From: Jeff Gostin <jgostin@eternal.pha.pa.us>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 20:10:03 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: How to legit encryption
Message-ID: <940724171435A8Ljgostin@eternal.pha.pa.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


tim werner <werner@mc.ab.com> writes:

> This is a neat way of expressing a good idea, but I wouldn't count on it.
> A language can probably be construed as something that can be understood by
> anyone who learns it.  Even though I speak PGP, I still can't understand
> what you say without a key.  There's probably no legal precedent for that
> yet, but look what they've done with the rest of the Constitution so far.
     Ok, what if PGP-encyphered text were argued to be COMPILED? In that
case, the original SOURCE CODE was being shared, and the COMPILER being
held secret. Source-reading keys are available upon request. Or some twist
like that. :-) What do you think? All of a sudden, we have compiled source
code being pushed around that is VERY difficult to reverse engineer
without the proper authorization.

                                        --jeff