OFAC Revises Rule Restricting Publishing Activities

Posted on January 7, 2005

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has issued a new rule clarifying the extent to which publishing activities with persons in Cuba, Iran and Sudan are authorized, notwithstanding the U.S. embargoes against those countries. The action addresses a series of issues that have come to the attention of the Treasury during the past year.

"OFAC's previous guidance was interpreted by some as discouraging the publication of dissident speech from within these oppressive regimes. That is the opposite of what we want," said Stuart Levey, the Treasury's Under Secretary for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). "This new policy will ensure those dissident voices and others will be heard without undermining our sanctions policy."

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. The rule entails the issuance of general licenses in the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 31 CFR part 515, the Iranian Transactions Regulations, 31 CFR part 560, and the Sudanese Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 538.

In September 2004, publishers' and authors' organizations filed suit in federal court to strike down regulations of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control that effectively bar U.S. publishers from publishing books and journal articles originating in countries such as Iran, Cuba and Sudan that are subject to U.S. trade embargoes. Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian author and human rights activist, filed a related suit in late October. In response to the suits, OFAC issued new regulations today which explicitly permit Americans to engage in "all transactions necessary and ordinarily incident to the publishing and marketing of manuscripts, books, journals, and newspapers in paper or electronic format." This includes substantive editing and marketing of written materials, collaborations between authors, and the payment of advances and royalties.

The revised regulations are "clearly a step in the right direction, permitting the broad range of publishing activities American publishers and authors must be free to pursue," said Edward J. Davis and Linda Steinman of Davis Wright Tremaine, counsel to the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (AAP/PSP), PEN American Center (PEN), and Arcade Publishing, the plaintiffs in the case. "We will continue to examine the regulations in detail, but it is plain that significant obstacles have been removed for American publishers and authors who want to work with authors in Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Works of critical importance to the advancement of science and our understanding of international affairs can now be published without threat of civil and criminal sanctions. Even works written by Iranian and Cuban dissidents could not be published in the United States under the prior regulations."