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.