Re: LYNX-DEV SSL export license

[tzeruch]

On Thu, 3 Jul 1997, Hynek Med wrote:

> BTW, how hard would it be to get a regular export license from US
> authorites? Perhaps the FSF could ask for it?

Start at

http://www.privacy.org/ipc/

for the full discussion.

Basically, the US will not issue an export license for anything that
contains strong crypto (with a few exceptions for banking and
authentication).  Maybe MIT will have some luck with their user cert
version, but I have my doubts. 

They don't make any exceptions for things using crypto from other
countries, so although SSLeay is available everywhere but the US
(including Canada!), you still can't place it on an US FTP site since that
would be exporting it.  And they consider any code with hooks to crypto as
being crypto (or maybe not, a costly court challenge would clarify this). 
But that is governmental logic.

Actually, my simplest version is one page of text, contains no crypto, and
I can send printed matter (Source code which is not specifically designed
for OCR) outside the US without any license.  My stronger programs are not
much longer.  But they would need someone to scan or type them in (as is
being done with PGP 5.0 as I write this).  And I can't afford postage to
everyone outside the US.

PGP scanning info with more explanations are at:

http://www.ifi.uio.no/pgp/


;
; To UNSUBSCRIBE:  Send a mail message to address@hidden
;                  with "unsubscribe lynx-dev" (without the
;                  quotation marks) on a line by itself.
;