"There are many reasons the proposed SSSCA - the
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act proposed by
Senators Fritz Hollings and Ted Stevens - is an astoundingly bad
idea. But would it kill the open-source movement, as has been
suggested many places on the Net? It's not obvious. In fact, it's
possible we're being played for fools.
The SSSCA is apparently aimed at providing a technological fix
to the problem of copyright violation. It's so easy to reproduce
protected digits, however, that the fix requires taking a wrench to
the very gonads of computing. This has raised fears that the SSSCA
would have the unintended consequence of killing Linux and other
open-source software. Here are the fears I've found. (If you have
more, please let me know.)"