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What colour are your bits? (2004)

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Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#11

Post by seanhunter »

Nursie wrote: post #7
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #3

That part about child pornography was a bit...weird. Am I misreading it or is the author suggesting children can consent?

I think it's fair to say that 20 years ago, discussions around CSAM were a lot less developed than they are today in a variety of ways. There were a lot more people much more ready to publicly make (IMHO terrible) arguments about how a jpg is just a stream of bits, which is a number, and you can't just arbitrarily ban specific large integers. Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's ju…

One infamous example

   “There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.” - Richard Stallman 2013[1]
…although he did later retract that view.

[1] quoted here and elsewhere. Can’t search for the original right now https://thenextweb.com/news/free-software-icon-richard-stall...

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#12

Post by nine_k »

It's a great illustration of what a pure and an impure (effectful) function is.

The author complains that getting some bits as a result of function f() is seen by the legal system differently than when these bits are obtained via another function g(), even though f() ≡ g()。

The problem is, of course, that f() and g() are not pure functions. They produce effects as a part of their being computed, such as accessing various sources of information. The colour thus obtained is one of the effects: accessing a medium while breaking a license agreement that forbids doing so is not the same as obtaining the very same bits from a random number generator by a blind chance. (Note that usually an RNG is also a stateful thing.)

It is easy to provide an analogy of colour in another pair of impure functions computing the same result.

Assume a predicate (theorem) P, which we assume is true. Let f(P) be true iff P is true, but producing a detailed proof of truthiness of P while computed (say, as a log output). Let g(P) be true iff P is true, but providing no explanation whatsoever. They return the very same one bit result: true, and this is the correct result, by construction. But there true values definitely have different colours, don't they?

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#13

Post by Nursie »

throw009 wrote: post #10
Nursie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that 20 years ago, discussions around CSAM were a lot less developed than they are today in a variety of ways. There were a lot more people much more ready to publicly make (IMHO terrible) arguments about how a jpg is just a stream of bits, which is a number, and you can't just arbitrarily ban specific large integers. Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's ju…

The internet was just colonised by bland NPCs and everyone interesting is now on the dark web. The reason why you don't see them here today is the same reason why you didn't see them in the NYT in 2003, you can't make money off ads when you're out of the Overton window.

It's hard to express how much I disagree with that position, given the context.

Contrarianism isn't interesting purely for its own sake, especially in relation to child abuse. And the internet is full of voices who are knee-jerk contrarian for the pure sake of it. Most of what they have to say is meaningless noise.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#14

Post by dang »

Related:

What Colour Are Your Bits? (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32400624 - Aug 2022 (3 comments)

What Colour are your bits? (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24917679 - Oct 2020 (35 comments)

What Colour are your bits? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525738 - Nov 2018 (1 comment)

What colour are your bits? (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14015524 - April 2017 (9 comments)

What Colour are your bits? (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8728532 - Dec 2014 (34 comments)

What colour are your bits? (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6231992 - Aug 2013 (15 comments)

What Colour are your bits? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2502015 - May 2011 (4 comments)

What Colour are your bits? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986 - March 2009 (11 comments)

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#15

Post by Symbiote »

PebblesRox wrote: post #5
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #3

That part about child pornography was a bit...weird. Am I misreading it or is the author suggesting children can consent?

"But when it comes to child pornography, I think maybe Colour should make a difference - if we're going to ban it at all, it should matter where it came from. Whether any children were actually involved, who did or didn't give consent, in short: what Colour the bits are. The other side takes the opposite tack: child pornography is dangerous by its very existence, and it doesn't matter where it came from. They're clai…

Two 17 year olds could consent to sex and taking photographs of each other, but the resulting photographs are child pornography.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#16

Post by deadbeeves »

Nursie wrote: post #7
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #3

That part about child pornography was a bit...weird. Am I misreading it or is the author suggesting children can consent?

I think it's fair to say that 20 years ago, discussions around CSAM were a lot less developed than they are today in a variety of ways. There were a lot more people much more ready to publicly make (IMHO terrible) arguments about how a jpg is just a stream of bits, which is a number, and you can't just arbitrarily ban specific large integers. Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's ju…

It sounds like you're dismissing the arguments purely by what you think it would mean to consider them seriously. "If these arguments are valid, then these conclusions are valid. These conclusions should not be valid. Therefore the arguments are invalid."

Why is it untenable that yes, data is data and it should move freely, and no, children should not be raped and filmed?

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#17

Post by woliveirajr »

This is the article that opened my eyes about the irremediable distance between Law and Computer Science. Nonetheless, Law comes from Humanities, Computer Science from Sciences. Each one has a specific mindset and it's not easy to change from one to another, let alone conciliate them in the real world.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#18

Post by msm_ »

corncob15 wrote: post #8
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #3

That part about child pornography was a bit...weird. Am I misreading it or is the author suggesting children can consent?

It's unfortunate - I was going to send this around because it's an excellent thing to think about, but then there's that bit that comes out of nowhere and if I send that to someone they'll think certain things about me.

That bit is very relevant to the concept of the colour of the bits (in this particular case, computer images) the author is explaining, and is only a single sentence of a quite long blog post. Why are you bothered by it so much that you 're afraid to even send the post to someone else?

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#19

Post by msm_ »

Nursie wrote: post #7
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #3

That part about child pornography was a bit...weird. Am I misreading it or is the author suggesting children can consent?

I think it's fair to say that 20 years ago, discussions around CSAM were a lot less developed than they are today in a variety of ways. There were a lot more people much more ready to publicly make (IMHO terrible) arguments about how a jpg is just a stream of bits, which is a number, and you can't just arbitrarily ban specific large integers. Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's ju…

> It's images/video of kids being raped, the continued existence and trading of which can be argued to do continuing harm to the victims.

I don't think that's what the author is saying. They say that IF any real world kids are involved in the "production" of the video, the image is illegal (have a bad "colour"). Nobody disagrees with that, especially not the author of that blog post. This is contrasted with drawn or rendered images that were created in a computer graphic program.

> Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's just data, ones and zeroes, that's not harming anyone. Or that the data is encoded, so it's meaningless without a decoder, a different decoder could decode that bitstream into literally anything else.

That's exactly what the author is arguing againts - he says that this is a naive interpretation of computer person, that makes no sense to a lawyer (in his words: color is not a function of bits).

I think CSAM is too sensitive topic to use it an example (today, maybe 20 years ago it was different). So my version of that example for 2023: watching and distributing (adult) rape videos is morally abhorrent and often illegal. But porn websites are full of staged rape videos. It's not about the content of the video, but its source (colour).

...that was my explanation of the thought process of the author. As he mentions, not everyone agrees with that interpretation in that context.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#20

Post by quietcomments »

Colour is used as a metaphor for the relationships lawyers want to create and the structuralist view that how you create logic matters as much or more than the content of the logic. Mushed together into one concept.

Then the author teases out the tangled truth. Logic and binary code can't support inherent relationships. Ones and zeros don't come with a 'colour'.

The ethical problems in the article conflates a symbolic representation generated by computer monitors from code, with the code itself being the problem. Like blaming the wind for carrying a dirty limerick into your ear.

Unfortunately the best way to deal with symbols is to burn them down. Detect and delete dirty pictures. You could make the Colour of generating unethical symbols illegal. Detect and prosecute after the fact like we do with most crimes. But not the binary code itself being illegal, just the symbolic representation of CP.

Also, DRM failing in the article's examples, is a feature not a bug. It gives a temporary structure to digital rights and doesn't constrain code re-use (like a software patent would) or try to lock down ownership of logic.

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