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From: hyatt@UDEL-DEWEY.ARPA (Glenn Hyatt)
Newsgroups: mod.legal
Subject: DES
Message-ID: <8603061745.AA03046@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 22:03:27 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8603061745.AA03046
Posted: Wed Mar  5 22:03:27 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Mar-86 01:36:52 EST
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A recent article in Information Week recounted efforts by the NSA to
bully ANSI into voting against the adoption of the Data Encryption
Standard (DES) by the ISO as an international encryption standard.
The NSA has trouble decrypting intercepted communications that are 
thus encrypted, and anticipates greatly increased traffic of this
sort if DES becomes an international standard.  Corporate members
of the affected ANSI committee (notably, IBM) strongly supported the
adoption of DES.

The Defense Department (apparently in the interest of the NSA) argued
that DES is a militarily-useful "item" and as such is subject to
export restrcition.  This is ludicrous on the face of it, but it
raised a couple of copyright questions on my mind:

	o  Correct me if I'm wrong, but an algorithm isn't 
	   copyrightable is it?

	o  If I am wrong, isn't "the" DES algorithm in the public 
	   domain?

	o  If I'm right, can something uncopyright-able to be 
	   considered in the public domain, or is the concept of 
	   public domain inapplicable?

	o  Does the "public domain" extend to the public of other countries?