Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!brolga!ggm
From: ggm@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (George Michaelson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Authenticated SMTP, anyone done one?
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.041626.15664@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au>
Date: 18 Jun 91 04:16:26 GMT
References: <9106180335.AA16085@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Prentice Computer Centre, The University of Queensland, Australia.
Lines: 34

kent@BBN.COM (Steve Kent) writes:

> ..... ....... ....... ....... ....... ......  Several independent
>implementations of PEM are now undergoing testing on the Internet and
>arrangements for the key management infrastructure are progressing.
>The latter work includes a numer of activities, e.g., license
>agreements with RSA to enable a PEM freeware implementation to be made
>available and interoperable with product-level PEM implementations in
>the Internet.  The bottom line on RSA licenses for PEM is that they
>are expected to be quite cheap, as little $2.50 per-user (maybe even
>less for students), if the keys are locally managed (by the school,
>company, or whatever organization with which the user is affiliated).

And what arrangements are being made to legalize and manage distribution
of keys in the "Internet-at-large" that lies outside the US, such as the
national and regional networks of Australasia, the Pacific rim, Scandanavia,
Europe, etc etc etc.

Who, if anybody is going to licence and distribute PEM keys to bodies outside
of the RSA patent area? Will PEM capable mailers be embedded into software
distributions such as SunOS and Ultrix and BSD4.4 for export, or will export
versions of the tapes be cut which lack this functionality? 

How does PEM behave when software DES is used? -As it stands, hardware DES
and some libraries for DES usage are not available outside of the US.


	-george

-- 
                         George Michaelson
G.Michaelson@cc.uq.oz.au The Prentice Centre      | There's no  market for
                         University of Queensland | hippos in Philadelphia
Phone: +61 7 365 4079    QLD Australia 4072       |          -Bertold Brecht