[lysace]

Even low-grade encryption was actually forbidden in France for a while in the mid 90s. I remember snickering about the whole thing back then, in a much smaller but also quite similar forum.

https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_...

> Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month jail term. Right now, apart from a handful of exemptions, any unauthorised use of encryption software is illegal.

These two former empires seem/seemed to have an over-inflated sense of importance and ability to control the world.

[pjc50]

There was also in the 90s the weird period of export control of encryption software from the US, leading to the "this tshirt is a munition" shirts with the algorithm printed on them. And the (thankfully failed) "clipper chip" mandate.

[dcow]

Those controls all still exist. You just get a pass if you’re using “standard crypto”. Or if your implementation is open source.

[Quarrel]

Export controls still exist, but we're at least a far cry from the days of "This version of Mozilla is illegal to download if you are outside the USA. Please don't do it."

(and before that PGP!)

[aspenmayer]

Japan was worried about running afoul of these same laws and banned sales of the PS2 in certain countries, I think the same countries we weren't allowed to share advanced crypto with.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-later-how-concerns-about... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250619030114/https://www.pcmag...

> All that power caught the eye of Japan’s Trade Ministry. In April 2000, they issued an edict[0]: if Sony wanted to ship the PS2 abroad, they would need to request a special permit. The law as written required any exporter who wished to ship hardware with potential military applications worth more than $472 outside the country to obtain permission from the government or face up to five years in prison.

> With a sticker price of $376, that meant any kind of bulk PS2 shipments would run afoul of the law. If the company couldn’t convince their government otherwise, American gamers wouldn’t have a chance to play Ridge Racer V or TimeSplitters on launch day.

> Sony applied for a special export permit to get its new console to the rest of the world, but a few countries were blacklisted. Libya, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were considered potentially likely to use the console for nefarious purposes. Here in the United States, we got the hardware on October 26, as planned.

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/716237.stm | https://web.archive.org/web/20241212131304/http://news.bbc.c...

[hungmung]

There are no real laws or court rulings protecting crypto, the Department of Commerce simply changed their rules to allow it, and I have no doubt they could easily change them back if the mood struck them.

Zimmerman had a novel defense (selling PGP source code as a book, which should be protected by 1A), but it was never actually tested in court.

[gosub100]

I wonder if the primary purpose of the law was to have a catch-all charge to file against people who stole military equipment? Of course there are charges like espionage and theft, but it seems like it could be a tactic to be able to levy "exporting an encryption device" charges in addition to everything else.

[pjc50]

It was a legacy from the era of the enigma machine, where encryption required a dedicated cipher device, rather than something you could do in pure code.

[alsetmusic]

Apple made an advertisement about the PowerMac G4 as a "supercomputer" because of onerous export controls related to encryption way back. It's more cheeky, I think, than serious. But then again, I haven't looked into it beyond just remembering that it happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxvLq0dFvw

[GeekyBear]

When you go back a few decades, "supercomputer" level performance doesn't seem all that impressive now.

A Raspberry Pi outperforms a Cray-1 supercomputer, for instance.

[waste_monk]

>A Raspberry Pi outperforms a Cray-1 supercomputer, for instance.

In terms of compute power this is true. However in terms of design and aesthetics I still find the Cray much more charming than the Pi (even if you start adding fancy cases and so on).

[lysace]

The French encryption ban was a moronic aberration that just lasted a few years. Hopefully just like this UK regulation.

It wasn’t relevant to any Apple ads.

[anthk]

From Minitel to the telecomms irrelevance against the US and UK. I'd guess the French investors's would love to kick the nuts of the whole parliament members signing that crap.