves back into the working poor for American corporations. Of course whether the Cubans actually elect a leader or a military coup takes place establishing an autocracies, makes absolutely not the slightest bit of difference to the end of the embargo.
All this does is highlight why other countries do not trust the current US administration with the central domain register, because as far as the current US administration is concerned, US corporate law is international law.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US is just in a near-conniption fit that the North has not collapsed, imploded, or exploded. It's a major embarrassment that multiple US administrations just ineptly cannot figure out how to have state-to-state talks with the North and get out of the way of confederation leading to reunification. Don't like MY perception? Read...on
Check out "Korean Endgame" by Selig S. Harrison...
The first two chapters show how ignorant the US can be when it comes to taking sides and coercing what it thinks are its client states (and is instead manipulated by the South, as was Russia by the North), yet (the US) ends up delaying reunification because if later finds it NEEDS and DESIRES a 'clear and present danger' of sorts in order to justify $42B a year in deployed US military assets around Asia, and $2B a year going directly to the South.
The South recently offered citizenship to people of the North. The YOUTH of the South probably care less about politics, but wealthy in the loop with military and economic assets at risk don't want to be besieged nor bothered by a massive influx of poor Northerners. In general, though, many if not most Koreans (North and South are torn by the division instigated by by Kim Song Il, after duping Stalin and getting assent from China.
The US *claims* it wants to aid Korea Unify, but so far it mostly has obstructed or ineptly carried out talks, bullied the North, and placated the South, enable the South to experience as little pain as possible in the march toward confederation. The North expected (rightfully) confederation and a formal declaration of cessation of hostilities, but the US botched things imposing its OWN view on BOTH Koreas. However, Seoul, for its part, never signed the armistice...
Now, what is going on is the Russians no longer sell much of anything military to the North, but is instead selling to the South and to others. The upshot is that the NK "regime"/government/Workers' Party isn't likely to go out with a bang. It'll just muddle along, and reunification (50% thanks to the US) will happen DECADES later than it could have or should have.
For what it's worth, i feel sorry for BOTH halves of Korea and i hope history takes in hand all those who did their bit to undermine and humiliate a great people, and wrought them great humiliation.
i hope the Coreas reunify SOON (less than 10 years). I hope they shift to indigenous local partners of the regional defense, and I hope they PROVE to Japan that a unified Corea purged of US occupation is NOT a threat to the Japanese peoples. i don't think there will be any wars unless puppeteers from afar instigate things.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
Try again later with the "doing what's right" herring.
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If all that landmass jumped off a cliff, the chaos caused to the world climate would be horrible. Might as well join them on the crazy ride down that ridiculously huge cliff they've found.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cuba is considered different because of its strategic value (closeness to the US). No one wants a communist bastille in our backyard. Many argue, and very reasonably so, supporting Cuba is paying your enemy to subvert your own country. They decided Cuba was the line in the sand and it would be the example held high to ensure no other threats surface. They prop it up as a human rights argu
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Informative)
Cuba could have been an ally after that revolution, but Castro nationalized the major factories and plantations. With cause: the Americans running them had been very involved in Batista's corruption, and the many poor in Cuba were starving and under threats from the corrupt government every day. They needed the money, and they needed control over their own economy. And then that amazingly incompetent Bay of Pigs assault was tried, and it was clear to many, not just Castro, that he had no chance of cooperation with the USA. So he cooperated with the Soviets, who helped provide foreign currency and trade as a showpiece of Communism in the Western hemisphere, and as a critical military base.
So, historically, the US priority is hardly one of "no threat". It's one of "Castro out" and "we want control back" as well.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the strenght of Cuban economy actually matter ? There is no way Cuba is going to launch a succesfull invasion on the US on its own, no matter how strong its economy; and if it is used as a stronghold by another power, it again doesn't matter.
If anything, having ties of trade to the US would make Cuba less likely to allow another country to attack its trading partner through it...
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Given the current state of the GOP it is hard to see them managing to pose a serious obstacle. Their main objective in November is going to be to deny the Democrats a filibuster-proof majori
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most likely the fear isn't that Americans would turn Communist, but that seeing Cuba as it actually is would undo over half a century of US propaganda about Communism. They might even start questioning other things the US Government claims. Which would be very bad news indeed for past and present members of Congress, the White House, the CIA, NSA, etc, etc.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Insightful)
We do keep trying, and we're a big step up from most of the world. But we're not there yet, and this administration has certainly hurt us.
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Errrmmm... There's one place that human rights are not respected on Cuba. It's called 'Guantanamo Bay [wikipedia.org]'.
Re: "Land Of The Free" (Score:5, Funny)
I thought we were calling them "Freedom Houses" now.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Funny)
or even to use all of those words in the same sentencAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaa
What do you expect from ENOM (Score:5, Interesting)
So what do you expect from companies like that? I would personally open an international lawsuit against them, and there is absolutely no way Enom can win that.
Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba... (Score:5, Funny)
You know, you never see Bush and Castro in the same picture ... like Clark Kent and Superman ...
You know, you never see Cheney and Castro in the same picture ... like ... nah - if Castro pointed a gun at your head and pulled the trigger, drunk or not, you'd be dead ...
You know, you never see Condaleeza Rice and Castro in the same picture ...
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ever wonder why his daughters were always getting drunk?
they know the truth.
And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many here would decry the Chinese and assorted third world countries for censorship of the internet, and yet, here we (in the US) act no differently. It makes me wonder how many things we just don't see, because the DNS entry doesn't even show up.
Are we truly free? Or is that just an illusion?
Wikileaks, now eNom... (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds as thought the great firewall of America will be installed sooner or later. Apparently all it would take is a judge and software that has already been developed, tested, and deployed by American companies in China. Not that it's anything new... we've been censoring the internet for more than a decade now in the name of copyright with the 1997 NET Act. It appears the nationalist crowd has modded you flamebait early... maybe some sane meta-mods will take care of that.
Slashdot stories about Godaddy: (Score:5, Informative)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage [slashdot.org]
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat [slashdot.org]
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site [slashdot.org]
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera [slashdot.org]
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? [slashdot.org]
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft [slashdot.org]
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions [slashdot.org]
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? [slashdot.org]
One Slashdot reader's experience: What needs to change [slashdot.org]. Quote: "... the catch was that it'd cost $80, as opposed to the $10 it normally costs."
Re:eNom is the REAL provider, others only re-sell. (Score:5, Interesting)
wake up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is why TLDs that don't contain country names should not be in the hands of any one government, but that is just wishful thinking. Maybe we will see
So why compare yourselves with China? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=389&year=2007 USA 16th
But do you really expect people to think freely if they've been spouting the pledge of allegence since they were 5?
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Move self from chair. Jump up. Set self on chair. Gravity says "no".
PS: In case gravity said "yes", don't worry, lack of atmospheric pressure will say "no".
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A country should be judged on the basis of how much freedom its people have, not by the fact that there are people elsewhere who have it worse off.
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JFK was personally involved with Cuba, bullets were fired and missiles were moved back and forth. I can understand his actions, they were related to contemporary events. However JFK is dead for quite some time, as well as some of Presidents who followed him. Mistreating Cuba for half a century is no more reasonable as whipping your dog daily, for 20 years, for him chewing your shoe when he was a puppy.
Get a .eu (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like there's some merit (Score:5, Insightful)
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A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable
Censorship being what a censor does. Notice they didn't do anything to his actual site; they seized the domain that he was using which is purchased and maintained in the US. It's a reasonable assertion to say that a domain name is property (maybe rented property) that can be seized by a government official.
Anyone doing business with Cuba knows about the embargo; it's possible he did
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To be fair, EU nations are also known to have laws censoring things their governments are uneasy about; see, for example, prosecutions of online auction sites by France and Germany, on grounds that those sites did not comply with laws banning the sale of Nazi memorabilia.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
But, this travel company has learned another lesson: Don't buy domains from eNom, they suck in so many ways....
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Want a different policy? Organize like-minded people to VOTE appropriately.
