On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 2:46 PM David Rowe <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've found in the past the Australian law in this area tends to be closely > aligned with the US. > The USA takes their law on defense, intellectual property, etc. and puts it in a treaty for other nations to sign onto. And you don't get most-favorable trading partner status for your country, or defense assistance, etc. if you don't sign on to those things. Of course, some of it is actually in your interest. I don't want to give missiles to North Korea. But a lot of it is to push an intellectual property regime that doesn't really work in the interest of Open Source projects. This is not legal advice, show this to a lawyer who is admitted to the Bar Association and licensed in your state, and contracted to you. That is the only person who can render legal advice to you (under the law where I am). While there is indeed a "public domain" exemption in both ITAR and EAR, the ITAR one doesn't actually count publication on the internet as a means of placing art in the public domain. It thus is to your advantage to publish scientific papers and get them accepted to journals. It also helps to get the source code on a CD (for example a Linux distribution) that is publicly available. I go into publication strategies in depth at https://www.openresearch.institute/itar-and-ear-strategy/ My reading of ITAR 120.9 is that if you render aid to a foreign defense project, whether the work is in the public domain or not, you're providing a defense service as defined below, and thus potentially in violation of the law: §120.9 Defense service. (a) Defense service means: (1) The furnishing of assistance (including training) to foreign persons, whether in the United States or abroad in the design, development, engineering, manufacture, production, assembly, testing, repair, maintenance, modification, operation, demilitarization, destruction, processing or use of defense articles; Regarding what technologies are restricted by ITAR, the part applicable to the project is in the United States Munitions List, Category XI, Military Electronics, item 18: *Parts, components, or accessories specially designed for an information assurance/information security system or radio controlled in this subchapter that modify its published properties (e.g., frequency range, algorithms, waveforms, CODECs, or modulation/demodulation schemes);* So, what's a radio "controlled in this subchapter"? Explicitly stated are a spread-spectrum radio providing a low probability of interception, a laser communicator, or a VLF radio that could potentially get a signal underwater. So, there is context necessary. But this does not state a bandwidth, and the SM-1000 can very easily be connected to one of the restricted devices. The Commerce Control List (used for EAR) has the text that got to Australia: Section 5 - Telecommunications, item b.6. *Employing functions of digital “signal processing” to provide 'voice coding' output at rates of less than 700 bit/s. * So, there are potential complications under both ITAR and EAR. Thus, it's important to maintain the "public domain" nature of the project, and not render aid to defense projects. Thanks Bruce
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