Re: CA certificates
* Niklas Vainio:
> On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 11:52:39PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> There's an interesting question. Is a public key copyrightable? In other
>> words, does VeriSign have any legal grounds to restrict use of their
>> public keys at all?
>
> My understanding is that copyright laws speak about original works with some
> creativity in them.
Some European jurisdictions require that a work shows a certain amount
of creativity before it is subject to the equivalent of copyright.
At least in Germany, this rule no longer applies to computer programs,
so it's quite unclear what the limits of copyright are over here.
> Computer-generated, seemingly random string of numbers hardly is
> such a work.
Such random strings tend to have DMCA protection. However,
certificates are not random strings, they also contain trademarks.
--
Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the
following domains: atlas.cz, bigpond.com, di-ve.com, hotmail.com,
jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt,
tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com.
Reply to: