Until 1999 (had to look it up) france completely banned "unlicensed" use of encryption. Even to the extent that if you had a windows NT server and changed the

Until 1999 (had to look it up) france completely banned "unlicensed" use of encryption. Even to the extent that if you had a windows NT server and changed the region to france, it would replace your hashed password with a plaintext version when you next logged in. So, there is a history of boneheaded tech laws.