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Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, we have missed the boat there. With people like Chavez waving suitcases of cash placing a few millions here and there is no longer effective. He can simply outbid the "West" and keep the Castro regime alive for a very long time.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
A generator of resources that the Cuban regime... (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean things like providing a never ending stream of very real examples of how America wants to meddle in internal Cuban affairs, thereby providing an instant excuse to play the nationalist "they want to topple your government from Washington! Ignore the abuses you know about and rally together as a nation to resist them as a people!" card?
This is very disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
I fear we are too trustworthy in the robustness of the internet and I'm even more afraid of the day if the powers at large decide the bring the hammer down. I don't think net neutrality legislation would be effective against a determined oppressor, it only takes a few dragging anchors for them to tear through a few laws.
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Not Everyone, Just (Score:3, Interesting)
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Pay Attention (Score:3, Interesting)
Please Americans, I love lots of what you stand for, now kill off the right-wing cancer that eats at your nation's heart.
Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
The interesting issue is all 3's money handling. I noted that after Super Tuesday, Mc
Re:Pay Attention (Score:5, Insightful)
irony (Score:5, Insightful)
easy enough to fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:easy enough to fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush and congress are trying to fix that. Welcome to Amerika; lets us make a copy of the data on your laptop, show us your papers, and watch what you say outside of a free-speech zone.
Use a european registrar (Score:3, Insightful)
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It seems to me if you want a
With great power.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Another example [guardian.co.uk] I came upon today is how the White House was planning to overthrow the democratically chosen Hamas party, because it didn't stroke with their plans.
What happened with "With great power comes great responsibility"? The US is just acting as the schoolyard bully.
Note that I understand that "The US" != "all US citizens", but please, you're the only ones that can do something about this. So please do so.
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My suggestion would be to have a third house, selected at random from the entire pool of individuals in the United States with demonstrably high IQs and/or EQs and/o
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Now instead of childishly insisting that they're Terrorists and therefore not worth acknowledging, it might be smart to admit their legitimacy in the eyes of their own people and find some way to coexist without killing each other.
Loath as I am to point this out, there was another fringe political party not unlike Hamas that won parliamentary elections in Germany a few decades back, and instead of finding a way to peacefully coexist with them we defeated them in war and tried the leaders for their war crimes. Democratically elected government or not, launching rockets into residential neighborhoods to kill people is terrorism, and the people who commit terrorism are terrorists.
You have to love our freedoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You have to love our freedoms (Score:5, Insightful)
God knows I'm not saying the Castros are happy little fuzzy angels who never did no wrong, but it's indisputable that they're a damn sight better than some of the thugs we happily deal with in the rest of the world. It's ridiculous and childish to blame everything on them, but it plays well in certain areas of south Florida which hold disproportionate power come election time.
Embargo America (Score:4, Insightful)
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Absolutely. The amount of U.S. debt they hold is a gun pointed at our head that could wipe out our power as effectively as any nuke.
Mind you, we'd take them and the rest of the world down in the process. When you owe the bank ten million dollars, you have a problem. When you owe the bank ten trillion dollars, the bank has a problem.
There's a lesson in here somewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
Non-Americans already have to do ridiculous things like obtain visas to just to make a flight connection in the US. Soon we're not even allowed to overfly the US. That's fun if, like me, you live in Canada.
To hell with them.
Before everyone starts going crazy... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you also realize that it was made law in 1992 under the title of Cuban Democracy Act [wikipedia.org] by U.S. Congressman Robert Torricelli (D) [wikipedia.org]?
Once again, those who seem historically ignorant are quick to condemn the current administration for something that has (arguably) been in place for over 40 years...
How about blocking Saudi travel firms (Score:5, Informative)
Well what about the billions in military aid given to Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes in the world?. Cuba is Disney Land compared to Saudi Arabia. What about all that money going towards oppressing the Saudi people? Imagine some big democracy movement started in Saudi Arabia and tried to overthrow the dictatorship. The Saudi government would no doubt use all the weapons we have been selling them against their own people.
