From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@upaya.multiverse.com>
Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 23:31:57 +0800
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Civil Disobediance
In-Reply-To: <199705152201.XAA02581@server.test.net>
Message-ID: <199705161509.LAA07342@upaya.multiverse.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Adam Back writes:

: 
: Dr Roberts writes:
: > Perhaps there is a way to turn the training on the trainers?  Civil
: > disobediance is the best way to do this.  Were a relatively small
: > number of people, a thousand for instance, to post the "RSA in 3
: > lines" code to the world, it would be highly unlikely that anybody at
: > all would be prosecuted, 
: 
: Many 1000s of people have exported it.  See also Vince Cate's arms
: trafficker page.
: 
: 	http://online.offshore.com.ai/arms-trafficker/
: 
: Around 3000 T-shirts were sold also.  Guess there are a fair number of
: people practicing civil disobedience in the US as a result.  They're
: still selling, see:
: 
: 	http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/uk-shirt.html
: 
: for order info.
: 
: While it's probably technically illegal to export, it clearly doesn't
: get you in trouble to export it.  Raph Levien sent off a Commodity
: Jurisdiction Request together with a sample T-shirt to ask permission
: to export the T-shirt under the ITAR regulations.  They did not answer
: his request.  I presume that they viewed either a "yes" or a "no" as a
: loose for them.  If they say no, they open themselves for mockery in
: the press, if they say yes, we progress the situation.  Export on
: paper?  Floppy?  Internet?  Bigger programs.

Under the new Commerce Department export regulations it appears that
encryption software printed as hard copy---and I think that T-shirts
are hard enough for this purpose---can be freely exported.  But
the same material in electronic form may not be exported or placed on
a web site without a license.  So the T-shirts are now OK, but under
the EAR it is still an offense to send the code in a sigfile to an
international e-mail list.

It is possible that the application for permission to export the
T-shirt may have influenced this result.

(What is Raph Levien's e-mail address?  I would like to ask him the
details about his application for a Commodity Jurisdictionb Request.
It should be an amusing footnote in my casebook for my course in
computers and the law.)

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu   
     NOTE: junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists