Re: Security, is it to much to ask?

The use of the copyright notice as a trivial decryption key is a clever legal hack. Since ActiveState 'owns' this phrase, it would be ill-advised to distribute software that uses it, unless you have their permission.

This allows them to use normal trademark and copyright law to protect their scheme, without relying on the presumably short-lived DMCA BS.

I am not a lawyer, yadda yadda yadda...

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

Comment on Re: Security, is it to much to ask?

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Re: Re: Security, is it to much to ask? by larryk (Friar) on Jul 19, 2001 at 19:11 UTC
What if I compile a 17 character perl script like `print "foobar\n";`? The XOR key then becomes `Copyright © 2000` which can not be 'owned' by them. I doubt that this would constitute distribution of software under another's copyright notice even if it was long enough to incorporate the whole string as, although it is being 'used', it is not on display. "Argument is futile - you will be ignorralated!"	[reply] [d/l] [select]
(HyperZonk) Re: Security, is it to much to ask? by HyperZonk (Friar) on Jul 20, 2001 at 03:26 UTC
I don't think that toma's point was that the encrypted software is copyrighted by AS, but that any complete program to decode software encrypted by them would be in violation of their copyright, since it would by definition include the copyright phrase (or something that eventually evaluates structurally to that phrase, no matter how obfu'd). By the way, even a program like `print "foobar\n";` [download] ends up being a program of about 500kB when it is made into an executable by AS's software, IIRC.	[reply] [d/l]