> > Another problem is France. You'd end up needing to have linux and
> > linux_for_france (like communicator and communicator_for_france on
> > netscape archives) since just because you can export it doesn't mean
> > other countries can legally import or use it.
I always thought this was some lingiustic issue that Netscape seperated the
French version. Silly me :)
> indeed. The French gov't has made noises that they will relax
> domestic use restrictionms, but there is talk, then there is do.
They announced a few weeks ago that the will allow all encryption upto 128bit
(Hey, where do they have that machine that can do <128bit in a day :)
They also signed the Wassenaar Agreement. Note that this happened only two or
three months after an announcement of the plan to block port 22 nationwide
to block all ssh traffic. Duh.
> In any case, I've never heard of France attempting prosecute anyone in a
> foreign country for having a web site that let French residents download
> illicit crypto.
That will never happen. In some ways Europe is quite different from North
American countries. For example, when the Dutch government tried to pass a long
that stated something like "Every use of crypto is forbidden and we define
crypto to be something that less then 10% of the Dutch people can read" it
only took a few people to publicly ridicule the law to prevent it from passing.
The Dutch (and most western and eastern european countries) seem to have more
outspoken (or at least more influential) freedom of speech fighters. If France
would prosecute someone for this, the entire Europe would en mass put it on
their websites.
(A similar thing already happened to Scientology, which basicly lost their
war entirely due to Europe (though they might not realise this yet), and
on a smaller scale recently the Nuremberg Files (questionable anti-abortionist
site). Even though we don't yell "first amandment" at every street corner, we
tend to protect it with more vigor then for example US citizens seem to do.
(Or perhaps we just have a different kind of media response)).
Anyway, I'm drifting from the subject, meet you all at ciphr to talk about
these issues :)
Paul Wouters
Xtended Internet
-- Broerdijk 27 Postbus 170 Tel: 31-24-360 39 19 6523 GM Nijmegen 6500 AD Nijmegen Fax: 31-24-360 19 99 The Netherlands The Netherlands info@xtdnet.nl
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