US publishers may conduct normal publishing activities with private citizens in Cuba, Iran, and Sudan, countries under US economic embargo, according to a 15 December 2004 ruling by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The ruling overrides prohibitions that had led to self-censorship, fears of fines and jail time, and lawsuits against OFAC by authors and publishers.
In a press release, Stuart Levey, an under secretary for the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said, “OFAC’s previous guidance was interpreted by some as discouraging the publication of dissident speech from within [the] oppressive regimes [of the embargoed countries]. That is the opposite of what we want.”
For publishers and lawmakers, the ruling is an improvement, but it’s not what they really want: no governmental regulation of publishing. Before this latest ruling, OFAC “had insisted that activities assisting ‘works in progress’ such as co-authorship and ‘artistic or significant...