4 ms·

RSA

Dylan16807 11mo ago
What was the societal benefit of putting 20 years of monopoly on that algorithm? I don't think potential profit was a big motivator in that research work. And that patent got invalidated in most of the world anyway.
- Aloisius 11mo ago
  The societal benefit was having RSA publicly described. MIT isn't a charity.
  - Dylan16807 11mo ago
    You think they were just going to sit on that and do nothing if they couldn't get a patent? Or that they'd turn it into a product without the underlying math being revealed right away? I don't believe either of those for a second.
    - Aloisius 11mo ago
      There is a rather long history of the workings of cryptography products kept secret, so yes, it is entirely possible that the underlying math would have been kept as a trade secret. It is also possible that it would have never been created in the first place because resources were allocated to other patentable inventions. Of course, in the case of RSA, a similar algorithm was developed separately by the British government and kept secret for 24 years.
      - Dylan16807 11mo ago
        Kept secret by the government is very different from kept secret in a product anyone can buy and encrypt arbitrary messages with. What are some message-sending cryptography products where people didn't know how the encryption worked for a long time? > It is also possible that it would have never been created in the first place because resources were allocated to other patentable inventions. Given the history of RSA in particular, I'm extremely skeptical of that.
        Aloisius 11mo ago
        > Given the history of RSA in particular, I'm extremely skeptical of that. Well then you might want to read about RC4 which only became public after it was leaked. Prior to being leaked, it was RSA's cash cow and one of the most popular encryption algorithms worldwide due to it's speed and the fact that it was exportable (with a 40 bit key). Indeed, RSA was rather notorious for keeping crypto algorithms as trade secrets (RC2, SecuriID OTP, etc.)
        Dylan16807 11mo ago
        You quoted the wrong part of my post. A trade secret algorithm supports the idea that it would have been made anyway. Looking at RC4, how widespread was it before that leak? How many users did it have? Wikipedia lists it being added to a bunch of protocols but all after the leak. Also more recent cryptography has lots of extremely public competition between nonpatented algorithm proposals, which largely undermines this entire realm of study as a reason to continue to have software patents.
        Aloisius 11mo ago
        > A trade secret algorithm supports the idea that it would have been made anyway Made and kept secret. If the leak never happened (like it hasn't for other RSA trade secrets), we may not know the algorithm to this day. No one could have built upon it. We may have spent years trying to reinvent the wheel rather than trying to improve upon it. > how widespread was it before that leak It was one of the most popular stream ciphers in the world, due to it's speed and the fact it could be exported, and it helped launch RSA as a company.
        Dylan16807 11mo ago
        How sure are we that the "leak" wasn't someone decompiling it? Because if it was decompiled, then even if that post didn't happen someone else doing it was pretty inevitable. As for any intact RSA trade secrets, I doubt any of them were all that special by the 20 year mark. A trade secret slows down innovation but it has to get pretty extreme before a software trade secret slows down innovation more than a patent. (And yes, sometimes you can build on someone else's patent without waiting for it to expire, but on average the delay to the progress of the arts is pretty big.)

RSA

What was the societal benefit of putting 20 years of monopoly on that algorithm? I don't think potential profit was a big motivator in that research work. And that patent got invalidated in most of the world anyway.

Aloisius 11mo ago
The societal benefit was having RSA publicly described. MIT isn't a charity.
- Dylan16807 11mo ago
  You think they were just going to sit on that and do nothing if they couldn't get a patent? Or that they'd turn it into a product without the underlying math being revealed right away? I don't believe either of those for a second.
  - Aloisius 11mo ago
    There is a rather long history of the workings of cryptography products kept secret, so yes, it is entirely possible that the underlying math would have been kept as a trade secret. It is also possible that it would have never been created in the first place because resources were allocated to other patentable inventions. Of course, in the case of RSA, a similar algorithm was developed separately by the British government and kept secret for 24 years.
    - Dylan16807 11mo ago
      Kept secret by the government is very different from kept secret in a product anyone can buy and encrypt arbitrary messages with. What are some message-sending cryptography products where people didn't know how the encryption worked for a long time? > It is also possible that it would have never been created in the first place because resources were allocated to other patentable inventions. Given the history of RSA in particular, I'm extremely skeptical of that.
      - Aloisius 11mo ago
        > Given the history of RSA in particular, I'm extremely skeptical of that. Well then you might want to read about RC4 which only became public after it was leaked. Prior to being leaked, it was RSA's cash cow and one of the most popular encryption algorithms worldwide due to it's speed and the fact that it was exportable (with a 40 bit key). Indeed, RSA was rather notorious for keeping crypto algorithms as trade secrets (RC2, SecuriID OTP, etc.)
        Dylan16807 11mo ago
        You quoted the wrong part of my post. A trade secret algorithm supports the idea that it would have been made anyway. Looking at RC4, how widespread was it before that leak? How many users did it have? Wikipedia lists it being added to a bunch of protocols but all after the leak. Also more recent cryptography has lots of extremely public competition between nonpatented algorithm proposals, which largely undermines this entire realm of study as a reason to continue to have software patents.
        Aloisius 11mo ago
        > A trade secret algorithm supports the idea that it would have been made anyway Made and kept secret. If the leak never happened (like it hasn't for other RSA trade secrets), we may not know the algorithm to this day. No one could have built upon it. We may have spent years trying to reinvent the wheel rather than trying to improve upon it. > how widespread was it before that leak It was one of the most popular stream ciphers in the world, due to it's speed and the fact it could be exported, and it helped launch RSA as a company.
        Dylan16807 11mo ago
        How sure are we that the "leak" wasn't someone decompiling it? Because if it was decompiled, then even if that post didn't happen someone else doing it was pretty inevitable. As for any intact RSA trade secrets, I doubt any of them were all that special by the 20 year mark. A trade secret slows down innovation but it has to get pretty extreme before a software trade secret slows down innovation more than a patent. (And yes, sometimes you can build on someone else's patent without waiting for it to expire, but on average the delay to the progress of the arts is pretty big.)