Liability wrt making pgp available to the campus

[Andrew Thomas]

>> Funny thing; last year the computer administrators wouldn't even allow a 
>> copy of PGP to reside on their systems -- now it is part of their public 
>> account (student-run officially University unsupported software, usable 
>> by all). 

About six months ago I was going to to compile and install pgp in the
campus software library which is made available to hundreds of systems
distributed accross the campus.  I decided against it at the time
becuase I was unsure if anyone (namely the University) would be liable
for providing the pgp executable to the public without having a
liscence for the RSA algorithm.  I had pretty much abandoned the idea
until I saw this post.  If i'm correct, it's the resposibility of the
user to obtain a liscence which is why pgp is freely available at ftp
sites without putting the owner of the site at risk.  In this case
would the University be resposible for aquiring a liscence?  This also
brings up another question: is there anyone out there using freeware
pgp who has obtained a RSA licsence so they can use it legally?  Also
I'm curious if there are there any sysadmins out there that have made
pgp available to their users?


Andy Thomas 
aethomas at uci.edu