Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995

No one seems to have pointed this out, so:
(maybe it's obvious to everyone else)

>    "Sec. 1030A.  Racketeering-related crimes involving computers
>      "(a) It shall be unlawful--
>
>   . . .
>
>         "(2) to distribute computer software that encodes or encrypts
>       electronic or digital communications to computer networks that the
>       person distributing knows, or reasonably should know, is accessible to
>       foreign nationals and foreign governments, regardless of whether such
>       software has been designated nonexportable."
>
    IANAL, but it seems to me that if I EMAIL a copy of PGP to, say, Tim
May, that I have just "distributed computer software .... to a computer
network ...accessible to foreign nationals ..." even though it was
"private" e-mail.

   Comments, anyone?   Anyone? Bueller? ;-)


>Get a copy of this bill from:
>                ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c104/s974.is.FTP
>and read it.
>
   Betcher ass.

-- Marshall
"The constitution. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than what
we've got."

Marshall Clow writes:
> >
> >         "(2) to distribute computer software that encodes or encrypts
> >       electronic or digital communications to computer networks that the
> >       person distributing knows, or reasonably should know, is accessible t
o
> >       foreign nationals and foreign governments, regardless of whether such
> >       software has been designated nonexportable."
> >
>     IANAL, but it seems to me that if I EMAIL a copy of PGP to, say, Tim
> May, that I have just "distributed computer software .... to a computer
> network ...accessible to foreign nationals ..." even though it was
> "private" e-mail.

Depends on how "computer network" is defined in the statute.

Perry

>     IANAL, but it seems to me that if I EMAIL a copy of PGP to, say, Tim
> May, that I have just "distributed computer software .... to a computer
> network ...accessible to foreign nationals ..." even though it was
> "private" e-mail.

It seems to me that this bill is so broad as to be unworkable, and that
could work in our favor.  I haven't read the full text, and I'm not a
lawyer, but my reading of the excerpts posted here suggest that even stuff
that's been *approved* for export by NSA could be prohibited. 

What would be the status of stuff like NIS+ under this bill?  The 
Netscape commerce server?