ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 13, Number 105
December 16, 2004

In This Issue: EDITING EMBARGO LIFTED

The Washington Office has been monitoring the issue of U.S. Treasury Department rules, through the Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, that prohibit transactions with the governments of Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. In a ruling on Wednesday, 15 December, the Department said that trade embargoes do not restrict publishing, so U.S. persons (citizens and registered aliens) do not have to apply for a license if they wish to edit or publish works by authors in Cuba, Iran, or Sudan. Violators of the trade embargo face fines of up to $1-million and jail terms of as much as 10 years. The new rule enables U.S. persons to freely engage in most ordinary publishing activities with persons in Cuba, Iran and Sudan, while maintaining restrictions on certain interactions with the governments, government officials, and people acting on behalf of the governments of those countries.

Congress had exempted "information or informational materials" from trade embargoes in 1988. Until Wednesday's ruling, however, OFAC had exempted only informational materials that were "fully created" by people in embargoed countries and that had not been substantially altered, including by editing, in the United States. In order to edit informational materials from authors in embargoed countries, U.S. persons were required file requests for licenses. 

In September, a suit asking for an immediate injunction against enforcement of the regulations was filed by the Association of American Publishers' Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, the Association of American University Presses, the PEN American Center, and Arcade Publishing. The plaintiffs were joined by Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist who sought to publish her memoirs in the United States.

A copy of the rule submitted to the Federal Register
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/office foreign.pdf



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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Carol Ashworth, Don Essex, Joshua Farrelman, Erin Haggerty, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.