To: rms@ai.mit.edu Subject: crypto poem From: pgut1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 15:17:29 -0800 Subject: And now for something completely different... PGP or not PGP (from Hamlet Act III Scene I) -------------- PGP or not PGP - that is the question Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous patents, Or to take arms against a sea of lawyers, And by encrypting end them? To crypt, to sign No more; and by a program to say we end The patents and the export restrictions That RSA is heir to - 'tis a consummation. Devoutly to be wish'd. To crypt, to sign. To crypt - perchance to pem-code: aye, there's the rub! For in that test of wills what lawyers may come When we have shuffled off this PGP business, Must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of such legal restrictions. For who would bear the whips and scorns of Leavenworth Th'patent systems wrong, the export laws worse, The pangs of despis'd lawyers, the NSA's delay, The insolence of Sternlight, and the spurns That patient usage of PGP takes When he himself might his quietus make with PEM? Who would this program bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary system, But that the dread of something after PEM The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne No cryptographer returns -- puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. - Apologies to Bill Shakespeare