Re: CJR returned to sender

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 5:13 AM 10/25/95, Raph Levien wrote:
>   I got the CJR back today, envelope unopened (although the corner was
>torn so you could see there were t-shirts inside). "Returned to sender",
>it said, "Refused___, Unclaimed___".
>
>   The address on the envelope reads:
>
>ATTN: Samuel L. Capino - 15 day CJR
>Defense Trade Analyst
>U.S. Dept. of State
>Office of Defense Trade Controls
>PM/DTC SA-6 Room 200
>1701 N. Fort Meyer Drive
>Arlington, CA 22209-3113
>
>   Did I do something wrong, or did the Dept. of State decide it
>didn't want to deal with this CJR?

Raph, I mean no offense, but if _any_ request is ever to be deemed
"frivolous," surely submitting a CJR for t-shirts is such a request.

I won't belabor the point that the t-shirt is _at best_ comparable to a
book, which generally needs no CJR (*), and _at worst_ is an illegible,
confusing "work of art." (I personally am miffed at the imprecision of the
"This shirt has been declared to be a munition"--or whatever, as I don't
have one handy to check--and the language of the sales advertisements.)

So the little joke was returned unopened. Not surprising.

No offense intended to all those who think a CJR for a t-shirt is a worthy
cause, but I think it's a pointless diversion.

(* Hal Abelson of MIT says there are possible export problems with the MIT
Press book on PGP, and MIT dropped plans for a version in a special OCR
font. So, I agree that _some_ books cross the line and look like pure
software. However, I continue to maintain that a badly-printed barcode is
just a joke, nothing more.)

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
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