From: Andrew Thomas <athomas@hydra.acs.uci.edu>
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 94 07:39:07 PDT
To: Matt Thomlinson <phantom@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Liability wrt making pgp available to the campus
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9404140039.A29966-0100000@stein1.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <199404161438.AA08286@hydra.acs.uci.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>> 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@uci.edu