US policy toward Cuba is not about the dictatorship. The US has supported and created many dictatorships in that part of the world. The US policy towards Cuba is based on anger over losing control of the country. It's like Britain banning citizens from travelling to the US because the US had the cheek to declare independence.
The fact there is a US base in an 'enemy' country is a little clue as to how Cuba has been treated in the past. Don't expect the mainstream media to talk about it though. The US occupied Cuba after independence from Spain and refused to leave unless the Cubans agreed to a list of items (the Platt Amendment). Among that rather imperialistic list of requirements was a permanent military base at Guantanamo bay.
Of course if Castro had been a business friendly right-wing dictator, it could have been a smooth transition from Batista's rule. You wouldn't be hearing the US making big noises about the lack of democracy at all.
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You kidding me? If the Saudis ever had a popular revolution start up
The underlying problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Our Constitution is quite possibly the greatest piece of law ever written in the history of mankind. Unfortunately, the politicians (both democrats and republicans) have decided it can be ignored at will. We need to change this. We need to force every aspect of the government to operate under the full strength of our Constitution.
No more seizing property without due process.
No more stifling free speech just because it might offend somebody.
No more wiretaps of citizens and legal residents to fight terrorists without a court order signed by a REAL judge.
No more government agencies that aren't sanctioned by the Constitution (list to long to put here).
I am sicked by any politician who doesn't consider the Constitution the most sacred document in existence. Which means I'm sicked by ALL politicians.
No it isn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
The lack of universal suffrage.
The electoral college and variegated citizenship.
The concept of equality and fairness.
It is folly to assume a document written in the 1700's would be a very good fit for the 2000's.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's such a great piece of law, how come so much of it can be interpreted so many different ways? Like that bit about guns.
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I used to think there was hope for this country. I now realize this country was lost a long time ago. Thanks for giving it the interest groups, asshole.
FYI, I can't stand Ron Paul.
Messing with DNS is the best you can do? (Score:3, Insightful)
In light of this and the wikileaks thing, I think it's interesting that the best we can do to censor foreign websites, is mess with their DNS registrar. Long term, that is just not going to be a viable tactic. It's like wack-a-mole, except that after the first mole, the remaining moles are out of reach.
i find the america bashing ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
if you as a cuban tried this in cuba, it is in the law of the land to arrest and jail you
if you doubt that, i'm not going to be your google monkey: go to the massively neocon sources of amnesty international and human rights watch and tell me what they say about the law in cuba about saying bad things about the government
so please, by all means, bash the us government: it's your right, you are respected as an american to bash your own government. just try to understand exactly what the real enemy is here. some people have a colossal lack of scale and perspective
eNom are MAJOR scumbags (Score:4, Informative)
This is further supported by taking a glance at data from the URIBL "Realtime URI" feed for Abused/Abusive Registrars. A glance at their website [uribl.com] shows they rank second out of 250 registrars for hosting blacklisted domains.
Re:Sheesh, it's almost like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, its almost like we're immature children who spitefully cling to their hatred long after the conflict is over and everyone else has grown up and gotten over it.
Hell, we've even made peace with the country that actually designed, built, and deployed the missles to cuba. You know, the country that actually owned them and put them their with the express purpose of creating a threat? The country that the 'cold war' was actually with? We made peace with them. But apparently our rage for a dying old man whose island they were on... for him... our hatred is boundless.
Grow up aready.
Yes, -1 Not conforming with majority opinion
No. -1 for being an immature and childish country.
You know, because of that whole trying to murder tens of millions of us and all.
You might want to check your history. The Soviets put missiles in Cuba in response to the fact that the USA put missiles in Turkey. Not that it stops their of course, the cold war was a series of moves and responses, but the point remains... Castro was a PAWN in a much bigger game of chess [er... global thermonuclear war] and his role and personal relevance was laughably minor.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that, for the sake of clarity, the .com/.org/etc TLDs should be reserved to "international" organizations (whatever that can possibly mean in legal terms), and all American domains should have been placed into .us. But that's not going to happen simply because no one would go through the