U.S. Treasury Department v. Marshall [1]

Steve Marshall, an English travel agent operating out of Spain, had approximately 80 of his websites shut down as a result of the U.S. Treasury Department's placing them on its blacklist [2]. Many of the sites discussed Cuba, some offering commentary about Cuba, and others offered online travel services to European tourists interested in travelling to Cuba.

According to the Treasury Department, the websites were added to the U.S. Treasury Department's Blacklist [2] because they breached the U.S. trade sanctions with Cuba by enabling U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba.  Treasury claims that its action was part of a broader effort to prevent tourist dollars propping up the "oppressive" Castro regime.

Marshall's US-based domain registrar eNom, Inc. disabled the domains in October 2007 when it was contacted by Treasury and informed of the blacklisting. Marshall reports that he has chosen to put the sites up using new, non-U.S.-registered sites.

There is some dispute over whether Marshall's company helped U.S. nationals to evade U.S. government travel restrictions. According to Treasury, it targeted U.S. citizens (see Press Release [3]). According to Marshall, who is quoted in the New York Times [4], he is not interested in American tourists: "They can’t go anyway."