Cuba criticised Microsoft on Friday for blocking its Messenger instant messaging service on the island and in other countries under US sanctions, calling it yet another example of Washington's ``harsh' treatment of Havana. The technology giant recently announced it was disabling the program's availability in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea to come into compliance with a US ban on transfer of licensed software to embargoed countries.
The move ``is just the latest turn of the screw in the United States' technological blockade against the island,' a technology writer said in an article published by state youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde. He called the ban on transfer of technology ``a truly harsh violation' of Cuba's rights.
Messenger has been used on the island for a decade without Microsoft interference. Dharmesh Mehta, director of Windows Live Product Management at the Redmond, Washington-based company, said Microsoft actually made the change late last year but that it ``has only recently received attention.'
``Microsoft is one of several major Internet companies that have taken steps aimed at meeting their obligations to not do business with markets on the US sanctions list,' Mehta said, adding that ``Microsoft supports efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a platform for open, diverse and unimpeded content and commerce,' and ``governments should exercise restraint in regulating the Internet.'
Internet communications service Skype currently works in Cuba, but the government evidently has periodically blocked other similar services in the past-sometimes including Messenger. Microsoft's move comes six weeks after the Obama administration announced it was lifting some US restrictions on telecommunications with Cuba in an effort toward easing the island's isolation. It is unclear if those changes will affect the ban on export of licensed software.