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It's a darned good thing they got that export exemption otherwise there would have been containerloads of Firefox held up at the border and storeowners all over
by GiraffeNecktie 17y ago
It's a darned good thing they got that export exemption otherwise there would have been containerloads of Firefox held up at the border and storeowners all over the world would be screaming that they didn't have enough Firefox for the Christmas rush.
- jacquesm 17y agoEver since the Zimmerman case I wondered how they were going to actually enforce this. I understand if you have a corporate presence in the US that it helps to play nice but the amount of encryption software that is available in repositories all over the planet basically means that this whole encryption-is-a-munition thing is ridiculous. It always was, but if the intent was to restrict encryption capabilities to the current definition of 'the good guys' then it utterly failed.
- stingraycharles 17y agoLink explaining the Zimmerman case, for people who are curious too: http://www.gimonca.com/personal/archive/philzima.html http://www.gimonca.com/personal/archive/philzima.html
- mkelly 17y agoI'm waiting for governments to realize that export laws as they currently exist just don't apply to software. The way software crosses borders is different (i.e. it's irrelevant whether it does or not; there's no border with border guards to pass), and the way it's created and distributed is different (which is why "containerloads of Firefox" is funny). I realize the laws probably won't change for a very long time, but hopefully everyone will accept much sooner that they're meaningless and unenforceable. It was my understanding, though, that the encryption-as-munitions thing had expired and gone away, at least with regard to average strong-crypto programs like PGP. I can't find a good source for that now, though.