Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Illegal Numbers

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 98 posts

Re: Illegal Numbers

#41

Post by aes256 »

wmf wrote: post #38
aes256 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Again, that can only work if either B or C is a derivative of A.

Apparently what I was describing here has already been put into practice in the shape of Monolith [1]

In the case I describe, as in the case of 'munging' using Monolith, neither B nor C bears any resemblance to A except when the two are combined.

In my view, at least, you cannot say either is a derivative of A. To do so would bind you to declare everything a derivative of A, because any B when combined with an appropriate C can form A.

If I take your post here as B, you will likely deny it is a derivative of any copyrighted work, but if I make the text of the post the encryption key to another file (C) which, when decrypted, becomes copyrighted work A, is your post itself derivative of a copyrighted work?

What makes your post non-derivative and the encrypted file I create derivative? They are both nothing in themselves, and yet a copyrighted work when combined with the other.

[1] http://monolith.sourceforge.net/

Edit: Reading through the article on the color of bits it seems this exact argument prompted the article in the first place. I guess I should finish reading this!

Re: Illegal Numbers

#42

Post by shasta »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #40
shasta wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You've described one side of the debate, yes. The technical side has no less merit; don't dismiss it offhandedly. Hence why I find the essay on bits having color so useful: it frames the debate nicely without actually taking a side. 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 ho…

We apparently had different interpretations of the color article. You seem to think the article was about there being two valid viewpoints (color exists and it doesn't), whereas I think it was just about trying to get the computer scientist to understand color.

> Or, to put it more snarkily: your claim that bits have some unrepresentable property of "color" sounds like non-geek misunderstanding to me.

The legality of information should and does involve tracking how they were obtained. This is not a property of mathematical bits, but is a property of the physical encoding of those bits in this world. Since the argument here is over how the law should work, a geek making arguments like this is just wrong. This is not a "they're both right" situation.

> Let's not rehash the arguments that the essay already eloquently expresses; neither of us will get anywhere that way.

Go reread the essay and see if you can really find support for your viewpoint. I just skimmed it (quickly, admittedly) and it seems to say what I remembered it to say.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#43

Post by snowwrestler »

aes256 wrote: post #33
Leszek wrote: post #28

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…

I've never really understood the child pornography thing. 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 chil…

Criminalizing the possession of child porn photos is a tool to assist in the capture of people who make child porn photos. A person facing prosecution for possession is highly motivated to reduce their own sentence by helping in the arrest and prosecution of the source of their images. If the source didn't make the photos, they certainly possessed them too, so it's possible to walk another link higher in the chain.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#44

Post by harshreality »

derekp7 wrote: post #29
takluyver wrote: post #10

I'm intrigued by how the law would handle one time pad cryptography in such a case. You could produce two numbers of similar length, each on its own bearing no relationship to the 'illegal' number, but which can be combined to give that number. Then post them separately. Could either of them legally be taken down?

The only way to produce such a pair of numbers is by using the restricted material as a source -- therefore the numbers would be a derivative work. This is already covered under copyright law. Now there is a twist to this concept -- plausible deny-ability. Let's say Bob posts a non-infringing work encrypted with a one time pad (randomly generated), and also posts the one time pad too. Both files would appear to be ra…

The initial example presents the same which-part-is-infringing conundrum as the more convoluted example you presented.

  - restricted material is X
  - generate Y randomly (using a typical cryptographically secure RNG or PRNG, zero-bias, with an entropy source unlikely to be observed by anyone else)
  - Z = X xor Y
There is no way to prove that it wasn't Z generated randomly, with Y = X xor Z.

It's clear that the only way to generate both Y and Z is to have the restricted material, but you don't know which piece is tainted and which isn't. You have to know which piece was generated first to know which one is infringing (the non-infringing one had to be used as input for the infringing one).

Re: Illegal Numbers

#45

Post by JoshTriplett »

shasta wrote: post #42
JoshTriplett wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've described one side of the debate, yes. The technical side has no less merit; don't dismiss it offhandedly. Hence why I find the essay on bits having color so useful: it frames the debate nicely without actually taking a side. 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 ho…

We apparently had different interpretations of the color article. You seem to think the article was about there being two valid viewpoints (color exists and it doesn't), whereas I think it was just about trying to get the computer scientist to understand color. > Or, to put it more snarkily: your claim that bits have some unrepresentable property of "color" sounds like non-geek misunderstanding to me. The legality of…

> Since the argument here is over how the law should work

I think we've talked past each other here. I agree with you about how the law works. As much as I might want it to work differently, it currently does not. However, read the second to last paragraph of the essay: "I think it's time for computer people to take Colour more seriously - if only so that we can better explain to the lawyers why they must give up their dream of enforcing Colour inside Friend Computer, where Colour does not and cannot exist." That one sentence nicely sums up both viewpoints: the law wants bits to have color, and technology does not support properties of bits beyond the bits themselves. You've argued the former, which I agree with. I've argued the latter, and you seem to think that in doing so I've disagreed with the former.

