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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:15:18
Mok-Kong Shen (mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de)
Thu, 01 Oct 1998 14:13:32 +0100
Brown, R Ken wrote:
>
> I suspect there are a lot of people who would have moral problems with
> breaking someone else's software copyright but wouldn't give a dam about
> breaking a software patent. An algorithm is an idea, and how can anyone own
> an idea? (I'm talking morals here, not law - intersecting universes of
> discourse, but not identical ones :-)
But sadly in matters of law there are software patents and particularly
in cryptography. One may have different opinions on crypto patents
and endlessly debate on them. My personal opinion is that the
benefits of crypto patents do not outweigh their negative impacts
on the development and use of cryptography especially in view of
the fact that a number of governments intend to suppress civilian
usage of strong crypto with all means that they can think of.
I think that claiming copyright is a good idea, since one retains
some kind of control over the stuff that one creates. One can then
say that copying is allowed for certain usages but disallowed in
others. (As far as I know copying some pages from a book, but not
the whole, for scientific purposes is free generally.)
M. K. Shen
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:15:18