Hal wrote:
The appellate court has already ruled that restrictions on export of printed materials do not violate First Amendment rights. I wrote up one of these, the Posey case, in <URL:http://www.portal.com/~hfinney/cryp_export2.html>. In that instance the materials being exported were some manuals obtained from the US government itself via the Freedom of Information Act! The law in question was not actually the ITARs but rather another one which applied specifically to exports to South Africa, and which did not have the public domain exemption. The point though is that the court did not agree that the First Amendment was relevant since the restrictions were specifically on export and did not have any effect on domestic distribution of the information.
The ITARs are currently keeping us(Netscape) from distributing our US-only products to people within the United States. We have asked for clarification from the government about network distribution, such as how much verification of location and citizenship of the recipient we must do, and have yet to receive a response. That makes it more than just an export issue, at least for us. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine.