I thought I would get a rise out of someone with this one. Good.
I was hoping it would.
On Thu, Aug 03, 2000 at 12:14:21AM -0400, Henry Spencer wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> > They don't want to merely be in a clean defensible position where the
> > courts would find in their favor, they want to be so overwhelmingly
> > safe that there would be nothing that could be brough against them for
> > which they would have to defend themselves.
> This actually misses the point rather badly. The key issue is not whether
> the project has to defend itself -- it has lawyers available if need be --
> but whether people will be scared off from using good crypto because it
> *just might* be an export violation. The bad guys have historically been
> rather skillful at winning battles with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)
> when they weren't likely to prevail in court. The point of our policies
> is to eliminate all reasonable doubt about whether the code is truly free,
> unencumbered, uncontrolled, and **legitimately** usable by everyone.
> Including people who can't touch it if there seems to be any chance that
> they might someday end up in court over it.
Actually, this is ALMOST as silly as the point I raised. I
guess it all comes down to the definition of "reasonable". Most
"reasonable" people, I run into, wouldn't loose a wink of sleep over
it as it stands now. For most "reasonable" people, all "reasonable"
doubt is gone and they are more worried about throwing as many nails
in the coffin of those regulations as they can.
The spread of PGP certainly wasn't hindered much by the very
real and very active persecution by the US government. In fact,
even during the darkest days of the PGP repression efforts, the only
ones I knew of who would even loose a moments sleep over using PGP were
in the US government. The big concern, back then, with businesses I
consulted with was that it was so difficult to use and some concern
over the patent issues (which were promptly solved by purchasing a
copy of ViaCrypt). Want a legally exported copy, wait till the US
authors printed the book and got it scanned in overseas. What a
joke that was! But it still got exported and still got sold and
still got used.
Is anyone hesitating to use PGP right now because the US may
come back some day and say "well, you can't export that any longer and
if you use it in any of your foreign offices we will prosecute you"?
I don't think so... I don't think that's "reasonable" at all.
Mind you, the worries you describe are for those in Canada.
It makes no difference for us in the US at all, obviously. The code
could contain US written code or could be written on Mars for all we
care and it doesn't affect its usability in the US or its exportability
from the US (well, that wasn't totally true by the letter of the law,
but it is, in fact, true now). It makes no difference to anyone outside
of the US and Canada, because US law doesn't apply to them and can't
affect what they already have. That leaves Canada. So now I'm doing
exactly what I just advised others not to do in another message.
I'm speaking to the state of affairs in a foreign country (Canada).
No where else in the world does it matter. So what is it in the
state of affairs of Canada that makes this situation so problematical?
The reciprocity treaties? How? When that horse has already left the
barn and the code is already spread all over the world, the US is going
to have a damned time slamming the doors shut on their OWN code that's
been exported from the US. I think THAT ALONE has removed all
"reasonable" doubt in my mind.
But I'm in the US as is John, so you tell me... Why is "reasonable"
so much different in Canada as elsewhere?
> Considering that our founder John Gilmore is already spending considerable
> time, money, and effort on legal challenges to US crypto policy, the claim
> that we're scared of legal action is more than a little silly.
I understand that and appreciate that John's neck has been stuck
out there far further and far longer than mine has been here in the US.
That doesn't address the situation in Canada, though.
I'm more concerned that this thing with FreeSWAN is taking on
the trappings of a "cause celebrity" and is less reasonable all the time.
> Henry Spencer
> henry@spsystems.net
Mike
-- Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw@WittsEnd.com (The Mad Wizard) | (770) 331-2437 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/ NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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