tlug: Japan Crypto Law

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Cozens <simon@example.com> writes:

    Simon> Not particularly Linux related, I know, but I'm aiming to
    Simon> set up a mirror of the Munitions cryptography archive. So
    Simon> far as I can see there's no import, export or use
    Simon> restrictions unless we're talking about contracts more than
    Simon> 5 man. Is that still the case?

This being Japan, I wouldn't worry about what the law or regulations
say.  I doubt they'd take you to court over it; I'm sure you've planty
of more convenient hostages they could threaten.  With the U.S. headed
toward more sensible policy it's unlikely the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs would care.  But if Mitsubishi is selling a competitive
product, MITI might.

I'd try to get "administrative guidance" from the Ministries if you
expect to get a lot of traffic and visibility to your site.  OTOH,
Cryptix has an official mirror, with their elliptic cryptography etc;
I'd think you'd be OK.  The RING is mirroring all the Mozilla stuff.
(But "Munitions" might actually ring some bells with the 'crats :-/ )

A web search at Yahoo Japan for "crypto source archive mirror" turned
up a lot of references to TLUG, amusingly enough.  We are a hotbed of
sedition.  (As seems to be the usual case, Google did a _lot_ better.)

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