Re: CJR returned to sender

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

Jeff Weinstein <jsw@netscape.com> writes:

>  Should they also reject the same content (RSA-PERL) delivered
>in any of the following ways:

>	Printed on paper
>	Printed on paper in OCR font
>	Printed on paper in barcode
>	Printed on paper with magnetic ink (like checks)

>  The lines being drawn here seem very arbitrary.

But lines are always arbitrary.  I posted about this a long time ago: it
is assault to hit a man with a baseball bat, but presumably not to hit
him with a feather.  Should we then ask if it is assault to hit him with
a straw hat, with a pillow, with a loaf of bread?  The lines which will
end up being drawn will also be quite arbitrary.  The line between day
and night is arbitrary but that does not mean that there is no difference
between day and night.  This whole exercise in line-drawing doesn't seem
that productive to me.

The appellate court has already ruled that restrictions on export of
printed materials do not violate First Amendment rights.  I wrote up one
of these, the Posey case, in
<URL:http://www.portal.com/~hfinney/cryp_export2.html>.  In that instance
the materials being exported were some manuals obtained from the US
government itself via the Freedom of Information Act!  The law in
question was not actually the ITARs but rather another one which applied
specifically to exports to South Africa, and which did not have the
public domain exemption.  The point though is that the court did not agree
that the First Amendment was relevant since the restrictions were
specifically on export and did not have any effect on domestic
distribution of the information.

Hal