On Mon, Mar 09, 1998 at 11:26:15PM +0000, Markus Kuhn wrote:
After government attempts to ban unrestricted encryption, we are now facing a decryption ban
Industry lobbyist groups have managed to persuade the European Commission to introduce rather radical new legislation for protecting pay-TV broadcasters against unauthorized reception by consumers. Not only the commercial advertising and sale of pirate devices is to be prohibited (this has already been the case in a number of member countries and is perfectly acceptable), but also the private possession or use of clone decoders as well as any private exchange of information about the security properties of pay-TV encryption systems will become illegal and punishable under the planned EU conditional access directive.
In the US there is not yet a ban on exchange of information because of the potential first amendment issues, but there are (and have been since the late 1980s) felony level bans with $500,000 fines for each incident on the manufacture, assembly, modification, import, export, sale and distribution of any device or equipment primarily of assistance in the unauthorized decryption of satellite cable programming or direct to home satellite. And unauthorized interception of radio signals including satellite video transmissions that are scrambled or encrypted can be prosecuted under current law as a felony. -- Dave Emery N1PRE, die@die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18