A very hot topic (and one of my favorites to track) on this list is the shutting down of various sites due to various factors. I'd be interested in hearing more of the BBS shutdown cases here, which are oft-rumored on Internet but rarely discussed authoritatively. Anyway, here's some strange actions by the State Dept. in shutting down a DEC FTP site. I wonder if this was *after* that little DES FTP retrieval demonstration before congress--did that give some people ideas? Anyway, this is disturbing, and the question always is `is this an isolated action or a trend emerging'--if hostility reaches the people who are responsible they are unlikely to do it again; even ivory tower bureacrats have a large CYA instinct (that's how they get there and stay there). Note that this was NOT the DECWRL machine but another at DEC. ===cut=here=== Subject: State Dept. shuts down open-access Internet DEC-Alpha via export ctl! Date: Thu, 08 Jul 93 01:34:07 -0700 From: gnu@cygnus.com DEC was the first company to put up one of their machines on the Internet so that people could log in and port their (free or commercial) software to it. This is a great idea, which I'm encouraging others to emulate. But the government objects... The machine was called axposf (AXP is the model, OSF is the operating system) .pa.dec.com (in the Palo Alto office of the DEC computer company). Anyone could connect to it over the Internet, using a standard protocol (telnet), and type to it, as if they were sitting at its console. This was WONDERFUL for people who are working on software. The AXP is a new "64-bit" machine, and most software will need at least minor revisions to accomodate it. But most software authors and companies won't immediately buy an AXP. Making one available for casual use on the Internet means that much more software would appear on the AXP sooner. The State Dept. regulates "remote access to computers" as equivalent to "export of computers". I shudder to think what would happen if they discovered that ordinary email can invoke processing remotely. Unfortunately, the machine is at DEC, which is gunshy about export problems, after getting a multimillion dollar fine (which I don't think they ever challenged in court) because some customer trans-shipped a Vax to Eastern Europe in the '70s. A more modern company might simply tell the State Dept. to shove it, and beat them in court over the unconstitutionality of the export laws. Are they seriously telling us that we can't put a public access machine on the Internet? Can we attach phone lines to it instead? If not, a few thousand BBS's running on fast machines are violating export laws... If so, what is the specific difference between the Internet and a phone line, that lets a company distinguish a legal act of commerce or communication from an illegal act of export? John, can you make sure the Congressional committees hear about this? As far as I know, they are still not on email. John Gilmore ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 7 Jul 93 02:12:04 -0700 From: paul@vix.com (Paul Vixie) Message-Id: <9307070912.AA15402@gw.home.vix.com> To: gdb@cygnus.com, mike@mbsun.mlb.org Subject: fyi ... I helped set up axposf.pa.dec.com before I left DECWRL, and I know that the U. S. State Department demanded that it be shut down since there were no access controls to prevent foreign nationals (even those we are not friendly with right now, e.g., Iraq) from telnetting in and getting access. Since the DEC Alpha machines fit the legal description of "supercomputer", this access amounts to "exporting munitions" even though the hardware doesn't move and the crypt(3) sources aren't online. Anyway the service is down right now and the relevant folks at DECWRL and DECNSL are working hard to get it back up again but meanwhile there are no guest DEC Alpha ("AXP") machines on the Internet just now. [gw:i386] telnet axposf.pa.dec.com Trying 16.1.0.14... Connected to axposf.pa.dec.com. Escape character is '^]'. OSF/1 (axposf.pa.dec.com) (ttyp1) login: axpguest Password: Login incorrect login: Connection closed by foreign host. [gw:i386] date Wed Jul 7 02:00:08 PDT 1993 - -- Paul Vixie "Be neither a conformist or a rebel, <paul@vix.com> for they are really the same thing. decwrl!vixie!paul Find your own path, and stay on it." (me) ------- End of Forwarded Message To: farber@pcpond.cis.upenn.edu Subject: Re: When did the DECWRL machine get pulled off the net? Date: Thu, 08 Jul 93 12:13:41 PDT From: Paul A Vixie <paul@vix.com> it happened about two months ago, while i was still brian reid's employee. note that DECWRL is still there, it's the corporate internet gateway. what got taken off the net was an AXP-OSF/1 guest machine. the state department said it was legally a supercomputer and since dec could not guarantee that folks on the SD's DNP ("denied parties list") (Iraq, for example) would be prevented from using it, they insisted that the machine be shut down. we got the notification from the lord-high-weenie of dec's legal department, and since they more-or-less outranked us we had to pull the machine off the net. i don't work for dec any more so i'm free to discuss this. brian reid, my old boss, is not free to discuss this. the whole thing makes me really really angry.