Acidus wrote:
What *is* interesting are the legal issues around private keys. Is a private key a trade secret? A 3rd party, through no illegal act, who independently discovers the a trade secret can utilize or publish that secret. Only we aren't talking about the Coca-Cola formula here. Public and private keys are mathematically linked. You can derive a private key, given a public one. It just can be very very (infinite grains of sands on a beach) hard. Or not. As in the TI case. You can't patent a private key, that kind of makes it public. ;-) So what do we do? Does there need to be some new kind of IP protections beyond traditional ones like patents, trademarks, and trade secrets? Are massive efforts to compute a mathematical value legal? Is it based on what that value protects or unlocks? Is it based on the intent of the people who derive the value? Homebrew software developers vs. Blueray crackers?
While I hope this matter is resolved quickly for Tom's sake, I would like to see some of these other legal issues addressed.
Email isn't covered by the 4th amendment supposedly because there is no envelope... Perhaps this really shouldn't be a trade secret/copyright argument. Better rules for digital privacy might be more useful for everyone.
