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Old 26th January 2010
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jggimi jggimi is offline
More noise than signal
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
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Call them hypocrites if you want, Beastie, but the fact is, what they hope to achieve is the avoidance of being brought up on charges by the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Quoting from the OFAC's website FAQ:
Quote:
The fines for violations can be substantial. Depending on the program, criminal penalties can include fines ranging from $50,000 to $10,000,000 and imprisonment ranging from 10 to 30 years for willful violations. Depending on the program, civil penalties range from $250,000 or twice the amount of each underlying transaction to $1,075,000 for each violation.
You can call them hypocrites, but this will keep the officers of Geeknet, Inc. out of trouble with US Treasury, and, out of trouble therefore, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as they are a publicly traded company. And, in their last quarterly report, while they do not mention any pending litigation related to any regulatory action by OFAC or others, they do reference possible future regulatory action that could effect their e-commerce as a risk factor to their business. Regulation by US Treasury, such as that imposed by OFAC, or, the more common munitions restrictions such as US State's ITAR or EAR, were not mentioned.
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