🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.123421.50@cobra.dra.com> sean@cobra.dra.com writes:
>In article <1993Jan07.075317.15435@convex.com>, hamrick@convex.com (Ed Hamrick) writes:
>> I've always been a little bit curious about the silliness of restricting
>> the "export" of information that's publicly available.  If our government
>> actually believed that there existed public information that wasn't
>> exportable/exported, I'd be quite surprised.
>
>It is much like the difference between exporting a journal that explains
>how to make gunpowder*, and exporting gunpowder.   The government isn't
>blocking the "knowledge" of how to make gunpowder from being exported,
>only its implmentation.

In this case the software is more like the journal, the computer running
the program is more like the raw materials needed to make the gunpowder.
The government does a great deal to limit the export of high-performance
computing required to do encryption of large amounts of data.

The government does it's best to prevent encryption information from
becoming public knowledge, but after the knowledge becomes public,
the government concentrates it's efforts on preventing high-performance
(bulk) encryption hardware implementations from being exported.


>Gunpowder wasn't invented in the U.S., and lots of people outside the U.S.
>are quite good at making it.  Some would say even better than those in
>the U.S.  [Continue to the point of absurdity.]

The best DES routines come from Finland, anyway.  I suspect the Russians
have excellent cryptographic technology, but inadequate computer power to
allow it's widespread use.  Obviously the Russians, along with every other
country that isn't allowed to import cryptographic equipment, have fully
functional DES and RSA source code.  The whole idea of preventing the export
of such widely available source code is just plain silly.

>*Gunpowder is just an example, replace it with any widely known thing on the
>munitions list.
>
>
>Software, and computers has made this distinction very fuzzy.  With computers
>the software is the implementation.  The computer is just a hunk of gold-plated
>junk without the software.  But then again, so is a chemical plant, until
>you type in the right formula.

Except that the export license clearly states that if source code is
publicly available, then then the object code is exportable.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick