Hi, (disclaimer: I'm Cuban national, living in Cuba, and a long time lurker in this great list) 2016-02-19 15:27 GMT-05:00 Faisal Imtiaz <faisal@snappytelecom.net>:
Considering the fact that such a block was just put in place about a week ago ? Last time I checked, blocking any part of the world is not part of any legal requirements on any Global Service Provider ? other than a 'company policy' ?
Being denied access to services, as a Cuban national, is something that we've all experienced here and we (sadly) have come to accept it as a fact of life. Sometimes we resort to proxies/VPNs in order to conceal our origin -- and by a similar token, sometimes, our destination ;). However, there are a couple of things that have made me wondering how arbitrary decisions can be. I think sometimes it just boils down to specific provider policies that try to (maybe rightfully) cover their bottoms in the light of the law. For instance, I can't hide the fact that I have access to Gmail; but at the same time there are many Google properties and services than I can't. There are many companies, global companies, that I can't access, and others are open to us which are, paradoxically, completely based on the US and under US law (won't name them publicly to avoid potential damage). Any way, I'm going back to lurk mode. However, feel free to ask anything, on- of offlist. And I thank you all for this wonderful resource. Carlos.