On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 03:07:56AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sun, Feb 24, 2002 at 11:34:26PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 01:15:08PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > On Sun, Feb 24, 2002 at 06:59:53PM -0800, Walter Landry wrote: > > > > I'm not so sure that multi-step exporting is legal, at least of the > > > > kind that Florian is discussing. > > > We have advice from a lawyer who specialises in the area that this isn't > > > an issue. > > Last I heard, the legal advice we had received was not within the > > context of an attorney-client relationship. Can you clarify? > > No, not really. Why do you think it's important, and what exactly are > you asking? "Legal advice" is more than just a lawyer giving you his opinion, even if it's perfectly sound. Without an attorney-client relationship, the law doesn't regard you as having received legal advice at all. This is important in any situation where "intent" is being established. If I establish an attorney-client relationship with a lawyer who gives me legal advice to the effect that I can do X without running afoul of the law, then I have a strong affirmative defense when the government indicts me anyway, claiming I had "intent" to, say, violate the BXA regulations. (This assumes that I don't disregard the lawyer's advice and do something he just told me not to.) Without legal advice received in the context of an attorney-client relationship, as far as the law cares I received no legal advice at all, and I lack one defense to charges that "intentionally" violated the BXA. The legal system in Australia might work very differently. Therefore, I am asking if Debian/SPI can establish such an affirmative defense in the event the U.S. government threatens us with indictment (or actually files charges) for violating BXA regs. There is one more barrier between the SPI officers and prison/fines if this defense can be asserted. Legal advice received outside the context of an attorney-client relationship may be intellectually interesting, and "good enough" for small stakes issues. However, in an environment where the current U.S. administration brands as "terrorism" anything that doesn't toe the line of its foreign and domestic policies, I don't think the stakes are low. If the same people who gave us legal advice in the first place are unwilling to establish an attorney-client relationship with us, we should be apprehensive, and wonder why. -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | Music is the brandy of the damned. branden@debian.org | -- George Bernard Shaw http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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