[143965] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Property RIghts in Keys
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nicolas Williams)
Thu Feb 12 12:17:59 2009
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:54:29 -0600
From: Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@sun.com>
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <20090203165448.26774d49@cs.columbia.edu>
On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 04:54:48PM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> Under what legal theory might a certificate -- or a key! -- be
> considered "property"? There wouldn't seem to be enough creativity in
> a certificate, let alone a key, to qualify for copyright protection.
Private and secret keys had better be property. Public keys are...
well, *public*, and CA public keys really, really had better be public,
so I'm as perplexed as you.
Most likely this is just a case of lawyers gone wild. Too bad a TV show
or DVD product based on that idea wouldn't be successful.
> I won't even comment on the rest of the CPS, not even such gems as
> "Subscribers warrant that ... their private key is protected and that
> no unauthorized person has ever had access to the Subscriber's private
> key." And just how can I tell that?
Really, really wild lawyers. (Or maybe not so wild, in the U.S.,
depending on what happens in the Lori Drew case.)
Nico
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