Re: Is it legal for commercial companies to use PGP?

[tim werner <werner@mc.ab.com>]

>From stewarts@ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 18 02:51:50 1995
>Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 23:52:35 -0700

>At 09:07 PM 7/17/95 -0400, tim werner wrote:
>>>... I was talking to one of the sys admins at
>>>A-B, and he said that we weren't allowed to use PGP to encrypt our mail,
>>>because Viacrypt owned the commercial rights.

>Actually, it's less clear than that.

>Selling software containing the code is pretty clearly commercial.
>Non-commercial messages from your personal non-business machine are
>clearly non-commercial.  Providing a service of encrypting and decrypting
>messages for people for money sounds like it's _very_ probably commercial.
>Encrypting and decrypting messages to/from your business that deal with money
>are a very gray area.

Maybe "commercial company" is the wrong expression.  All I meant was
that my company is not non-profit, or a university, or a government
organization.  It is an engineering firm.  What I have in mind is
nothing to do with a commercial use of encryption per se. 

If they decided to put encryption into a product, that would be
something else entirely.  I doubt they would ever be using it to accept
payment for the stuff they sell, although I don't really know much about
the marketing aspect of the business.

Basically, I have two potential uses for it:

1) I have some email pen-pals that I would like to be able to use PGP to
   talk with.  All my other accounts (freenet, school) have mail
   forwarded to what I think of as my email "home address", which is my
   work address.  I would like to use that work account to process my
   email.  Is it legal to use PGP 2.6.2 for this purpose?  I'd also like
   to be able to tell fellow workers that they can use it, and show them
   how. 

2) It's entirely likely that people within the company may wish to get
   into the habit of transmitting company data in encrypted form.  This
   is not a question of incorporating the encryption technology into a
   product, or even into the sale of a product -- it's just a question
   of keeping intra-company information transfers private.


The first is the one I'm really concerned with.  The second would be
sort of a natural extension that, if legal, would be nice.  I can't
imagine that these uses are subject to the ViaCrypt license, but I need
some reassurance/ammunition in order to be a little more open about
getting it installed on the machines in my department.


thanks,
tw

-- 

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