[49360] in Cypherpunks
Re: RC2 protected by copyright?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ken Arromdee)
Tue Feb 6 14:35:14 1996
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Date: 6 Feb 1996 14:30:09 -0500
Cc:
>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
