[10830] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
(hypothetical) mandatory Clipper Chips
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John [Francis] Stracke)
Fri Mar 11 15:13:15 1994
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 10:10:49 +0500
From: francis@avalle.insoft.com (John [Francis] Stracke)
To: com-priv@psi.com
I just thought of something--if the govt. were to ban the use of non-
Clipper encryption, wouldn't people like PKP be able to sue on the
grounds that the govt. was devaluing their property (the public key
patents)? The Supreme Court ruled a couple of years ago that a law
which makes it illegal for someone to use his property in a formerly
legal way is a taking, and is permitted only under the eminent domain
clause of the Constitution, which requires that the govt. pay a fair
price for what it gets. The specific instance was a (property)
developer in SC whose seafront land became worthless under new SC
environmental laws; the Court ruled that the state had to compensate
him for his lost investment.
So what does this mean? Probably means the ban won't be total, just
wherever they can weasel it into contractual situations and so forth.
Joy.
/===========================================================================\
|John (Francis) Stracke | My opinions are my own. |
|InSoft, Inc. |==================================================|
|Mechanicsburg, PA | "Fate just isn't what it used to be." |
|francis@insoft.com | --Hobbes |
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