Comment by sopooneo
11 years ago
I am missing something here. It seems a restriction on exporting software is like a regulation on which air molecules can flow out the door. It's impossible to enforce in the internet age. So why all this workaround? Why not just give it freely to people in the US with the full knowledge that one or more of them would email it to people in other countries, possibly compressed or encrypted so that it wouldn't be recognizable if someone scanned the files?
Was this all just so that there was a plausible legal explanation for the code's existence outside the US, even though the means to make it happen otherwise were already obvious and undetectable?
Yes -- the issue was the code was strongly associated with named US persons in the US. If the code appeared outside the uS, it would have been difficult or impossible for any entity complying with US law to make use of that code, and there might have been serious repercussions on the named US people (PRZ, specifically).
The source code itself got posted anonymously before this point (I believe on cypherpunks@toad.com list), but officially exporting it like this was still helpful.
The goals were: staying out of jail but ALSO potentially making money through commercial versions, support, etc. There have been at least 3 incarnations of PGP as a commercial company.