Licensing Encryption

I appreciated Russell Kay's article ``Distributed and Secure'' (June). But I disagree that Philip Zimmermann's PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption software is illegal because it uses the RSA algorithm without a license. Not all unlicensed use of patented software necessarily violates a patent holder's rights, which is what I assume Kay meant by the term illegal. Also, ViaCrypt sells a commercial use version that is--and always has been--licensed. The noncommercial version (2.6) is now available on an MIT server and is licensed. What's important is that licenses are available for commercial and noncommercial versions of the standard-setting PGP.

Curtis E. A. Karnow

San Francisco, CA

At the time I wrote the article, PGP 2.6 had not yet been announced. I was aware of the ViaCrypt product (I mentioned in the article that one of the people I quot ed had bought and was using ViaCrypt), but I had no specific information about its operation and did not realize it was an ``authorized'' (I almost said ``legal'' but that's another issue, as you correctly point out) version of PGP. What I did know was that I had read a number of statements attributed to RSA president Jim Bidzos to the effect that PGP was totally unauthorized and there was no licensed version. I'm pleased to hear the licensing issues have since been resolved and an RSA-sanctioned noncommercial PGP is available for general use.--R. Kay