As mentioned before on this news site (US firewall exposed by bloggers from countries like Cuba or Syria), the embargo laws in the United States have a direct impact on information technology development in the affected countries. Now, a blog from Cuba has reported that Google Wave is blocked for Cuban internet users.

The article (Spanish only) goes even deeper and itemizes other examples of how the USA embargo affects the IT development in Cuba. Here is a translation of some of the cases:

• An English travel agent, Steve Marshall, lives in Spain and sells travel packages to tropical destinations, including Cuba. In October 2007, about 80 of their web sites surprisingly stopped working, as a result of an action by the U.S. Government. The Treasury Department stated that eNom Company had not acted in accordance with the law, as the agency helped Americans evade restrictions on traveling to Cuba and was “generating resources used by the Cuban regime.” Among the domain names that were shut down include www.cuba-hemingway.com (a site about literature), www.cuba-havanacity.com on Cuban history and culture and other support services for tourists from Italy and France, such as www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com.
• The Institute of Scientific and Technological Information (IDICT) was affected significantly, when it was denied access to the Database Premier Academy with eBooks from Taylor & Francis Publishing. It was launched in 1996 as a central database for researchers in the fields of science, technology and medicine.
• In 2008, access to new versions of the database engine free software used all around the world, MySQL, remained limited, as also happens with Java, after they were purchased by the US corporation Sun Microsystems.

Carlos Martínez, the author of the article, also lists some websites that express the blockade against Cuba and other countries between them. The most famous ones include: Cisco Systems, Oracle Technology Network, Telefónica Spain and the Total Bank, an online banking and payment services, banking and business credit cards company.

The good side of it, according to Carlos, is that the Cuban users will have to look for alternatives to Microsoft Messenger and Google Wave tools in the free software communities. But by doing so, the users will gain more security, privacy and software freedom. He says:

Technically, although Cuba is living these prohibitions as a disadvantage compared with other Internet users, this blockade will force the Cubans to use messaging services libres (i.e. Jabber), giving them more security and privacy.

NovaTux is the first open source video game to be released by Cuba’s vibrant free software community. The work was done by students of UCI, one of the most important computer science universities in Cuba, which also launched Nova, the first GNU/Linux distribution from the country.

The video game was developed using only Blender and GIMP and is designed for kids between the ages of 9 and 14 years. NovaTux is a phase game, where each player passes through different worlds after completing specific objectives, all of which are designed to teach the main concepts of free software as well as how to use the Nova GNU/Linux distribution. So, while Cuban teens and pre-teens are learning how to use Unix with a fun and visually-compelling video game, US teens and pre-teens are dodging diet pill pop-up ads on their school’s website and squandering their limited technology resources on software licenses.

Cuban programmers have been contributing for a while already to the Blender free software project, a 3D animation and content creation application suite with incredible functionality and possibilities. Cuban programmer Raul Fernandez Hernandez (Farsthary) works on true volumetrics for Blender. He keeps a blog with updates on his project but he also supports the Cuban Blender community and writes about his visits to the UCI Campus and their community-building efforts.

ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) is an organization designed to foster co-operation amongst Latin American countries and currently includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras and Dominica as member states.

In response to the controversial Organization of American States, which is viewed by many in Latin America as a way for the United States to apply economic and political pressure against countries in the region, ALBA has a released a statement which strongly condemns the recent OAS summit and pronounces their world view.

In their statement, which covers a broad range of issues, ALBA calls for universal access to telecommunications (phone, internet, etc) as a human right in a world which increasingly relies on networked communications:

Basic education, health, water, energy and telecommunications services should be declared human rights and cannot be subject to private deal or marketed by the World Trade Organization. These services are and should be essentially public utilities of universal access.

This ideal has driven many of the policies of Latin American countries inside and outside of ALBA, including Brazil.

FLISOL - The Latin American Festivals of Installation of Free Software are install fests organized by the regional free software communities since 2005. The event is the largest distributed free software event in the world — last year, there were install fests in more than 200 cities in 18 countries in Latin America.

The goal of the event is to promote the use of free software, so the general public can know its philosophy, install GNU/Linux on their computers, learn about the applications and understand how they are developed by volunteer communities. Every install fest is free of charge in every location and they also include lectures, presentations and workshops.

Check out the list of countries hosting the event:

In the interest of discussing software freedom, this bit of news is both surprising and challenges the ideas that we hold about freedom & democracy as “exports” from the United States.

Currently, President Obama is attending the Fifth Summit of the Americas, where Heads of State from 34 countries in the Americas meet to discuss regional policies for North, Central & South America. All of the countries of the Americas are represented - except Cuba.

These summits have a history of controversy and violence. During the Fourth Summit of the Americas, held in Argentina in 2005, large protests over the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the policies of the Bush Administration in Latin America led to pitched battles in the streets, complete with tear gas and Molotov cocktails. The Third Summit of the Americas became known as the Battle of Quebec, with similar violence erupting out of large-scale protests.

The Fifth Summit is being closely watched because of the significant political re-alignment of the Americas since these “siege summits” happened. Along with the new leadership in the United States, the wide-scale shift to the left in Latin America has meant that people like Evo Morales (who was one of the protesters during the last two summits) are now participating in the summit as Heads of State. Because of this shift, there is heavy pressure on the United States to end their 50-year embargo on Cuba and insistence that Cuba be banned from the Summit of the Americas.

In a related issue, bloggers are starting to take notice that countries like China are not the only ones to enforce a “national firewall” - as every sysadmin knows, a firewall controls both incoming and outgoing packets! And the “United States firewall” has been exposed by LinkedIn’s official policy of banning users from Cuba, Syria, Sudan, Iran and North Korea. Apparently, Google and Sun also ban users from these countries because of U.S. embargo laws.

Here is the official support response from LinkedIn to a user from Syria who lost their LinkedIn account:

Dear Anas,
Per the terms of our User Agreement, use of LinkedIn services, including our software, is subject to export and re-export control laws and regulations. This includes the Export Administration Regulations maintained by the United States Department of Commerce and sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.
Regards,
Kelly
LinkedIn Customer Support