crypto poem

[gnu@cygnus.com]

To: rms@ai.mit.edu
Subject: crypto poem
From: pgut1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 15:17:29 -0800
Subject: And now for something completely different...

    PGP or not PGP      (from Hamlet Act III Scene I)
    --------------
 
PGP or not PGP - that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous patents,
Or to take arms against a sea of lawyers,
And by encrypting end them?  To crypt, to sign
No more; and by a program to say we end
The patents and the export restrictions
That RSA is heir to - 'tis a consummation.
Devoutly to be wish'd.  To crypt, to sign.
To crypt - perchance to pem-code:  aye, there's the rub!
For in that test of wills what lawyers may come
When we have shuffled off this PGP business,
Must give us pause.  There's the respect
that makes calamity of such legal restrictions.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of Leavenworth
Th'patent systems wrong, the export laws worse,
The pangs of despis'd lawyers, the NSA's delay,
The insolence of Sternlight, and the spurns
That patient usage of PGP takes
When he himself might his quietus make
with PEM?  Who would this program bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary system,
But that the dread of something after PEM
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No cryptographer returns -- puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
 
    - Apologies to Bill Shakespeare