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Is the RSAs Loss Everyone's Gain?
Rafael sent us a story over at ZD Net about RSAs Patents Expiring later this year. It talks about what it is likely to mean to us. Among other things, cheaper and more common encryption.
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*A large percentage of the Flat Earth Society are in the Southern states of the US.
RSA encryption has been used, freely, throughout Europe, for a considerable period of time. International versions of PGP, for example, can be found in many University FTP archives, and are widely used.
Yes, it does mean RSA can be used "freely" in the US, but that's about the limits of the benefit. One small continent, amongst many.
Besides, RSA isn't cutting-edge, by a long way. Yes, it's proved very resistant to attacks, and it's one of the best public-key encryption algorithms out there, but there's a lot of much newer stuff that looks like it could be more attractive in the long-term.
(IMHO, it's a mistake to rely on a "proven solution" in preference to looking ahead. If anyone cracks the primes problem, RSA is dead in the water. Instantly. No matter how "robust" it's been.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Read the very informative page Opposing Copyright Extension.
Copyrights have been extended an average of about 1 year per year since 1962. The latest extension, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension act of 1998 extends corporate copyrights to 95 years, retroactively. Since the stated purpose of copyrights in the constitution is to encourage the production of art and science by giving a monopoly for a limited time, retroactive extensions are IMHO unconstitutional. The current extension madness seems designed to make sure that Mickey never enters the public domain.
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"L'IT c'est moi!"
Look guys... RSA was formed for the specific purpose of cornering the encryption market and they have been screwing the entire industry with their draconian licensing costs. Their patents are expiring -- do they really think that I, as a developer that has been putting up with their bugware and outrageouse prices for year, am going continue to license their bugware when there are numerous free, high quality implementations?
I think not. Ding, dong the witch is dead! The witch is dead! Hail to a new era when lions and hyenas can communicate securely! Death to RSA!
-- Slashdot sucks.
I'm not sure of the actual numbers anymore, with the popularity of Linux and the renewed interest in the Macintosh, but the percentage of Microsoft desktops is still probably over 80%. Microsoft already licensed the technology (and from what the article said for much cheaper than the average company could) and apparently uses it.
Encryption is for most people invisible, they go to an online shop and buy stuff. Maybe they notice that the little lock in the lower left corner is closed and maybe they don't. If RSA is a part of the protocol then its already there.
Most people don't care about pervasive encryption. When they're forwarding the latest joke they received to their friends and families they don't worry about encryption or digital signatures. People don't even bother encrypting email to their mistresses, their mistress probably can't be bothered to remember a private key.
The difference it will make is to people who sell the technology, it'll be a bit cheaper to them which might be important since for good or bad the current cost model for Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator etc. is to be free (like beer, not speech)
I don't see that RSA patents has hampered the widespread deployment of PGP. Apathy on the part of the public has hampered the widespread deployment of PGP. I know personally that if people started sending me trivial things encrypted it'd probably hit the bit bucket unread.
Because RSA was patented, replacement algorithms were developed and used instead. GNU Privacy Guard as well as PGP 5.0 and later use Diffie-Hellman, DSA and/or ElGamal instead of RSA.
Besides, PGP doesn't use public-key encryption for the whole message. It uses RSA (or equivalent) only to encrypt a random "session key", which is then applied to the whole message using a symmetric cipher. PGP 2.x uses the IDEA cipher, which is also patented, and which is patented more widely than in just the USA.
Because of all the patent nonsense, I urge everyone who still uses PGP 2.x to upgrade to PGP 5.0 or higher, or to switch to GnuPG.
If you don't use any encryption tools yet, I recommend GnuPG.