Publishing Restrictions Eased, but Not Rescinded

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 enhancement’ were prohibited,” says Marc Brodsky, executive director of the American Institute of Physics and chairman of the Association of American Publishers professional and scholarly publishing division, a party to a lawsuit filed last year against OFAC (see Physics Today, November 2004, page 33 ). The new ruling “removes for a while the sword hanging over the heads of authors and publishers,” says Brodsky. But, he adds, it excludes many governmental entities. “I don’t know what the implications are.” As an example, he asks how publications from government organizations similar to National Institutes of Health in the embargoed countries will be handled.

Moreover, says Brodsky, “publishers worry that OFAC might again arbitrarily and capriciously change its regulations, and we think they have no right to even issue regulations on publishing.” In response to the new ruling, Representative Howard Berman (D-CA), author of the 1988 amendment that exempts “information” and “informational materials” from government regulation, released a statement saying, “OFAC is still acting like they have the authority to grant permission and that interferes with our fundamental right to freedom of expression.”

“The plaintiffs are still considering whether to continue the lawsuit,” Brodsky says. Besides the principle of free speech, he adds, “we’d like to recover our [legal] costs. It’s been hundreds of thousands of dollars.”