At 03:07 PM 10/3/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> wrote:
The point, of course, is NOT to encourage these companies to support Clipper IV. Rather, goal is to suggest to them a "poison pill" which would make their cooperation meaningless in the end, while at the same time giving them a 2-year free 56-bit export. Think of it as a monkey-wrench they can throw into the works.
A really _fine_ post! I'm also impressed by the way they announced it just _after_ Congress ended its session, while they're busy losing the export level in court. On the other hand, boycotts aren't particularly useful, when RSA (who is or is not joining the Bad Guys) owns half the public key patents and Cylink (who definitely is) owns the other half. If you're selling public key, you've got to pay the Bad Guys, until the DH patents expire in 97 (later for RSA.) Or you've got to buy from somebody who's paying the Bad Guys. And the Bad Guys Unindicted Co-Conspirators' announcements haven't even _mentioned_ permitting export of public key technology (since 56-bit RSA doesn't quite make it.) But they _could_ export Kerberos, with only minor hacks needed to implement Key Ripoff. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com America's Open Presidential Debate - Beyond Dole and Clinton! <A href="http://gate.net/~bdcollar/bbe/debate.htm">Tuesday, Oct. 8th 8:00 PM EDT</a>