DMCA Attacks: NAI Tells Sites To Remove PGP (Updated)

daecabhir writes: "I am on Declan McCullough's excellent policy and technology mailing list, and received this article on Declan's Politech web site. Basically, Network Associates now appears to be using the DMCA to force sites that provide access to the "free" versions of PGP to cease and desist, if this is any indication. Unfortunately, I think that Network Associates may well be within their rights with regards to 'their' intellectual property, even if I disagree with the manner in which they are going about things." Update: 05/22 13:55 GMT by T : Looks like this wasn't the whole story, and in fact NAI was only objecting to a site with the commercial version of its software -- read below for more. Grant Bayley writes: "The hype being generated by the "NAI pulls out the DMCA stick" postings and the spectre of PGP being "removed from the Internet" is entirely bogus, and provably so with a little bit of fact checking.

Looking through the Google cache, it becomes very clear very quickly that crypto.radiusnet.net was hosting a copy of the commercial version of the software - not a copy of the PGPi (aka freeware) version of the PGP product. Given that this is the case, NAI is well within their rights to demand the removal of the files.

You can confirm this in the Google Cache.

Comments

NAI - Graduates of the Verisign School of Business

[zentec]

I purchased several copies of NAI's PGP for Unix version 5. The CD had a standard license agreement with it. Two years later, I receive a letter from NAI telling me that my license was revoked and I could no longer use the software.

Somehow, I do not think I received my $1500 worth.

I should have known, I asked NAI's sales department for a price quote on NAI virus protection products for the "enterprise" and I never did receive a straight answer.

Thank God for GPG! Works with NAI's PGP plug-ins and it's truly free.

careful if you use wget for your websurfing needs

[Cardhore]

If your user agent happens to include "wget", watch out! "Any IP/Host seen using wget or any other mirror tool will be banned!

you know...

[kevin lyda]

it's too bad that people don't pay more attention to rms when he talks about freedom.

and it's also too bad that people kept doing dev on possibly not free pgp versions instead on truly free implementations of pgp (ie gnupg).
how many times are we going to learn this lesson?

Re:careful if you use wget for your websurfing nee

[kubrick]

It's unethical. but it's possible to change this. And even if it weren't included in the options, being open source it would be easy enough to change:

`-U AGENT-STRING'
`--user-agent=AGENT-STRING'
Identify as AGENT-STRING to the HTTP server.

The HTTP protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a `User-Agent' header field. This enables distinguishing the WWW software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as `Wget/VERSION', VERSION being the current version number of Wget.

However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring the output according to the `User-Agent'-supplied information. While conceptually this is not such a bad idea, it has been abused by servers denying information to clients other than `Mozilla' or Microsoft `Internet Explorer'. This option allows you to change the `User-Agent' line issued by Wget. Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are doing.

Re:wait..

[corebreech]

That's the thing. NAI ain't selling PGP anymore.

Makes you wonder who's running NAI.

Re:GPG frontends

[psychosis]

I use GPG with Evolution daily, and have had no problems in the 1.0.3 release.
It even handles different keys for different accounts without user intervention (after telling it the key number for a given account, of course).
It has the handy features like "remember pass phrase for this session" (it's an option for the paranoid), sign-every-message, and verification of a signed message sent to you with a mouse click.
Check it out - it's the only mail client I use now!

Re:wait..

[BrookHarty]

We tried to buy a site license at work. We needed something that would plug into Outlook Exchange and work with everyone inside and outside the company. But after NAI killed PGP, we tried GPG but there was no plugin for Outlook Exchange (client).

Good product, lots of people wanting to buy it, and no alternative program. If someone came out with a windows office plugin, maybe they could make/start a software company.

Haven't I Seen This Somewhere Before? Oh well...

[krmt]

First they came for the Amiga, and I did not speak out because I was not an Amiga user.

Then they came for Be, and I did not speak out because I was not a Be user.

Then they came for Blender and I did not speak out because I was not a Blender user.

Then they came for PGP, and I was thankful that someone had spoken for me.


Many thanks to the GnuPG developers.