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- Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew
- From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Subject: Re: RSA marketing weakness or lack of demand?
- Message-ID: <iDLTTB12w165w@mantis.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 06 Nov 92 13:44:53 GMT
- References: <1992Nov4.195416.4015@netcom.com>
- Distribution: world
- Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
- Lines: 46
-
- strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
- > It appears that RSA has had patent protection for about 15 years. Yet
- > there are no readily available standard RSA systems for use on Macs,
- > nor standard electronic mail packages widely available for purchase
- > using RSA (though it is claimed that Apple's OCE will include at
- > least message authentication next year).
- >
- > I'm curious about what people think about why this is.
-
- Well, let's see. I believe RSA was developed at MIT, and paid for by the US
- taxpayer. I understand that when it was announced, the US government
- attempted to cover up the whole business and bury the technology, but that
- they failed because A.K. Dewdney of Scientific American and various other
- people mailed out photocopies of the appropriate papers to all and sundry,
- having been 'leaked' copies of the articles before or shortly after initial
- publication.
-
- I gather that it was then arranged for a series of patents to be applied for
- retrospectively. (That is, I'm told, why the patents are not valid outside
- the US; they were applied for after publication.) These patents were
- apparently handed on a plate to PKP, a company which seems to have done very
- little other than threaten litigation.
-
- Although they're a completely independent organization, and nothing at all to
- do with the US government, PKP seem strangely reticent to license the RSA
- patents to ordinary citizens who want to use RSA. In fact, they refuse point
- blank to license the patents to people who want to use PGP. Odd, eh?
-
- Now, suppose you are the US government, and you want to prevent widespread
- usage of public key encryption by the general public. Suppose your initial
- heavy-handed attempts fail, and you don't want to be seen publicly to be
- stomping on people's freedoms. What do you do? Why, you form a completely
- independent (yeah, right) litigation company, hand them a bunch of patents,
- and tell them not to license the technology to anyone who might sell products
- to the general public.
-
- Paranoid ravings aside, though, there is a general lack of awareness of the
- need for encryption technology amongst members of the public. Many
- businesses use fax for confidential financial information; some even do
- million-dollar cash transfers on the basis of faxed orders from clients.
-
-
- mathew
- --
- This disclaimer does not represent the views of Mantis Consultants Ltd
-
-