[108072] in Cypherpunks
Re: you don't have to ask, but you'll be sorry you didn't
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Motyka)
Wed Feb 3 11:55:21 1999
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 08:30:34 -0800
From: Michael Motyka <mmotyka@lsil.com>
To: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
CC: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Michael Motyka <mmotyka@lsil.com>
Bill,
I like generic questions.
When I asked the question originally the answer seemed *obvious* - an
applet has been exported if it is accessed from offshore. Execution on
the remote machine supports that argument. Your note made me think of a
variation to the original question that may be worth discussion.
It's not unreasonable to argue that a web page and any bytecode applets
it contains are SW products that are freely available and in the public
domain for use by anyone in the US. Does this alter the obvious answer
to the original question regarding a browser in another country?
Maybe the designers of the Wackenoff Agreement have gone and fucked
themselves...
Mike
>
>
Bill Stewart wrote:
>
> At 12:24 PM 2/1/99 -0800, Michael Motyka wrote:
> >Am I right in assuming that an applet that performs non-exportable
> >encryption is considered to have been exported when the page is accessed
> >by someone offshore?
>
> You've asked that in very generic terms.
>
> Some governments consider it to be export if someone outside their
> territory downloads information from a computer inside their territory,
> and some don't. Among those that do, some consider the export
> to have been performed by the sender; others may consider it to have
> been done by the recipient.) I consider it to be none of their business,
> but they didn't ask me, and you did :-)
>
> If the information that was downloaded happens to be
> export-prohibited crypto software, then the fact that it's an
> applet on a web page as opposed to a file on an FTP server
> is unlikely to affect how they treat it. There may, however,
> be different export rules for binary vs. source,
> and they may have randomly annoying opinions about whether
> Java Bytecodes should be treated as one, the other, or both.
> Thanks!
> Bill
> Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
> PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
