RE: Leahy bill, legalize crypto

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 11:50 AM 3/14/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
>At 2:41 PM 3/14/96, Robichaux, Paul E wrote:

>>The difference here is that the courts have upheld government restrictions
>>on broadcast spectrum because it's a scarce resource. In the special case of
>>encryption on ham bands, no one's ever even challenged the restriction
>>AFAIK. As Duncan Frissell has preached here many times, bandwidth is no
>>longer as scarce, so I think a constitutional challenge to an encryption ban
>>would probably be workable.
>
>Yes, and I said as much--about the bandwidth limitations--in my post. In
>the very next line after you stopped quoting!!!!!:
>
>"Sure, I understand that Internet bandwidth is not the same as the
>"public airwaves," but this subtlety may not be enough to stop the parallel
>from being successfully drawn. Especially if the phone companies and other
>threatened players are pushing hard for the FCC to step in and regulate."

I think your analysis is absolutely correct.  Despite the fact that fiber 
bandwidth has none of the limitations  of "over the air" communications, the 
government will try to regulate it as if it were.  The underlying danger of 
the CDA, in addition to regulating CONTENT, is that the government is 
setting up precedents to regulate the communications AT ALL, which is 
dangerous to us.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com

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