At 12:18 AM -0600 12/11/01, Jim Choate wrote:
On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, John Gilmore wrote:
NSA's export controls. We overturned them by a pretty thin margin. The government managed to maneuver such that no binding precedents were set: if they unilaterally change the regulations tomorrow to block the export of public domain crypto, they wouldn't be violating any court orders or any judicial decisions. I.e. they are not BOUND by the policy change.
That's not accurate. There have been several court rulings finding source code and such protected by the 1st. This would provide a lever that was not there previously.
In the most recent ruling, Universal v. Remerdez/Eric Corley 2600.com (00-9185), http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-2600-cad.htm , the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declined to overturn an injunction against the posting of DeCSS on the Internet. The Court held that software was speech, but did not enjoy the level of First Amendment protection accorded to pure speech because it is functional with little human intervention. This is a very disturbing precedent which I hope will be reversed on appeal, but given the post-9/11 mood and the limited technological understanding of most judges, I wouldn't count on it. Also I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld export controls in the past, the First Amendment notwithstanding. Having a body of open source crypto software that is not entangled by any U.S. input is not a foolish idea. Surely there are good programers outside the U.S. who understand the importance of making FreeSWAN work seamlessly with Linux. Arnold Reinhold --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com