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

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

>Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 16:15:10 -0400
>From: tim werner <werner@mc.ab.com>

>... 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.

I should have mentioned that I have no problem with people trying to
make money.  However, it turns out that ViaCrypt is not selling
site-licenses, or even floating licenses, so they actually want to sell
a separate copy for every user that will use it.

As it happens, the aforementioned sys admin had purchased 5 licenses, to
take care of the 2 users he already knew about, and figuring that there
would probably be a couple more wanting to jump on the bandwagon.  He
offered to let me use one of the licenses, but there's no way I can go
and tell my users "we have PGP", if I can't tell everyone that they can
do it.

And, there's no way I can see convincing my boss that we need that many
copies of ViaCrypt, just so everyone in my department can encrypt their
email traffic.

Of course, I realize that none of the above changes the legality.


thanks,
tw

-- 

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