Unfortunately for Netscape, U.S. regulations prohibit the export of products incorporating strong cryptography. In order to distribute an international version of its browser overseas, Netscape had to weaken the encryption scheme to use keys of just 40 bits, leaving only a million million possible key values.
In 2000, the Clinton administration relaxed cryptography export rules, allowing the export of strong encryption (e.g. 128-bit) without special licences to most countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...