david@sternlight.com wrote:

At 5:09 PM -0700 7/22/96, Ted Anderson wrote:

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shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green) writes:

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At 15:27 7/20/96, Tom Weinstein wrote:

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Why not consider what the consequences will be? Do you seriously believe that this will make the government stop enforcing ITAR? Do you believe it will make them change the law? No. What it will do is make them remove our permission to distribute this stuff.

I doubt that. PGP has been distributed for years with less safeguards than Netscape. It is available on more free-world sites than Netscape US. This did not prompt the powers that be to force MIT to take down their site. ...

I must agree with Lucky. I am quite sure that even if Netscape was not begin distributed over the net, copies would still be uploaded to international sites by folks practicing Civil disobedience.

To call simple lawbreaking by cowards working in secret "civil disobedience" is to defame the name of Gandhi, King, and all the legitimate protesters of modern history. Civil disobedience must be seen publicly, and must be done by observable individuals. Masked men throwing stink bombs is not civil disobedience--it's hooliganism.

As I have said before, European & other foreign users, who get the strong- crypto version should pay Netscape what they owe Netscape, to keep the ITAR as the issue, and not piracy. These are two separate issues, and if necessary the foreign users can mail anonymous cash [the paper kind] to assuage their consciences. Not all will do this, of course, but that's another example of ITAR losing US companies $ again. Lucky is, as usual right. There is a double standard for PGPdistribution vs other strong crypto distribution, and Tim is also right that this GAK-loving info-disclosure requirement sets a *really* lousy precedent for later software distributions. Pelease deal with issues separately. me