Softlayer / Blocking Cuba IP's ?

Fri Feb 19 23:08:42 UTC 2016

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 at 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.