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Consider use of another public key encryption scheme, say LUC encryption.

Which, of course, is patent-pending. It appears that we can no more make progress in cryptography in the face of algorithm patents than we could advance mathematics under the burden of theorem licensing. We can't afford to wait until 2001.

On the other hand, perhaps the patent holder of LUC would be willing to licence LUC for use in a PGP-like tool (or PGP 3.0) on the same basis IDEA is now licenced to PGP users. (i.e. non-commerical use is OK. Even certain commercial use is OK.) This might solve a lot of our problems. Has anybody asked? I can't be the first person to have considered asking. Mark -- Mark Henderson markh@wimsey.bc.ca RIPEM key available by key server/finger/E-mail MD5OfPublicKey: F1F5F0C3984CBEAF3889ADAFA2437433