The Defendant Is Charged with Good Editing

The following article was originally published in The Chronicle Review on 21 May 2004. Peter Givler surveys the legislative history of Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations that seek to exert licensing authority over the publication of work from countries under embargo. The author - and the publishing community - rejects such authority, citing evidence of Congressional intent to free First Amendment materials from such regulation and arguing that such bars to a free press are harmful to national interests.