At 09:39 AM 10/1/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
Now that the shoe is dropping on "Clipper III" (or "Clipper IV"), the "voluntary, for export, key escrow system," how might it be enforced?
Some possibilities:
[snip]
(Else what's to stop Giant Corporation from using Non-GAKked software within the U.S., which is perfectly legal (under the "voluntary" system), but then "happening" to have their foreign branches and customers obtain "bootleg" versions at their end? All it takes is a single copy to get out, and be duplicated a zillion times. Voila, interoperability, with the only "crime" being the first export...which is essentially impossible to stop, for so many reasons we mention so often. Conclusion: Government must make this very mode illegal, perhaps by making it a conspiracy to thwart the export laws....)
If this solution were really practical, it would have been tried already. One of the biggest problems with enforcing anti-export laws is that there is no guarantee that anybody currently within the jurisdiction of the country involved (for concreteness, the US) is actually responsible for a given export. Let alone KNOWN to be responsible. And it's even less likely that it be "provable" within the standards of court cases. Worse, doing the prosecution does nothing about returning the copies of the program to the country of origin, making the whole exercise pretty damn futile!
Any other ideas on how the government plans to enforce GAK, to make GAK the overwhelmingly-preferred solution?
Clipper I was, I think, their best hope for promoting GAK. It would have engineered distorted-market pressure by making it artificially easy to use GAK, hard to use non-GAK. Subsequent proposals have all been weaker, less effective, less practical, and less encompassing. And the "worst" part, from the point of view of the USG, is that it's now 3.5 years after the announcement of Clipper I, and they're no closer to foisting this turkey onto us. Nobody in Congress is under the illusion that the public likes this stuff, unlike 1993 where they could at least imagine that there were no emotions running high on the subject. In 1993, they were under the impression that they could implement their fondest desires with legislation; now the only likely legislation is either anti-GAK or non-GAK. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com