From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Thu, 5 May 94 09:36:09 PDT
To: adam@bwh.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: Keyserver service outage
Message-ID: <9405051631.AA13478@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Adam Shostack writes:
> 	I think folks outside the US can legally run 2.4 or 2.5, as
> there are no restrictions in their countries on using that software.
> The difficulty is getting it outside of the US without getting anyone

Not true.  The problem is copyright, which is honored by Berne Convention
signers even if they don't have software patents or patent-after-publishing
rules like the US.  This includes Europe, the U.S., and many other places.
ViaCrypt 2.4 is copyrighted by ViaCrypt, and RSAREF is copyrighted by RSA,
so you won't be able to use 2.5 source outside the US either; not sure about
binaries.

There's an easy cure for this, though - if some non-North-American wants to
write an RSAREF-compatible software package in C and distribute it as freeware,
then it can be used in non-US versions of things that require RSAREF.

An interesting question is whether PGP 2.5 will include any restrictions
on the non-RSAREF portions of the source code, like not talking to earlier
PGPs, or the RSAREF interface glue not being exportable or whatever.
But we'll see real soon.
			Bill