PGP source code (fwd)
John Young
jya at pipeline.com
Sat, 01 Sep 2001 21:20:51 -0700
You must not be sensible about application of the DMCA.
If you do anything with PGPsdk that the license prohibits,
whether you read it or not, agreed to it or not, then you may
be punished for violating it. Publication of the license is
public notification of its applicability to whoever opens the
licensed-protected packages or manipulates the contents
of the packages.
In short, if you do anything NAI forbids in the license, you
have circumvented its content protection measures no
matter how slight or sleight. It is the intent of the content
protector which rules not the measures deployed.
Engineers and scientists who work with the content
owners have repeatedly stated that secure protection is
not the goal of their work. Their job is to state that a measure
has been applied, and as far as is known, under the DMCA
this measure does not have a lowest limit. A seemingly
silly, easily avoidable license is as good a content protection
measure as the strongest possible software and hardware
encryption. I wonder if it was not a frustrated cryptologist
who proposed the PGPsdk license as a signal that the game
is rigged.