Brown, R Ken wrote:
I suspect there are a lot of people who would have moral problems with breaking someone else's software copyright but wouldn't give a dam about breaking a software patent. An algorithm is an idea, and how can anyone own an idea? (I'm talking morals here, not law - intersecting universes of discourse, but not identical ones :-)
But sadly in matters of law there are software patents and particularly in cryptography. One may have different opinions on crypto patents and endlessly debate on them. My personal opinion is that the benefits of crypto patents do not outweigh their negative impacts on the development and use of cryptography especially in view of the fact that a number of governments intend to suppress civilian usage of strong crypto with all means that they can think of. I think that claiming copyright is a good idea, since one retains some kind of control over the stuff that one creates. One can then say that copying is allowed for certain usages but disallowed in others. (As far as I know copying some pages from a book, but not the whole, for scientific purposes is free generally.) M. K. Shen