[737] in libertarians
Re: Zimmerman case
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethf@MIT.EDU)
Thu Feb 23 12:29:12 1995
From: sethf@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 12:26:58 -0500
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
> I'll bet they are REALLY harassing him simply for making a tough program
> that makes it harder for them to monitor what we say. The "export" stuff
> is just a smokescreen. All that did was provide them with an excuse.
Nope. They didn't even know what the PGP program was, and had to
have it explained to them. The person who sic'ed customs on Zimmerman
was the President of RSA Data Security, Inc, James Bidzos. He did this
because he was annoyed at Phil Zimmerman for not paying him umpteen
thousands of dollars in licensing fees for PGP. Rather than seek civil
redress, he used the government to stick the taxpayers with the bill for
his revenge, turning it into a criminal matter (a rather common tactic
for software publishers). My source for this is a personal conversation
from someone who should know (high placed sources say ...), but it may
also be in the recent book by Simpson Garfinkel.
Sorry, while it would be nice to think of this case as motivated
by an evil government repressing The People, it was in reality
instigated by an evil businessman in the service of monopolistic goals
and distortion of the free market. The export-control nonsense is one
side of the story. But the other side is the RSA software patent, a very
broad legal monopoly defended in the name of intellectual property rights.
The URL http://www.eff.org/ is a good place to start reading
about the various topics.
================
Seth Finkelstein
sethf@mit.edu
