31–40 of 98 posts
The main problem with "illegal numbers" seems to be that for any illegal number a , which represents someone's intellectual property or trade secret A , I can easily create two original pieces of intellectual property B and C so that b + c = a .
Numbers corresponding to obscenity depends entirely on the software that interprets and renders them, doesn't it? If I write software that translates the number 5 into obscenity, would 5 become illegal?
Let's rephrase this problem as not something that people will defend, e.g. anti-DRM, but something people will not defend; let's go straight for the big guns and use child pornography. Clearly, child pornography is illegal, and yet the images are just a series of 0s and 1s; these could potentially be re-interpreted as a single number, giving rise to the problem here. Or maybe each triplet of bytes of the JPEG's data…
Criminalizing mere possession of such images seems like a roundabout, largely ineffective, and perhaps even counterproductive, way of tackling the real issue; the sexual abuse of children.
It blurs the very real and very important distinction between those who are sexually attracted to children and those who will act on that attraction to sexually abuse a child.
It criminalizes the inquisitive, has the potential to make people inadvertent criminals, and ultimately — to return to the original subject matter — it makes a crime of possessing a particular sequence of 0s and 1s, which strikes me as particularly absurd.
My personal suspicion is that sexual attraction to children (primarily referring to teenagers here) is not the abhorrent, unnatural illness that people speak of in public, but a perfectly natural, harmless preference that is far more commonplace than most people would like to admit.
Ultimately, I'm for the free sharing of 0s and 1s in any order, and I'm not the least bit swayed by the child pornography challenge.
There is a Latin term for arguments based on the reduction of software to numbers: reductio ad absurdum.
The main problem with "illegal numbers" seems to be that for any illegal number a , which represents someone's intellectual property or trade secret A , I can easily create two original pieces of intellectual property B and C so that b + c = a .
Give us an actual example of b and c that are created without knowledge of a, and you may have case. But information theory says it is unlikely, if a is deeply original and not derivative of something like b and c to begin with.
Now I'm no expert on compression, but there are surely a vast, if not infinite, number of possible pairs B and C that could combine to form the original copyrighted work.
Thus, with copyright law in its current state, we are not simply granting copyright holders the exclusive rights to a particular sequencing of 1s and 0s, but also rights over any method of creating that sequence.
If there are an infinite number of methods of creating that sequence — that is to say, any B, if combined with a suitable C could form A — then aren't we in effect granting rights over everything to the copyright holder? Where do we draw the line?
The 1s and 0s that make up this post could, with suitable decompression, form an exact copy of a hit blockbuster, but neither this post nor the decompressor would resemble the blockbuster on their own.
Edit: Interesting idea time. If I uploaded a series of files alleging they are encrypted copies of blockbuster films, but resolved not to release the encryption keys to any of the files for 12 months, would the copyright holders have the right to have the encrypted files taken down in the meantime?
They can't actually prove that the files are infringing without the encryption key. Is the mere suggestion that a file may potentially, with some manipulation (i.e. decryption with the appropriate key), resemble a copyrighted work, sufficient to have it taken down?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm aware, but the grandparent wrote a "summary" that could be read as either: His point, worded a little oddly. "The author got the law side wrong , and is yet another stupid nerd who doesn't get it."
From the perspective of the law, bits do have color, even though that makes no sense from a technical perspective. So, any given number may or may not qualify as "illegal" depending on how you generated it. That said, I don't think that makes the terms "illegal number" or "illegal prime" nonsensical, depending on context. In any case, I think the article doesn't deserve the pithy "summary" upthread; the summary provi…
Your claim that bits having color "makes no sense from a technical perspective" sounds like more geek misunderstanding to me. There is no technical problem here -- only a problem of geeks applying technical results where they shouldn't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Summary: "Illegal number" is a term that you use to refer to protected digital information when you also want to convey that you have no grasp of the legal issues involved.
> you have no grasp of the legal issues involved Let's have a thread about it then. What legal issues am I misunderstanding? It seems to me that the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA are rather unprecedented. Brandenburg v. Ohio demonstrated that free speech protects abstract advocacy of force or law violation. The anti-circumvention provisions criminalize the distribution of not just software that can be dir…
http://gigaom.com/2012/07/30/censorship-ok-to-fight-copyrigh...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give us an actual example of b and c that are created without knowledge of a, and you may have case. But information theory says it is unlikely, if a is deeply original and not derivative of something like b and c to begin with.
I may not be on the same wavelength as rolux here, but compression would be one example. Create B (a series of compressed files) and C (a decompressor), both unique creations in their own right, that when combined create the original work of another person, A. Now I'm no expert on compression, but there are surely a vast, if not infinite, number of possible pairs B and C that could combine to form the original copyri…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Summary: "Illegal number" is a term that you use to refer to protected digital information when you also want to convey that you have no grasp of the legal issues involved.
> you have no grasp of the legal issues involved Let's have a thread about it then. What legal issues am I misunderstanding? It seems to me that the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA are rather unprecedented. Brandenburg v. Ohio demonstrated that free speech protects abstract advocacy of force or law violation. The anti-circumvention provisions criminalize the distribution of not just software that can be dir…
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to speculate that if you upload image.bmp, a picture you took with your camera, that happens by coincidence to contain a key that can be used for circumvention, then you would not be prosecuted or convicted. In other words, it's not the number that's illegal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the perspective of the law, bits do have color, even though that makes no sense from a technical perspective. So, any given number may or may not qualify as "illegal" depending on how you generated it. That said, I don't think that makes the terms "illegal number" or "illegal prime" nonsensical, depending on context. In any case, I think the article doesn't deserve the pithy "summary" upthread; the summary provi…
My summary was snarky, but "illegal number" is a silly term intended to emphasize that "it's just a number (so how could it be illegal?)", which is as sophisticated as the legal arguments "it's just a plastic disk with certain reflective properties" or "it's just some markings on a piece of paper." Your claim that bits having color "makes no sense from a technical perspective" sounds like more geek misunderstanding t…
The arguments you referenced would indeed make for relatively unsophisticated legal arguments, but they don't claim to be legal arguments; they're statements about technology and about how geeks want technology to work. They carry no less weight than statements about how lawyers want technology to work.
Or, to put it more snarkily: your claim that bits have some unrepresentable property of "color" sounds like non-geek misunderstanding to me. There is no legal problem here -- only a problem of non-geeks applying legalistic results where they shouldn't. :)
Let's not rehash the arguments that the essay already eloquently expresses; neither of us will get anywhere that way.