"The Treasury Department has not responded to requests for an explanation."
Creeping censorship?
Sunday, March 7, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
UNLIKE THE totalitarian regimes condemned by the United States, ours is a nation where we never have to fear government censorship.
Right? Or has something changed?
To the shock of publishers, editors and translators, the Treasury Department recently issued regulations that prohibit editing manuscripts that come from Iran -- and perhaps other countries, including Cuba, Libya, North Korea, with whom trade is banned without a government license.
The new regulations require editors to publish only "camera-ready copies of manuscripts" and warn that they may face serious legal consequences if they insert illustrations, correct grammar, replace inappropriate words or rearrange paragraphs or sentences. If publishers violate these regulations, they could be charged with "trading with the enemy," and receive a fine of $500,000 and a 10-year prison sentence.
The publishing industry has rightly condemned these regulations as an imposition of censorship. Eric Swanson, a senior vice president at John Wiley & Sons, said that it is "against the principles of scholarship and freedom of expression, as well as the interests of science, to require publishers to get U.S. government permission to publish the works of scholars and researchers who happen to live in countries with oppressive regimes."
