ECC Wit and Wisdom (Fwd)

[Vin McLellan]

Pithy wit and wisdom from New Zealand. lol.

_Vin

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Gutmann  <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Sent: Thursday, 23 March 2006 12:41 PM
To: cfrg at ietf.org; ogud at ogud.com
Subject: RE: [Cfrg] Defining inter operable ECC keys in for IETF protocols

"Blumenthal, Uri" <uri.blumenthal at intel.com> writes:

 >I would MUCH prefer ECC - but my lawyers (yuk!) are telling me that there are
 >licensing problems, and supposed NSA contacts don't call them back.
 >
 >Anybody knows anything useful about licensing of ECC GF(p), that he can
 >share with me?

Certicom have done such a good job of creating FUD about ECC legal 
issues that, unless you're a Certicom licensee, it's easier to not 
use it at all.

So far every time I've been asked about ECC support (which admittedly 
is once a blue moon anyway), I've asked the organisation who want it 
to come back to me with either proof of a Certicom license or a clear 
statement of which non- infringing mechanisms they want me to 
implement.  In every case, after looking at what's involved, they've 
decided they didn't need ECC that much anyway.

It's like the conclusion from Wargames, the only way to win is not to play.

Peter.

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