On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
At 7:32 PM -0400 10/15/96, Mark O. Aldrich wrote:
You cannot commercialize PGP whether you pay Ascom-Tech any royalties or not. Phil Zimmermann grated an exclusive license to ViaCrypt, Inc. a number of years ago to be the sole commercial version of PGP. In the mean time, PGP Inc. was formed and has acquired ViaCrypt. Thus, PGP Inc. now holds the exclusive license on commercial PGP products. Just by chance, Phil Zimmermann is the CEO of PGP Inc.
It seems a bit strange that PGP Inc. is so fastidious about enforcing intellectual property claims, given the treatment of RSA Data Security Inc.'s similar property claims a few years ago.
Is there, however, a notion of legitimacy here? In other words, are PGP's claims valid while RSA's are not? I'm not talking under "The Law", but under notions of what's good and what's not. Many would assert that RSA's IP claims are overstated, invalid, way too far reaching in scope, and that they're being greedy bastards who are not telling the truth about what happened with the agreement with Phil. PGP, as far as I know, hasn't started being "fastidious" about IP claims (in fact, I don't think their position has changed at all), and bases their assertions on Phil's rather straight-forward PGP license and his basic assertion that he owns the rights to the encryption software called "PGP" and he don't want nobody else selling it except he and his licensees. (not taking sides here - just holding up one perspective for discussion)
In other words, I don't worry for one nanosecond about "infringing" on PGP Inc.'s claimed property rights.
Not to pick a fight, but you generally take that position with most IP rights, correct? I _think_ you've voiced opinions that align with some anti-copyright positions in the past, but I may be wrong. Stepping aside from that for the moment, why would you feel that PGP's property rights are not respectable?
Nothing personal.
Ditto. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |some people get by | Mark Aldrich | |with a little understanding | GRCI INFOSEC Engineering | |some people get by | maldrich@grci.com | |with a whole lot more | MAldrich@dockmaster.ncsc.mil| | -- Sisters of Mercy | | |_______________________________________________________________________| |The author is PGP Empowered. Public key at: finger maldrich@grci.com | | The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author | | and my employer gets no credit for them whatsoever. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------