Illegal Prime Numbers • Hacker News Board

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#71

Post by zests » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #14

Primes are pretty dense. If you can encode something as a number, then you can encode it as a prime number with enough padding. Therefore I don't see how those numbers being prime changes anything. This looks to me like a weak argument that tries to take advantage of poor intuitions that some people have about primes. Yes, the IP laws are ridiculous but this is not a good argument to support this opinion.

There is no question that the person creating and publishing the prime is infringing copyright. However, they aren't the ones actually publishing the information. The copyright infringer creates the prime, proves something interesting about it and then the fan websites (like PrimePages mentioned in the articles) actually distribute the primes.

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#72

Post by sweezyjeezy » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

dezmou wrote: post #4

dezmou wrote: post #2

I understand that one number can be the binary equivalent of a protected source code, but I don't understand why the fact that it is a prime number is important.

I Missread it "...worthy of being published on the lists of the highest prime numbers.[1] In a way, by having this number independently published for a completely unrelated reason to the DeCSS code, he had been able to evade legal responsibility for the original software."

Just because it has a secondary reason of interest, it doesn't negate the original intent (especially when the original intent has been documented by the author). I doubt this would stand up if legally challenged.

Primes are pretty dense in the integers - unless you're going to say 'data can't be illegal' - including e.g. CP, then highlighting illegal primes is simply not a valid evasion.

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#73

Post by GuB-42 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #28

upofadown wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...what if we wrote a text commentary about Shakespeare's Hamlet that when SHA-1 hashed, it gives you that same information? That would imply that it would be practical to create a document that hashes to a specified value. The SHA-1 pre-image resistance would prevent that.

https://shattered.io/

This is a collision attack, much weaker than pre-image. It means that you can make two different texts with the same hash, but you can't create a text that matches a specific hash.

Even MD5 is safe from a pre-image attack, it means, for example, that it is safe to use for storing passwords (but not recommended for other reasons).

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#74

Post by cannabis_sam » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

How clueless about mathematics do you have to be, as a professional in the legal field, to propose this type of garbage?

Mathematicians (in my humble experience) are also pretty clueless about law, but at least they can’t just make up shit that is fundamentally incompatible with reality[0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#75

Post by dTal » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #51

dTal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum reasonable size of an "illegal number" is fairly comprehensively explored here [0] (tl;dr 128 bits) (You needn't be kept up at night by the thought of accidentally publishing nuclear codes; as you say, the probability is 0 for all practical purposes, and the reluctance of government agents to dismiss it as a coincidence would be entirely reasonable ) [0] https://qntm.org/number

I don't know about "reasonable", but much smaller numbers have, in practice, been banned in various contexts by legal authorities (tl;dr 2 to 11 bits). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number#Other_examples

...I don't think it's quite fair to characterize the search term "4" as 2-bits of information, since it's possible to put any text in a search box, not just numbers. Although it's certainly not 128 bits either!

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#76

Post by zild3d » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

curryst wrote: post #66

amelius wrote: post #39

People believe (although there is no proof) that any finite sequence of bits appears somewhere in pi, making pi an illegal number :) https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/216343/does-pi-cont...

If true, that could be an exceptionally interesting method of compression. Any volume of data can be compressed to two numbers: an offset and a length. Presuming we have a way to "stream" the numbers, rather than having to calculate the entire value.

also means the offset can be larger than the data

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#77

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #34

If N is illegal, then could N+1 be legal or not?

I think all we can say is that if N is an illegal prime, then N+1 is not an illegal prime.

Well, I suppose a government could try to ban the numbers 2 and 3, but it might have trouble complying with that law itself.

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#78

Post by FrozenVoid » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

If any number is illegal, all numbers in such size range A xor B can be made illegal(even though A or B are both perfectly mundane, xoring them creates an illegal number, so they're now illegal too). * Xoring the original illegal number with any random legal number A of same size creates a new (also random) number B that (A xor B) restores the original.

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#79

Post by whatgoodisaroad » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

I could imagine a somewhat cynical science fiction story where Earth manages to communicate with an intelligent alien species using fundamental constants and rules of mathematics. But then, the aliens transmit a prime that the humans have happened to have declared illegal and have no choice but descend into interplanetary copyright war.

Re: Illegal Prime Numbers

#80

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #47

lovelyviking wrote: post #44

>it describes a computer program that bypasses the digital rights management scheme used on DVDs. Hiding number is not a proper way to address the issue. We should address the core of it - drm which should be made illegal. What is strange for me is that making digital rights management program that does who knows what and thus breaks any privacy by definition is not illegal but some number that merely describes a com…

Obviously. But the issue is not that simple. Do you think any kind of information should be protected by law? Because I can think of a few examples. Actually, I believe we are going towards information being the thing that has value, we should arrive there, assuming abundance (on a human scale of course, energy is still required to sustain any patterns), material goods being just things that can be copied. So where d…

> So where do you draw the line?

A reasonable suggestion would be to draw the line around private data.

By design, DRM is intended to restrict people's use of data which the publisher wants to spread as widely as possible (on the condition that they are paid for every copy). This data is therefore not private in any sense.

All your other examples work with this line: Private keys are obviously private; internal company documents are "private" in the same sense that corporations are people; government secrets are private (and countries are legal people); and Facebook should be keeping people's personal data secret on their behalf.