Re: Your login/password for SafePassage beta

[Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>]

At 02:27 PM 11/27/96 -0500, Mark O. Aldrich wrote:
>On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, SafePassage Downloader wrote:
>> You can now download SafePassage. You'll need the following login/password:
>> 
>> Login: cypherpunks@toad.com
>> Password: [elided]
>> 
>> Go to http://stronghold.ukweb.com/safepassage/ and select "Download" -- 
>> you'll be prompted for your login/password, after which you'll be able to
>> download the software.   Make sure you keep your login/password
>> private.   Revealing your login/password to anyone is a violation of the
>> license agreement.
>
>Is this to say that you wrote your license agreement with the foolish
>premise that an e-mail address belongs to just one person?  Maybe you need
>to really understand how the Internet works before you write a license
>agreement based on incorrect assumptions and your personal preferences for
>how things ought to be. 

The message that UKWeb sends with the SafePassage beta userid/password is
incorrect - not because it makes any of the assumptions you're ascribing to
UKWeb and license writers, but because the license itself fails to require
the person who agreed to it to keep the userid/pw combination confidential.

But you are entirely off the mark with your assumptions about the
assumptions made by the writer of the license. I am the person who wrote
the license. (Actually, I modified some pre-existing license text, merged
some in from another source, and generally did the sort of copying &
pasting that's considered perfectly acceptable in the legal field and is
considered copyright infringement if a programmer does it.) And I made no
such assumption. And I know enough about how the Internet works to laugh at
anyone says they "really understand how the Internet works." (Hint: before
and during law school, I worked as a consultant to ISP's who needed
technical assistance.) 

You would do well to heed your own advice and learn something about law
before making grand statements about "how [things] work". UKWeb does not
enter into an agreement with anyone (or everyone) who receives E-mail. It
enters into an agreement with the person who fills out the form to download
the software. People and organizations who haven't filled out the form
don't have an agreement with UKWeb to use the software; and absent that
agreement, their use isn't legal. 

I'm not interested in turning this molehill into a mountain. The beta test
of the software is unwittingly functioning as a beta test of the license
document; this morning's message revealed something I missed when I worked
on the license agreement. It will be corrected shortly. 

(This seems to be as good a time as any to announce that I'm now one of the
Cpunks who's working at C2Net.) 

--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.
                            |