From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 04:00:16 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: RC2 protected by copyright?
In-Reply-To: <199602050211.SAA18120@hammerhead.com>
Message-ID: <4f8a81$opp@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>RC2, though, as 256 bytes of seemingly random data at the head of it,
>in a permutation table.  This is clearly not any idea, but a bit of
>text.  This text would have to be copied to any interoperable RC2.
>(You could surely use some different permutation, and probably most
>of the 256! permutations would be equally secure, but would not
>interoperate with RC2).  I would expect that this copying of text be
>held to be a violation of copyright.

What about "merger"?  If there's only one way to write a table to make it
interoperable, could it be ruled that the idea has merged with its expression
and thus be legal to copy?
--
Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, karromde@nyx.cs.du.edu;
    http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~arromdee)

"Snow?" "It's sort of like white, lumpy, rain." --Gilligan's Island