U.S. Nixes British Cuba Tourist Site

The US Treasury shut down a British company’s sites because they advertised travel to Cuba.

With a few exceptions, American citizens aren’t allowed to go to Cuba. Steve Marshall, a British travel agent who operates tourism sites out of the Spanish-owned Canary Islands, knows that. Heclaims he doesn’t do business with Americans wanting to travel to Cuba because of that ban. So he’s baffled as to why the US Treasury blacklisted 80of his sites in October and ordered domain name registrar eNom to close his sites and deny him access. In a New York Timesstory, Marshall said it made no sense that "websites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by US law" and that “These days not even a judgeis required for the US government to censor online materials." A Treasury spokesman told the newspaper that Marshall was free to appeal the decision, but that his business was "a generatorof resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people".   The site, Bonjour Cuba, is now up again, along with most of Marshall’s other sites, but with a European host and a .net suffix.