Domains Blocked By US Treasury 'Blacklist'

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...

... are breaking the law if they go there?

*gets out his eraser and starts removing that "Land Of The Free" line from all the songbooks...*

Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba...

*gets out his eraser and starts removing that "Land Of The Free" line from all the songbooks...*

Sorry, that's also illegal.

j/k ;)

Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba...

Nope... you're being genuinely, unambiguously uneducated. But not sarcastic.

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...

Yes, I see how the US is putting pressure on all the African countries with which they trade weapons, diamonds and oil...

Re: "Land Of The Free"

Prisons? Aren't those a French invention?

I thought we were calling them "Freedom Houses" now.

Re:So Americans Who Sympathize With Cuba...

If the country really were in that state, it would be illegal to point out the hypocrisy of the administration.

or even to use all of those words in the same sentencAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaa

What do you expect from ENOM

Enom are the people who took over registerfly's expired domains (expired because you had no means renewing them), and then tried to get a $200 extortion fee for your domain to give it back to you.

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...

You know, you never see Bush and Castro in the same picture ... like Clark Kent and Superman ...

... except that Castro wasn't a coward who had daddy pull strings for him, isn't a drunken coke-head, etc.

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 ...

And yet...

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...

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 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.

Re:And yet...

This has nothing to do with censorship. If he had registered his domain in Europe, there'd be no problem. Nobody would be trying to prevent people in America from viewing his site. Personally, I think it was stupid to embargo the domain, but let's not use the straw man of censorship to show our disapproval.

So why compare yourselves with China?

You'd hope USA would compare itself with the top end of the freedom scale, and not the bottom.

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?

Looks like there's some merit

...to the EU's argument that censorship restricts free trade. This looks to be a fairly clear example where censorship caused direct economic difficulties.

Bullshit

Of course it's bullshit. But what is eNom to do? They are in the same spot as any other American company. What we should be doing electing politicians that have the sanity to ignore the screeching Cuban expats in Miami, and scrap the embargo, which if anything only keeps the Castro Brothers in power.

But, this travel company has learned another lesson: Don't buy domains from eNom, they suck in so many ways....

Re:Bullshit

Exactly. The only reason for the Castro brothers to outlive the fall of the iron curtain is the embargo. If the USA lifted the embargo in 1990 Cuba would have been a democracy by now. It would have taken a few million pounds transfers to "opposition" to make that happen like in Eastern Europe, but there would have been a result none the less. The embargo is the main reason why this has never happened and may never happen.

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

Exactly. The only reason for the Castro brothers to outlive the fall of the iron curtain is the embargo.

Maybe. An interesting thing I picked up traveling the Caribbean and talking to a lot of natives is how they want Cuba to stay on the embargo list. The last thing, say, Aruba wants is a huge island paradise thats almost within walking distance of Miami. Especially with airline fuel costing what it does. If Cuba were open again, tourism throughout the rest of the islands, and Mexico and Central America would take a huge hit. And that loss of income is politically destabilizing as well. There's more at work here than sheer stupidity.

A generator of resources that the Cuban regime...

...uses to oppress its people?

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

I mean, this has me chilled to the bone. Ignoring the ridiculousness that in a "free" country we have "travel restrictions", the fact that they can legally perform such blocking with little or no recourse alone has me shaking.

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.

irony

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.'

I don't think they fully appreciate the irony of that statement. trying to stop funds from tourism being used to oppress cuba by restricting the travel of americans and censoring anyone remotely connected to the USA.

With great power..

Undoubtably I'll be modded down to flamebait, but as a non-US citizen I get pretty tired of the US trying to be the 'policeman of the world' and at the same time pull these underhanded tricks.

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.

You have to love our freedoms

We can trade out the ass with Red China, and cozy up to Uzbekistan, but Cuba, no es posible. Why? Because Cubans who fled Cuba after the revolution because they wanted their comfort and money more than they wanted to stay and fight, now control a lot more political power in America than they should. We can ask if Cuba really has it that bad. Its major export is educated people. Doctors, mostly. Can we acknowledge that maybe individual greed doesn't steer everything in the right direction all the time? Sure Cuba has poor folks. Do we care about poor folks in Cuba more than we care about the Americans that were left stranded in New Orleans after Katrina for political reasons? Not this year. The US has more people in prison than any other country in the world. Yes, and that is not by percentage. Cut the bullshit, we need to get over our sense of exceptionalism.

There's a lesson in here somewhere

1. Don't have anything to do with the USA.

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...

... do you realize that these restrictions have been in place since 1962 [wikipedia.org] because the Cuban government expropriated the property of U.S. citizens and corporations in Cuba?

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

The article says...

...a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people

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.

The underlying problem

This problem, like many others, can be fixed by one simple thing. FORCING OUR DAMN GOVERNMENT TO ABIDE BY THE CONSTITUTION.

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.