"No, the issue is whether 'exporting' a text editor to N. Korea would REALLY make any difference. Perhaps the clueless, bribed, caviar-stuffed and prostitute-sucked morons in Congress think so, but most of them can hardly even send an email."
Think about this for a few milliseconds before ranting. How would you write a law that blocked the bad "exports" while allowing the good "exports" through? It's much less work to write and administer to just to block them all to countries like North Korea.
I'd wager it's even less work not to block anything. Answer me this:
1) Can you point to scientific evidence, or even a carefully-reasoned argument, that blocking U.S.-hosted free software from "rogue" states like North Korea, Syria, or Iran either A) is a meaningful deterrent to the governments of such states or B) has a desirable effect on the citizens of those states?
2) Do you think it's likely that the people with power to make decisions about this actually thought rationally about any evidence or reasoning?
My provisional answers are 1) Not likely and 2) Fat chance.
I'll have to agree with you here. Banning physical exports may make sense - if North Korea can't import plutionum it's not very likely they'll get it. Or at least it's posssible to police the ban.
If the North Korean regime really wants to download notepad++ it's as good as impossible for anyone to stop them. All they need is a proxy in another country. Or someone travelling with a USB stick, or just two people using dropbox on either side of the border. Code is very different from physical good in this regard.
People in power, or anyone else for that matter, really don't have the time to debate the finer points of the export laws (which includes free software), so it's probably better that they just made a simple law that even developers can understand.
The reason I made point 1 is because our default decision should always err on the side of freedom. Why would you bother restricting anything unless you can identify some benefit to restricting it? It's more work, and maximizing freedom often results in positive results when the freedom turns out to be useful in a way you didn't expect.
For all I know, not a single man in North Korea knows what the hell Notepad++ is. Maybe no North Korean citizen would have any use for any U.S.-hosted software at all. If that's true, then isn't that yet another reason not to restrict it?
Is it really too complicated to say: "Data is not subject to export control laws, unless it's in category X or Y (like cryptosystems are, under current law) in which case the following rules apply: so-and-so." I think it's disingenuous to suggest that officials writing export laws "don't have the time" to make any distinctions on such a large class of exports. Our federal laws are rarely guilty of having insufficient detail.
Additionally, I'd reiterate what other people have already mentioned, which is that if the (yet to be justified) goal is actually to stop these entities from using all this software, the goal is impossible. The law burdens U.S. hosts as much as it burdens foreigners, who can just use a proxy or a mirror in another country.
After reading through the other posts, I don't think Notepad++ was ever restricted by export controls. Sourceforge initially didn't allow them to specify that the software was not restricted by law so they restricted everyone.
So, other than software that contains encryption, what software is restricted?
It's impossible to block open source software exports. Anyone in the entire world can download anything from anywhere; an attempt to block by country reflects a lack of understanding of how the internet works.
Blocking export of closed source/commercial software is more realistic, but still, the targets can always pirate or obtain what they want through a third party.
I wouldn't. I'd just take all of the open source projects like notepad++ and host them outside the US giving non-US hosting companies business, and leave all of the text editors using super-secret hi-tech military encryption on US hosting servers.
Think about this for a few milliseconds before ranting. How would you write a law that blocked the bad "exports" while allowing the good "exports" through? It's much less work to write and administer to just to block them all to countries like North Korea.