Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs

Re:Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs by jkot on Saturday July 09, 2016 @03:15AM (#12060515)

> makes it a crime to circumvent an “effective means of access control” that sits between users and copyrighted works

US had always legal troubles with cryptography. In past programs like PGP, TrueCrypt etc were developed outside US. That can easily happen with browsers.

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Re:Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs by thaumasiotes on Saturday July 09, 2016 @03:20AM (#12060529)

Huh? PGP was developed in, and published from, the US. Hence the criminal investigation.

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Re:Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs by drxzcl on Saturday July 09, 2016 @05:44AM (#12060790)

It's was split off at version 2.6.3(i) into an "international version" that was exported by printing the source into several large books and scanning them in, and then further developed outside of the US. I believe most current PGP versions are descended from the international branch, but I could be wrong.

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Re:Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs by effie on Saturday July 09, 2016 @09:36AM (#12061254)

That sounds interesting. What was the point of printing source and scanning it back into computer? Did that bypass the export law back then?

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Re:Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs by kalleboo on Saturday July 09, 2016 @10:12AM (#12061326)

http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/

> However, the Export Regulations only covers software in electronic form (e.g. on disks, or via the Internet).

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