Mods to Dining Cryptographers: legal questions...

[monty.harder@famend.com (MONTY HARDER)]

PF> spend on software patents. I don't, and don't mean to say that _he_
PF> goes around stealing ideas from other people and patenting them.)
PF>
PF> How do I do this and protect myself from the people who do have the
PF> money to go through the intellectual property courthouse game?

  IANAL, but... Create a detatched signature certificate of your idea,
and post =that= here. Get some of us to sign it


       I, _______, a resident of _______ County, __________, do hereby
     attest that I recieved the above certificate on _____ ___,1995.

                [plaintext for non-crypto-aware folks]

and email to you. Also, make two hard copies, including hard copies of
our notarizations you recieve back . Put one of them in an envelope with
a 3.5" floppy of everything, and address the =back= to yourself. Go into
the post office, and ask the clerk to hand-cancel the envelope, so that
the cancellation goes half across the flap and the rest on the envelope.
When you get this from yourself in the mail, you put it in your safety-
deposit box or equivalent.

  This way, when you open the envelope in the presence of the Judge/Jury
you have the word of the US Postal Service that you had X idea on Y
date, not to mention the corroborrating e-signatures. If Z were to claim
authorship, you could ask Z to prove it by forging your signature on
another document. This could go a long way toward proving the value of
PGP signature to the Unwashed Masses, =and= illustrate the danger of
GACK + corrupt gummit agent (in the light of the Ruby Ridge and Waco
hearings, people will be =quite= sensitive to the fact that agents can
and do abuse their power).

  In fact, the ability for us to be able to attest to your possession of
Document X on Date Y, without any of us ever seeing X itself, is one of
the most powerful uses of digital signatures. I can see Phil Z. being
called as an expert witness, to establish the mechanism involved.  Joe
Sixpack needs to hear Dan Blather mention this on the Evening News. OK,
not Blather, but Koppel would do it. Maybe even John Stossel on 20/20.

  This is what we need to be pushing to the Luddite crowd: The very new
technology that frightens them, because they percieve it as out of their
control, brings with it new means for people to take control. Even if
you lost your case on some other grounds, it would be one of the best PR
bits for PGP I can think of.



 * Don't say "Gun Control", it's "Victim Disarmament".
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 * Monster@FAmend.Com *