> More details are here: > http://news.com.com/2100-1028-994667.html
Thanks :) The Texas law is problematic in certain often-used scenarios. Our corporate policy for remote access is to use SSL tunnels wherever practical. In Texas, a road warrior with an up-to-specs configured laptop would commit a crime by only sending and receiving mail using SMTPS and POP3S or IMAPS. Nonsense. Impractical, unenforceable nonsense, respected only by idiots without a clue about security. Regarding the Maryland one, I was unable to chew through the legalese and find/understand the part about format conversion software, but if it is as you say, it means that so trivial and common software like transcode (for conversion of video formats, unix commandline tool, allows retrieving files over FTP or HTTP or (with relevant libraries) even from streaming sources), mencoder (part of mplayer package, the same applies as for transcode) and mmsclient (a small utility for saving MMS streams as ASF/WMV files, handy for watching things you can't get through a not-so-wideband connection) are illegal and by mere ownership of them I become a criminal there? Technically speaking, even a patch cable led from a soundcard Line-Out of one machine into a sound card Line-In of another machine (common setup with more computers and only one pair of headphones) can be considered a circumvention device. How the Law copes here? Will a day come when BATFC (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Copyright) commandos go busting Radio Shack shops, seizing lists of the customers who dared to buy 3.5mm stereo plugs or shielded cable? When will we have to declare and register all our electronic equipment? What worries me here is the quest of the Law Enforcement Departments for better crime statistics; so there is a good probability these nonsenses will get enforced, at least where they will be a low-hanging fruit. Sweeping antiterrorism surveillance powers will be very handy, after the time passes a little and their usage creeps to less serious areas. Do you have too many unsolved murders in your area? Make a pogrom on your local geeks, sweep-raid the suburbs and a local college, get your unsolved crime statistics from 50% down to 15% in a single day, get your quarterly bonuses. </rant> Weird world...
