[AR] ITAR Revisions Comments Deadline Tonight

  • From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2015 18:35:53 -0700

"The Department of State will accept comments on this proposed rule until August 3, 2015", which I take to mean they're due by midnight EDT tonight, AKA about 2.5 hours.

The good news is, by my reading the proposed ITAR changes at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-06-03/pdf/2015-12844.pdf would finally unambiguously include discussions here as "published" for public-domain determination purposes.

The bad news is, "public domain" would be redefined to only include things published with explicit written government authorization. Add that to the inherent uncertainty whether any given dual-use technology item is or isn't an ITAR-restricted "defense article", and you have a seriously chilling effect on rocketry and related discussions by US persons.

Comments can be emailed to DDTCPublicComments@xxxxxxxxx, with the subject line, ‘‘ITAR Amendment—Revisions to Definitions; Data Transmission and Storage.’’ There's also a website, but it wouldn't load on my browser just now.

More details at http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau142.html#itarproblem


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