On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 02:32:44PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
| > Despite your contempt for Netscape and Microsoft, they do,
| > in fact, sell strong crypto products where they are able
| > to. If the CEOs of these companies went to their boards of
| > directors and told them that they were going blow off the
| > entire international market because they didn't want to put
| > export grade crypto into their products, they'd be out of
| > their jobs faster than you could say "stockholder lawsuit."
|
| PGP neither crippled its product, nor did it blow off the
| export market. Instead it vigorously worked around the
| existing laws. Microsoft has made some effort to get around
| these laws, but seemed to lose interest. Perhaps Bill Gates
| was the recipient of a little talk. Netscape does not seem
| to have made any effort to get around these laws.
That is not the case. Netscape published a good deal on what they
were going through, spent substantial sums on lobbying (there was a
while when Netscape's counsel, (Peter Haber)? was one of the most
prominient voices on this subject), got conditinal access crypto put
in, and shipped a browser or two with a "POLICY-BEGINS-HERE"" bug that
could be fixed with a text editor.
To say Netscape didn't achieve what we all wanted them to would be
correct. To assert that they didn't try is revisionist history
comprable to the work done by Winston Smith.
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
