[LINK] Ars: 'US seizes domain name of Spanish company selling Cuba trips'

[Roger Clarke]

>US seizes domain name of Spanish company selling Cuba trips
>By Joel Hruska | Published: March 07, 2008 - 04:36PM CT
>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080307-us-interferes-with-travel-to-cuba.html 
>[Text of article below]

[A .com domain-name operated by a Brit working in Spain has been 
de-registered because the business promoted holidays in Cuba.

[The credibility of the .com domain as an international one is in tatters.

[ICANN needs to use the embarrassment arising from this ridiculous 
intrusion to get itself cast adrift from the US Dept of Commerce's 
apron-strings, and shift its operations from the US to a country that 
meddles less in international affairs.

[Interestingly, http://www.icannwatch.org has disappeared from the Web.
[The most recent entry at http://www.archive.org is 8 Nov 07.



>US seizes domain name of Spanish company selling Cuba trips
>By Joel Hruska | Published: March 07, 2008 - 04:36PM CT
>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080307-us-interferes-with-travel-to-cuba.html

>The United States has often presented itself as the guardian of Internet
>free speech. China may censor the Internet, and otherwise-civilized
>nations such as Germany or France may attempt to block what they view as
>unacceptable material, but the United States of America likes to think
>of itself as a place that doesn't censor people online... unless you
>happen to own a foreign travel business that offers trips to Cuba. Under
>such circumstances, as Steve Marshall discovered, all bets are off.
>
>Steve Marshall is a British citizen living in Spain. For the past
>decade, he has operated an online travel agency that specializes in
>selling trips to Cuba to various European nationals. Marshall operated a
>number of Cuban-specific web sites, including several that focused
>specifically on the literary and historical aspects of Cuba, and
>maintained them in English, French, and Spanish. The Internet Archive
>has some of Marshall's web material on file. The sites themselves don't
>appear to have been particularly well-designed-both Flash and text ads
>abound-but there's no evidence that Marshall failed to provide the
>services he advertised.
>
>According to the Department of the Treasury, however, Marshall and his
>business helped Americans evade the US embargo against Cuba. A 2004 DoT
>(Department of the Treasury) press release stated: "This travel provider
>is not only a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to
>oppress its people, but it also facilitates the evasion of U.S. sanction
>policy." The PR goes on to assert that Tour and Marketing International
>Ltd. (Marshall's company) advertised itself as the number one agency for
>American travelers, claimed it could serve any traveler, and insisted
>that Americans interested in traveling to Cuba use the company's online
>payment system.
>
>Marshall's domain name registrar, eNom, is based in the US. It
>apparently didn't learn that his company had been blacklisted for two
>and a half years. When it did, however, the registrar promptly shut down
>Marshall's sites without notification and has since refused to release
>the domain names to him. Marshall has since rebuilt his business using a
>European registrar and the .net rather than the .com suffix, but his
>experience raises troubling questions.
>
>As previously noted, Marshall is a British citizen operating a business
>from Spain, with servers located in the Bahamas. He does not claim that
>no Americans ever visited Cuba, but he has stated that he was
>uninterested in marketing his services to the US. In this case, the
>Department of the Treasury was able to shut down his business without
>notification or negotiation of any sort. Even if he wanted to appeal the
>decision, Marshall has no organization to which he can appeal, save his
>registrar, which can simply claim to have been following government
>orders.
>
>If the US intends to continue presenting itself as the guardian of
>Internet rights, situations like this require a bit more delicacy. By
>effectively shutting down Marshall's business, the United States has
>committed the censorship it condemns in other nations. Even worse, the
>Department of Treasury effectively shut down an international business
>without any type of due process. Both France and Germany followed a
>court process when investigating Yahoo for alleged improprieties, and
>the company in question (Yahoo) had the opportunity to respond to the
>charges in a court of law. Marshall was afforded no such luxury.
>
>While the Internet may be global in nature, foreign companies may very
>well limit their use of US registrars and hosting services out of
>concern that activities targeted at other countries could be shut down
>here.


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW