legality of mailing Debian CDs from US to overseas?
John B. Fink
Hey folks,
I've just started a scheme for sending Debian x86 CDs (the
"binary-i386.raw" images) free of charge to educational/non-profit
institutions and affiliates --
http://adler.lib.muohio.edu/~jbfink/debian-giveaway. As of today I've
sent out seven CDs -- three to US addresses, one to Canada, one to Sweden,
one to Indonesia, and one to the People's Republic of China. I am located
in the U.S.
Now -- my question is, can I get into any trouble by "exporting" CD-R of
Debian Linux? I'm just sending burns of the "binary-i386.raw" images that
I get via rsync. My primary worry (all of a sudden -- I guess I should've
thought of this beforehand but I was *pretty* sure it was okay) is strong
crypto and the (imho, half-asswd) U.S. munitions export laws concerning
crypto over 40bit.
I just want to make sure I can continue my Debian Giveaway project without
fear of the FBI or some mysterious foreign government equivalent pounding
down my door.
Any information or advice would be appreciated!
-- jf
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Daniel Martin
<SNIP>
> Now -- my question is, can I get into any trouble by "exporting" CD-R of
> Debian Linux? I'm just sending burns of the "binary-i386.raw" images that
> I get via rsync. My primary worry (all of a sudden -- I guess I should've
> thought of this beforehand but I was *pretty* sure it was okay) is strong
> crypto and the (imho, half-asswd) U.S. munitions export laws concerning
> crypto over 40bit.
This is why there exists a non-us section which is distinct from
the regular main, contrib, and non-free sections. By design,
binary-i386.raw does not contain any export-restricted cryptography.
> I just want to make sure I can continue my Debian Giveaway project without
> fear of the FBI or some mysterious foreign government equivalent pounding
> down my door.
You're sending CDs to the PRC? They have some odd censorship laws
there - all that talk about freedom in "free software" might be risky
:-).
(Not to mention some places with strict censorship laws might not like
the "fortunes-offensive" package)
But seriously, as long as the FBI behaves intelligently, they won't be
knocking on your door (for this at least).
That said, I'm uncertain what the US laws are with regard to
non-commercial (you're giving the CDs away) export to countries (such
as Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, North Korea, Iran, and Syria) against
which the US currently has an embargo. If you are really paranoid,
you may wish to avoid sending CDs to those countries. Then again, the
Iranian grad. students here use Netscape all the time and no FBI
people are swarming over the campus computers, so...