Mailing List Archive

On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Fabio Coatti wrote:

> I've checked many links about import/export crypto laws, and the now I'm
> even more confused

Although it may not help you may also want to look at the UKCrypto archive
at http://haig.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/I.Brown/archives/ukcrypto. It has
recently had a long discussion with lawyers etc giving their opinions of
the Wassenaar agreement. It may confuse you even more, but may help.

I think that the problem is

i) Wassenaar have not released an official statement yet (although
speaking to lots of officials who are quoted on UKCrypto as well as
elswhere the thrust of the proposals are understood).

ii) The lawyers disagree about how legally binding the Wassenaar agreement
is on different countries.

iii) Germany (and the UK) are bound by both national and EU laws which
often conflict with each other

> I've no idea (in short) if there is some law
> restriction about import/export of crypto products in Italy or Germany. I
> think that there are no problems but
> I'm trying to get some more infos; in the meanwhile I've removed gpg rpms
> from felix.unife.it and flug.unife.it

I think that you are OK at the moment. Wassenaar is just an agreement for
each contry to pass laws in their country. Until the German government
have discussed the proposals and passed new laws themselves it isn't
binding in Germany.

Also non-tangible things like
software is very hard to ban (even though Britain wants to try). Think of
a UK company with a server in Germany. How would the law relate in such
situations?

Finally, public-domain software, is exempt from current laws in Europe.

Anyway, as I say look at
http://haig.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/I.Brown/archives/ukcrypto as there are lots
of discussions going back months on these issues.

cheers,
ian

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Check out this URL for my attempt to figure out how it affects us UK
folk:

<URL:http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/I.Brown/archives/ukcrypto/1198-0299/
msg00125.html>

Ciao!

Martin




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