Property RIghts in Keys

[Jack Lloyd]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:49:37AM -0700, sbg at acw.com wrote:

> If anybody can alter, revoke or reissue a certificate then I agree it is
> common property to which attaches no meaningful notion of property rights.
> 
> If on the other hand only certain people can alter, revoke or reissue a
> certificate then it seems to me they have some sort of property rights in
> the certificate and from their point of view the certificate is their
> property and not everybody's property.

That only certain persons can revoke or reissue a certificate is a
matter of mathematics, not legal restrictions.

Say I have discovered a marvelous method of easily factoring RSA keys,
which unfortunately the margin of this emacs buffer is too small to
contain, and I then go out, factor GeoTrust's CA key and issue a new
certificate.

Questions:

Am I now infringing on GeoTrust's IP rights? Or have, rather, I made
myself a co-owner in said rights on this particular key?

Have I broken any law? If not, should what I have done be illegal?

-Jack

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