> whereas I think it was just about trying to get the computer scientist to understand color.

I'd argue that the same article would also help lawyers understand why technology cannot represent the color of bits.

In any case, I think the sentence I quoted above makes both viewpoints very clear. And while I recognize that the law sees bits as having color, I intend to continue working to make sure technology does not attempt to care.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#46

Post by wmf »

aes256 wrote: post #41
wmf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, that can only work if either B or C is a derivative of A.

Apparently what I was describing here has already been put into practice in the shape of Monolith [1] In the case I describe, as in the case of 'munging' using Monolith, neither B nor C bears any resemblance to A except when the two are combined. In my view, at least, you cannot say either is a derivative of A. To do so would bind you to declare everything a derivative of A, because any B when combined with an approp…

Let me put it a different way. If A = decompress(B), then necessarily B = compress(A), so B is obviously a derivative of A. Introducing xor does not change anything; one of the parts must be a derivative of the original.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#47

Post by wmf »

harshreality wrote: post #44
derekp7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to produce such a pair of numbers is by using the restricted material as a source -- therefore the numbers would be a derivative work. This is already covered under copyright law. Now there is a twist to this concept -- plausible deny-ability. Let's say Bob posts a non-infringing work encrypted with a one time pad (randomly generated), and also posts the one time pad too. Both files would appear to be ra…

The initial example presents the same which-part-is-infringing conundrum as the more convoluted example you presented. - restricted material is X - generate Y randomly (using a typical cryptographically secure RNG or PRNG, zero-bias, with an entropy source unlikely to be observed by anyone else) - Z = X xor Y There is no way to prove that it wasn't Z generated randomly, with Y = X xor Z. It's clear that the only way…

That just encourages the powers that be to take a "shoot 'em both and let God sort it out" approach. Also, the metadata that says Z = X xor Y will be seen as infringing.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#48

Post by ewillbefull »

shasta wrote: post #39
ewillbefull wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The anti-circumvention provisions criminalize the distribution of not just software that can be directly used, but anything that serves as a tool to violate copyright. 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 w…

I'm not speaking about accidental violation of the provision, I'm even talking about intentional violation. Anti-circumvention provisions don't cover the copyrighted work, they don't even cover a derivative work. It's just suppression of speech that tangentially supports or encourages illegal activities, which the Supreme Court has ruled the government has no compelling interest in quelling.

A lot of this speech can take many forms. It can be blog posts delving into how some encryption scheme works, it can be keys that are derived mathematically from Sony's mistakes, and it can be software which may only incidentally be used as a tool to circumvent DRM. This does not survive strict scrutiny.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#49

Post by skybrian »

This sounds absurd only because we have a hard time really understanding the consequences of dealing with a vast search space. Yes, 128^140 is the space of all possible tweets (in ascii), but just because we're able to count them (sorta) and assign a number to each message doesn't actually give us any power over them. After all, the omega number [1] is just another number too.

[1] http://plus.maths.org/content/omega-and-why-maths-has-no-toe...

Re: Illegal Numbers

#50

Post by shasta »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #45
shasta wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We apparently had different interpretations of the color article. You seem to think the article was about there being two valid viewpoints (color exists and it doesn't), whereas I think it was just about trying to get the computer scientist to understand color. > Or, to put it more snarkily: your claim that bits have some unrepresentable property of "color" sounds like non-geek misunderstanding to me. The legality of…

> Since the argument here is over how the law should work I think we've talked past each other here. I agree with you about how the law works. As much as I might want it to work differently, it currently does not. However, read the second to last paragraph of the essay: "I think it's time for computer people to take Colour more seriously - if only so that we can better explain to the lawyers why they must give up the…

I think the few bits about lawyers not understanding the limitations of metadata weren't the thrust of the article. I do agree that the two viewpoints there aren't opposed, but that point about metadata is not the same as the wrong headed one being made by people using the phrase "illegal number."
Post reply on HN