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Re: Is SSL legal to import/use in Israel
Hello,
The following information is from an SSL implementation that was
developed outside of U.S.A. and thus did not break any USA exporting
rule. The information relate to this specific implementation but as
a general rule, if one free SSL implementation can be legally used,
then in solve your problems.
For more information look at:
http://www.psy.uq.oz.au/~ftp/Crypto/
Is this legal?
That is one of the hard questions on which there is as yet no clear answer. You
need to read quite a bit of information (see the RAMBLINGS file in the SSLeay
source distribution) to draw your own conclusions - and then go and talk to a
lawyer. Again this document is my opinion and as such should be treated in that
light - reality could be quite different to how I happen to see things :-).
In short:
outside the USA there should be no problems
inside the USA RSA hold patents over the "RSA" algorithms, however if you use
RSAREF (which SSLeay can link to) then non-commercial use is possibly okay.
RSAREF can also be licensed for commerical use from Consensus.
IDEA may be a problem inside Europe and RC4 inside the USA; both can be
removed with a simple compile-time option
Excerpt of message (sent 3 November 1996) by Gilad Ben-Yossef:
> On Sun, 3 Nov 1996, Jonathan Ben-Avraham wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know whether it is legal to use/import SSL (40 bit export
> > SSLeay version) in Israel or other countries? It seems that the apache
> > server SSL patch is not legal to export from England (by their law) but
> > there seems to be no restriction on the CERN patch that does the same
> > thing for the CERN server. According to a rumor on USENET it is illegal
> > to import SSL into France.
>
> I am no no lawyer, but... Even if *exporting* this product out of its
> origin country is unlawfull by the laws of that country, it DOES not say
> its illeagel for you to use this product in Israel once *someone* has
> imported it - Israel (Again, AFAIK) does not have any laws forbiding you
> to use SSL.
>
> It may be illeagel export this product from certain countries, but once
> the product is imported you can use it here "safely" - you are not doing
> anything agint the foriegn country laws - you did not export the product,
> just use it, and you are not doing anything against Israeli laws.
>
> I suggest, though you check this with a lawyer.
>
> G.
>
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--
-- Regards,
Gal.
References: