From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 15:10:28 +0800
To: "Timothy C. May" <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: How might new GAK be enforced?
Message-ID: <199610020332.UAA16663@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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