Jeff Findley wrote on Sun, 1 Apr 2018
19:20:39 -0400:

In article ,
says...

I suspect this dates back to the days where USA government controlled
technology to ensure its military had the best (thinking only USA could
produce superior tech such as encryption).

But an "rights" basis, I suspect such NOAA rules would be struck down at
an international tribunal since no single country owns the rights to the
Earth and can't prevent taking pictures of it.


Bull****. The US has jurisdiction over what its citizens, and its
corporations, do in space. They're well within their rights here,
except for the bit where the cameras are so low resolution (in terms of
pixel size on the surface of the earth) that it's laughable.


In point of fact, there used to be a (fairly course) resolution limit
for commercially available imagery; something like 10 meters. Everyone
pretty much followed the US mandate (since we owned most of the
commercial imaging satellites) until the French launched SPOT image.
It did better than 10 meters and to add insult to injury the French
started selling some of their military imagery. The US yelled for a
while, but the allowed resolution eventually came down. I think it's
down around half a meter to one meter now.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw