At 11:33 PM 5/21/02, you wrote: >At 5:41 PM -0700 on 5/21/02, Joseph S. Barrera III wrote on FoRK: > > > > So what are they trying to do? > > I've totally not been following PGP, > > so I don't understand what they're doing. > >Ohhhh, I don't knowwww.... It looks, to *me* at least, like they're trying >to stamp out "unauthorized" copies of PGP on the net by threatening to send >people to jail. What does it look like to *you*?
Yes, using the DMCA hammer can attack unlicensed distribution, but like most things, it is not without other consequences. Whether or not those other consequences are more desired by NAI than simple protection of intellectual property is unknown. Potentially among those other consequences would be reduction of availability to novices of PGP (with slick GUI). Absence of new versions, as the MS Win OS moves older apps into incompatibility, essentially trends toward removing PGP from new systems as operated by the mass market. We are told that NAI wanted to sell the PGP entities but could not find an adequate buyer. I have seen no doc on how hard they tried, or what bids might have been in discussion. Others have said that NAI bought PGP from the gitgo to kill it. It appears that whatever NAI's motiviations, PGP, as packaged for the mass market novices, is being killed. While other versions are abundant, without a slick GUI and seamless integration into the mass email clients, they will not be abundantly adopted in the mass market. Stamping out the distribution of software that is no longer available for sale is of dubious immediate financial benefit to the copyright holder, thus they must be doing it either for future hopes for PGP (sale or re-marketing; not likely in my opinion), or for other, undisclosed reasons (liklihood unknown). Some say the State surveillance ops would prefer to have a smaller haystack in which to search for whatever needles them. Less encrypted traffic would appear to shrink the number and size of those haystacks. It could be accidental that NAI's business operations just happen to coincide with what benefits those ops. For those prefering conspiracy theories, NAI announced essentially the shutdown of PGP on March 5, 2002, and the company announced shortly thereafter "On March 26, 2002, the Company announced that it was informed that the Staff of the SEC had commenced a Formal Order of Private Investigation into the Company's accounting practices during the 2000 fiscal year". Such notifications follow non-formal hints that the Formal Order will soon be announced. That appears to be a potential jail-time hammer, if one was needed. But it could simply be a protection of intellectual property rights for whatever business opportunity may unfold in the future. Or the accounting hammer. Or "We are currently engaged in several research and development contracts with agencies of the U.S. government. The willingness of these government agencies to enter into future contracts with us depends in part on our continued ability to meet their expectations. Minimum fee awards for companies entering into government contracts are generally between 3% and 7% of the costs incurred by them in performing their duties under the related contract. However, these fee awards may be as low as 1% of the contract costs. Furthermore, these contracts are subject to cancellation at the convenience of the government agencies. Although we have been awarded contract fees of more than 1% of the contract costs in the past, minimum fee awards or cancellations may occur in the future. Reductions or delays in federal funds available for projects we are performing could also have an adverse impact on our government business. Contracts involving the U.S. government are also subject to the risks of disallowance of costs upon audit, changes in government procurement policies, required competitive bidding and, with respect to contracts involving prime contractors or government-designated subcontractors, the inability of those parties to perform under their contracts." Pick none, one or a few.
