Adam <aba@atlas.ex.ac.uk> writes:
Jon Baber <jbaber@mi.leeds.ac.uk> writes:
I believe that the laws regarding the export of crypto from the UK are very similar to the ITAR regs in the US.
I thought they were markedly different!
I always understood there were NO restrictions on crypto export, import or use to western countries. There used to be COCOM agreements which said that you should get approval to send commercially produced crypto to some blacklisted countries (Iraq, etc). I also read that the COCOM restrictions did not claim to apply to free software.
I think that it was the COCOM restrictions that I was thinking about. The blacklist was fairly large (including the USSR) and I believe that it did apply to software (although I do not know about free software).
Anyway, I read that the COCOM agreement has expired, so none of this applies anymore, even.
Now this I did not know. Do you know when it expired and why it was not renued? We must still have some export restrictions for Munitions does this no-longer cover crypo?
However our Government seems to take the view that putting crypto software on the net is not exporting it, the exporting is done whenever anyone from an export restricted country downloads the software and is done by them rather than by the person who made the software available.
I also have heard this.
I can not remember where I heard this though. I don't suppose you know whether this was an official policy statement or just a comment like 'well it may technically be illegal but we would hold the downloader liable rather than the supplier'?
I think he would be safe emailing it, putting it on the WWW, or posting it to USENET. There are no selective access restrictions on *any* crypto ftp/http sites that I know of in the UK (like various ones in the US which make a sho of enforcing the export restriction by not allowing export to non-US domain names.)
Adam
I do not know of any crypto sites in this country with access restrictions but I would still probably make any software available via the WWW or an FTP site (or maybe post it to USENET via a host in this country) rather than actively mail it abroad... but then again I am paranoid (at least it does not involve shipping larges pipes out of the country). Jon jbaber@mi.leeds.ac.uk http://www.chem.surrey:80/~ch02jb/