Re: EU plans decryption ban
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
On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Dave Emery wrote:
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.
There is a law in Pennsylvania that bans the distribution of "plans or instructions" for devices or modifications of devices that can be used for theft of services. Full text at: http://moose.erie.net/~italo/sb0655p0687.html Excerpt: 10 (2) sells, possesses, distributes, gives or otherwise 11 transfers to another[,] or offers, promotes or advertises for 12 sale [any instrument, apparatus, equipment or device 13 described in paragraph (1) of this subsection,] any: 14 (i) unlawful telecommunication device, or plans or 15 instructions for making or assembling the same, under 16 circumstances evidencing an intent to use or employ such 17 [instrument, apparatus, equipment or] unlawful 18 telecommunication device, or to allow the same to be used 19 or employed for a purpose described in paragraph (1) [of 20 this subsection], or knowing or having reason to believe 21 that the same is intended to be so used, or that the 22 aforesaid plans or instructions are intended to be used 23 for making or assembling such [instrument, apparatus, 24 equipment or device.] unlawful telecommunication device; 25 or At the L0pht we distribute a CD that contains plenty of technical data for modifying telecommunications equipment and for building your own from easily obtained parts. We do not ship our CD to Pennsylvania due to this law since we cannot be assured that the intent of the purchaser is not to defraud a telecommunication service provider. Since information can be used for good or bad we are pretty sure that some of the purchasers from Penn will use this information illegally. This goes against everything the L0pht stands for but we do not have the resources to fight this in court. Weld Pond weld@l0pht.com http://www.l0pht.com/~weld
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