From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 23:51:54 PDT
To: tim werner <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Is it legal for commercial companies to use PGP?
Message-ID: <199507180649.XAA25411@ix3.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:07 PM 7/17/95 -0400, tim werner wrote:
>>... I was talking to one of the sys admins at
>>A-B, and he said that we weren't allowed to use PGP to encrypt our mail,
>>because Viacrypt owned the commercial rights.

Actually, it's less clear than that.  It's pretty clear what you can
do with ViaCrypt code; just read the license to see who can use it,
and you can send any kind of messages you want over it, even for money.

On the other hand, the definitions of "non-commercial use" for RSAREF and
IDEA are far less clear (and they're clearer for RSAREF than for IDEA,
and I got the impression from what I read somewhere on the net or in the PGP
docs
that the initial permission from Ascom-Tech for use of IDEA with PGP was
pretty informal, and that they've been trying to tighten up what's covered.)
(Also RSAREF licenses have changed from version to version, and the
license PKP uses to distribute versions of RSAREF may also have changed?)

Selling software containing the code is pretty clearly commercial.
Non-commercial messages from your personal non-business machine are
clearly non-commercial.  Providing a service of encrypting and decrypting
messages for people for money sounds like it's _very_ probably commercial.
Encrypting and decrypting messages to/from your business that deal with money
are a very gray area.
#                                Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com