2000-01-14-18:09:20 Vin McLellan:
> Mr. T condemns RSA as "amoral and evil" because it refuses
> to sanction knock-offs of its inventions and proprietary designs.
I think RSA is amoral and evil because in their rabid desire to lock
their victims into their proprietary library, they refuse to license
their patent for other implementations, and use it to suppress the
use of free software.
You're convinced that people wouldn't be using RSA if it hadn't
been marketed using resources marshalled by extracting fees at
lawyer-point for their patented algorithm. I don't share that
conviction. If I did, perhaps I'd be more likely to forgive their
actions; at least that would make some kind of case that their
actual accomplishment was good even if their chosen means were
contemptable.
> (Let me put it to the Listocracy: Reading Bennett's
> words, would _you_ trust our Mr. T *not* to steal or assist in the
> theft of RSA's proprietary IP if he had the chance?
I'll be interested if anyone else thinks my views make me a thief,
or suspect as one. I think applying patents to algorithms is stupid
and evil, because it sets back the state of the art for the life of
the patent. There's only one group that wants to do that for crypto
--- the likes of Louis Freeh and people who support his efforts
to suppress crypto. But I don't steal peoples' IP, I live without
it until the patent expires. Copyright is no problem; it doesn't
restrict independant implementations.
I never did get around to using PGP seriously, until modern
implementations using DSA and ElGamal made it completely legal to
use. Then I registered my keys with a keyserver and started signing
everything I posted.
> (We all presume Mr. T cheered and capered with delight
> when anonymous parties pirated Ron Rivest's RC4 and RC4 algorithms
> -- which RSA had not patented -- and posted them to the Net,
> right?
I can't help what you all presume, but I was pretty much "ho hum"
when the algorithms were reverse engineered ("pirated" is a word
used in this context only by people who think keeping the algorithm
secret was a good idea, and that trade secret law should have
helped to prevent it). Unpublished crypto algorithms are used by
people who don't know what they are doing, or who are trying to
deliberately use bad security. I've never wanted to use RC4 for
anything. Curious.
-Bennett
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