From: tim werner <werner@mc.ab.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 18:10:02 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Is it legal for commercial companies to use PGP?
Message-ID: <9507180107.AA03586@mondo.ab.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 16:15:10 -0400
>From: tim werner <werner@mc.ab.com>

>... 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.

I should have mentioned that I have no problem with people trying to
make money.  However, it turns out that ViaCrypt is not selling
site-licenses, or even floating licenses, so they actually want to sell
a separate copy for every user that will use it.

As it happens, the aforementioned sys admin had purchased 5 licenses, to
take care of the 2 users he already knew about, and figuring that there
would probably be a couple more wanting to jump on the bandwagon.  He
offered to let me use one of the licenses, but there's no way I can go
and tell my users "we have PGP", if I can't tell everyone that they can
do it.

And, there's no way I can see convincing my boss that we need that many
copies of ViaCrypt, just so everyone in my department can encrypt their
email traffic.

Of course, I realize that none of the above changes the legality.


thanks,
tw

-- 

Well, Bust My Britches!  Eggs Almondine and a Bottle of Beaujolais!