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Comment by p-e-w | Hacker News Reader

I never understood the story about the book-printed PGP source code. Isn't source code protected speech under the first amendment anyway, regardless of the form in which it is transmitted? All kinds of media receive first amendment protection, including things like monetary donations, corporate speech, art, etc. I've never heard of there being a requirement for the printed form. Did the interpretation of the first amendment change recently in this regard?

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The book was published in 1995 [1,2]. Free speech protection for source code under US law wasn't decided until 1996, in Bernstein v. United States [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Co...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

The idea was to make it blatantly clear that it's not a "munition".

Why would that matter, if source code is protected speech anyway?

And why is it more "clear" with a printed book vs. an emailed text file?

This was a time when we were happy when they managed to get congresspeople to understand that the internet is not like a truck, but more like a series of tubes.

I think anchoring it to something old school like a book was a good call.

I think if you’re looking for a logical answer from first principles, you won’t find one. It’s more that the legal system runs on precedent, and a book fits far more squarely in the fact patterns of previous First Amendment cases. Likely the source code case would end up with the same outcome, but it doesn’t hurt to make it more obvious.

Legally speaking, it didn't really matter. But symbolically, having the feds argue that a book constitutes "munitions" would be bad optics for them in a way that is more understandable to the average American, compared to more legal arcane arguments about software having 1A protections.

> source code is protected speech

That wasnt the case at the time.

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