On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:49:37AM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > If anybody can alter, revoke or reissue a certificate then I agree it is > common property to which attaches no meaningful notion of property rights. > > If on the other hand only certain people can alter, revoke or reissue a > certificate then it seems to me they have some sort of property rights in > the certificate and from their point of view the certificate is their > property and not everybody's property.
That only certain persons can revoke or reissue a certificate is a matter of mathematics, not legal restrictions. Say I have discovered a marvelous method of easily factoring RSA keys, which unfortunately the margin of this emacs buffer is too small to contain, and I then go out, factor GeoTrust's CA key and issue a new certificate. Questions: Am I now infringing on GeoTrust's IP rights? Or have, rather, I made myself a co-owner in said rights on this particular key? Have I broken any law? If not, should what I have done be illegal? -Jack --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [email protected]
