"IT3 Stuart B. Tener, USNR-R" wrote: > Ms. Harris: (Mr., actually :-) > I thought the Bernstein case said that public domain research > development for ciphers maybe published and exported? My understanding is that it is more complex than that. The international agreement on such things: http://www.fitug.de/news/wa/index.html says: | The Lists do not control "software" which is either: | | 1.Generally available to the public by . . . retail . . . or | 2."In the public domain". so "public domain" software should be completely exempt from export controls. The glossary for that document defines "In the public domain" as: | . . . "technology" or "software" which has been made available without | restrictions upon its further dissemination. | | N.B. Copyright restrictions do not remove "technology" or "software" | from being "in the public domain". so GPL software seems to be "public domain" by their definition. Despite being a signatory to that agreement, the US government has chosen to restrict export of public domain cryptography software. The question of whether code is public domain or not is irrelevant in the Bernstein case: http://www.eff.org/bernstein/ That case revolves around the argument that code is speech, used for communication among programmers, and therefore protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If I understand it correctly, they are arguing that the cryptography export laws are unconstitutional and should be overturned completely. The gov't lost twice in the Bernstein case, first in lower court then again on appeal. At that point, they changed some export regulations -- you can now export public domain source code with only a requirement to notify the gov't. -- and asked for a new hearing. That still doesn't match the international agreement, which says the export restrictions don't apply to public domain code period. Nor does it make it entirely clear whether a US-baased company can ship a Linux distribution with strong crypto in object-code form. The Bernstein/EFF position is that the law is still unconstitutional and should still be struck down. Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
