David, Before turning to your certainty that laws are self-explanitory and not nuanced, I should mention soething I forgot. The Elashi case rattled the Export Controls Defense bar, because the Elashis didn't actually send anything to Libya, their buyer was some computer broker in Malta, and that's who sent the export controlled material on to a state on the restriced list. The Elashi case established the precedent that a buyer's actions could transfer export control liability to the seller. Turning to your certainty, the original language has been modified to put a Moore's Law (my shorthad) COLA-like MIPS excalator, and modified again to replace "proliferation" (which has a rational relationship with MIPS) with "terrorism", which has no computational characteristics known to me. I don't know why the Elashi's attorney entered a plea on the export issue, as the cost for agreement to a plea appears to be indeffinite sentancing, rather than an ordinary rational cost of business fine. Cheers, Eric