What Colour are your bits? (2004) • Hacker News Board

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#21

Post by youzicha » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

The blog post writes:

> Suppose you publish an article that happens to contain a sentence identical to one from this article, like "The law sees Colour." That's just four words, all of them common, and it might well occur by random chance. Maybe you were thinking about similar ideas to mine and happened to put the words together in a similar way. If so, fine. But maybe you wrote "your" article by cutting and pasting from "mine" - in that case, the words have the Colour that obligates you to follow quotation procedures and worry about "derivative work" status under copyright law and so on.

There was a real court case in 2012 which I think is interesting because it's very similar to this example. A photographer was accused of "copying" the concept of taking a photo of a red bus in front of a grey Houses of Parliament. He defended himself by saying that that those ideas are very common and should not be copyrightable---but failed:

https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/162846191544/what-colour-ar...

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#22

Post by skybrian » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

There is the thing itself and there is the history and context of the thing, and they are both important. We try to keep them together, but the connection is often fragile.

One example: a product and its price. The price roughly summarizes information about how it was made and how valuable people think it is, which are not attributes of the thing itself and often can’t be deduced from it. In some cases we physically attach a label, the price tag, to keep track. In other cases we attach a lot more info.

Another example: a photo and information about when and where it was taken. For a photo to serve as evidence we need a reliable history. In court, this is the chain of custody. Too often on the Internet, we pretend that having the photo is proof enough, but without knowing its history, it could be a fake.

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#23

Post by goto11 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:08 AM UTC

This is a great metaphor because you will often see people with a technical background arguing copyright law is if it was purely about the bits. Because for us, the bits are the only real thing. But the law does not see it like that.

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#24

Post by goto11 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:15 AM UTC

youzicha wrote: post #21

The blog post writes: > Suppose you publish an article that happens to contain a sentence identical to one from this article, like "The law sees Colour." That's just four words, all of them common, and it might well occur by random chance. Maybe you were thinking about similar ideas to mine and happened to put the words together in a similar way. If so, fine. But maybe you wrote "your" article by cutting and pasting…

If I understand the verdict correctly it says that it doesn't matter that the visual idea was trivial and that many other people have come up with the same idea independently. What matters is that this particular photographer deliberately wanted to copy a known image.

A very good example of "color", since the exact same photograph (same bits) would be non-infringing if the photographer had got the idea independently.

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#25

Post by goto11 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 11:24 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #17

This essay is written to create the impression that it's imparting something profound, but it's really just identifying the existence of side channels. We encode bits in all kinds of things. You can store some bits on a flash drive. Then you can write some words on the outside of the flash drive. They're both just bits. Whether you own a flash drive with some bits on it which is in a safety deposit box at a bank may…

> Suppose Alice publishes R1 and Bob publishes R2. R1 is Alice's message xor Alice's one time pad. R2 is Bob's message xor Bob's one time pad. The one time pads are "random". Then it's discovered that R1 xor R2 generates a third party copyrighted work.

It is common among computer people to think the law can be hacked like an algorithm. It does not work like that. If you xor two apparently random files and they surprisingly produce the full text of the Harry Potter series, you do not have plausible deniability if you start distributing it.

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#26

Post by ziml77 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #25

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #17

This essay is written to create the impression that it's imparting something profound, but it's really just identifying the existence of side channels. We encode bits in all kinds of things. You can store some bits on a flash drive. Then you can write some words on the outside of the flash drive. They're both just bits. Whether you own a flash drive with some bits on it which is in a safety deposit box at a bank may…

> Suppose Alice publishes R1 and Bob publishes R2. R1 is Alice's message xor Alice's one time pad. R2 is Bob's message xor Bob's one time pad. The one time pads are "random". Then it's discovered that R1 xor R2 generates a third party copyrighted work. It is common among computer people to think the law can be hacked like an algorithm. It does not work like that. If you xor two apparently random files and they surpri…

I see it all the time and it's quite frustrating to see people being so naive. The law is not purely mathematical and algorithmic. I think a good example that moves outside of IP law is murder vs manslaughter. Two identical killings could fall under different charges simply due to what the killer was thinking at the time. And we want it that way. It would be unfair and not accomplish anything good to treat an accidental and an intentional killer the same way.

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#27

Post by troublesom » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

It'll be time to update to 2020!

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#28

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #25

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #17

This essay is written to create the impression that it's imparting something profound, but it's really just identifying the existence of side channels. We encode bits in all kinds of things. You can store some bits on a flash drive. Then you can write some words on the outside of the flash drive. They're both just bits. Whether you own a flash drive with some bits on it which is in a safety deposit box at a bank may…

> Suppose Alice publishes R1 and Bob publishes R2. R1 is Alice's message xor Alice's one time pad. R2 is Bob's message xor Bob's one time pad. The one time pads are "random". Then it's discovered that R1 xor R2 generates a third party copyrighted work. It is common among computer people to think the law can be hacked like an algorithm. It does not work like that. If you xor two apparently random files and they surpri…

You're missing the attack in exactly the same way as the author does.

The same person doesn't distribute both of the files. Two different people distribute two different files. One of them is totally innocent and the party distributing that file doesn't even have to be in on it or have any relationship with the other person, but there is no way to tell which one it is.

The legal system is forced into either punishing and taking down the innocent file or not doing so for the infringing one. There is no other option when you can't distinguish between them.

But it isn't supposed to do that to the one which is just an ordinary use of a one-time pad by an innocent independent third party who has e.g. posted it in a public place for the intended recipient of the non-infringing message to receive it without there being a direct one-to-one communication between sender and the recipient. Or because there are multiple intended recipients and only those with the correct pad can read the original message so it's safe to publish widely.

The fact that some totally different person has come along and used your published file to encode an infringing one is not supposed to affect your legal status. But if nobody can tell which one is the original, the legal system has to choose between punishing the innocent and not punishing the guilty.

It isn't an algorithmic problem, it's an evidentiary problem. There are two different sets of bits and one is supposed to have a different "Colour" but the legal system has no information as to which one it is.

It's like someone discovering that the flashlight on certain phones is bright enough to blind surveillance cameras, and when someone points out that criminals could use this to prevent surveillance cameras from capturing their faces while they're committing their crimes, you respond that the legal system doesn't work like that because having an effective way to avoid being identified doesn't make your conduct legal. But that wasn't the original claim.

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#29

Post by goto11 » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 11:41 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #28

goto11 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose Alice publishes R1 and Bob publishes R2. R1 is Alice's message xor Alice's one time pad. R2 is Bob's message xor Bob's one time pad. The one time pads are "random". Then it's discovered that R1 xor R2 generates a third party copyrighted work. It is common among computer people to think the law can be hacked like an algorithm. It does not work like that. If you xor two apparently random files and they surpri…

You're missing the attack in exactly the same way as the author does. The same person doesn't distribute both of the files. Two different people distribute two different files. One of them is totally innocent and the party distributing that file doesn't even have to be in on it or have any relationship with the other person, but there is no way to tell which one it is. The legal system is forced into either punishing…

Have this scenario actually played out in court, or are you just speculating what would happen?

Re: What Colour are your bits? (2004)

#30

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #29

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the attack in exactly the same way as the author does. The same person doesn't distribute both of the files. Two different people distribute two different files. One of them is totally innocent and the party distributing that file doesn't even have to be in on it or have any relationship with the other person, but there is no way to tell which one it is. The legal system is forced into either punishing…

Have this scenario actually played out in court, or are you just speculating what would happen?

Suppose that Alice is an innocent bystander who has done nothing more than publish some innocent data encrypted with a one-time pad and Bob is a pirate who xors a copyrighted work with Alice's data and publishes it. Or vice versa. Anybody who downloads both of them can xor them together and get the copyrighted work, but only one of them was actually derived from the copyrighted work, and you don't know which one.

There are only three things that can happen next, right? Either you punish both Alice and Bob even though one of them is innocent, or you let them both go even though one of them is guilty, or you punish only one of them arbitrarily and thereby, because they're indistinguishable, have a 50% chance of punishing the innocent person while the guilty one goes free.

Which one of those would you propose the legal system should do in that case, and why?