Cuba

Summary

Cuba presents an opaque and high-risk environment for external crawlers due to pervasive state control of telecommunications and internet infrastructure through ETECSA (the sole state-owned ISP). Decreto-Ley 35/2021 on Telecommunications (Gaceta Oficial, August 2021) grants the Ministry of Communications broad authority to suspend or cancel internet services for content deemed to threaten public order, morality, or national security; this is primarily an operator-directed content-control tool but creates a hostile regulatory backdrop. Ley 149/2022 (Gaceta Oficial, 25 Aug. 2022; in force 21 Feb. 2023) is the first comprehensive personal-data protection law; it covers all automated processing of personal data by public and private entities with enforcement by the Ministry of Justice and fines up to CUP 20,000. The law has no confirmed explicit publicly-available-data carveout. Ley 151/2022 (Penal Code, Gaceta Oficial, September 2022; in force December 2022) introduced cyberspace-related crimes and uses cybercrime as an aggravating factor; specific article numbers for unauthorised-access offences have not been independently verified in accessible English-language sources. Cuba's copyright law (Ley 14/1977) protects original compilations; no TDM exception exists and no sui generis database right is established. No scraping-specific case law is accessible. State control of ETECSA means practical access risk is high independent of statutory analysis.