Illegal Numbers • Hacker News Board

Re: Illegal Numbers

#21

Post by tokenadult » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 11:28 PM UTC

Are we sure that this Wikipedia article, kindly submitted for our discussion, lays out the issues thoroughly? The Wikipedia article's talk page includes the tags

"This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the project's quality scale.

"This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale."

What are Wikipedians doing about that? The article history

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Illegal_number&#38...

makes it look like this is a rather sporadically edited article, which needs a lot of work. Are Hacker News participants willing to roll up their sleeves and jump in on editing the article? Or is that part of the problem on Wikipedia, that an article can be known to be lacking, but still not get fixed?

Where else would one go to find good sources on this issue? I've got no special knowledge of this specialized issue, so I can't personally help. My experience as a Wikipedian, fixing articles I know how to fix, is that most Wikipedia articles on most subjects need a lot more reliable sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...

Re: Illegal Numbers

#22

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 11:28 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #13

This is an interesting problem that we, as a society, need to deal with. HN's readership would be predominantly from a tech background with probably a reasonable basis in mathematics and the sciences. As such we can recognize some of the absurdities of the legal system, like how you can't patent a mathematical formula but you can patent software, which is ultimately indistinguishable from a formula in many (if not al…

This topic is explored more in GEB[0], with the point made that in general the information exists neither only on storage device, nor in the reading device alone; in fact the information is encoded on both of them together.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

Re: Illegal Numbers

#23

Post by geofft » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 11:43 PM UTC

unimpressive wrote: post #5

shasta wrote: post #4

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.

Having read the article, I'm not sure if this summary is satirical or not. On the one hand, it sounds like it could be a relevant summary of his point, on the other hand it sounds like you're saying the author has no grasp of the legal issues involved. Can you clarify?

It sounds to me like he's saying that the author of the "Illegal number" article has no grasp of the legal (or philosophical) issues involved, not that the author of the "What color are your bits?" article has no grasp of it.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#24

Post by baddox » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 11:54 PM UTC

Not to mention the binary representation of every single copyrighted MP3, text, software, picture, etc. in every conceivable encoding and file format.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#25

Post by 001sky » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 12:02 AM UTC

rolux wrote: post #17

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 .

This is a good point, as it the derivative notion: are my thoughts about illegal numbers, themselves, illegal. Evidentiary issues aside. etc.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#26

Post by jpiasetz » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 12:11 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #13

This is an interesting problem that we, as a society, need to deal with. HN's readership would be predominantly from a tech background with probably a reasonable basis in mathematics and the sciences. As such we can recognize some of the absurdities of the legal system, like how you can't patent a mathematical formula but you can patent software, which is ultimately indistinguishable from a formula in many (if not al…

> While I sympathize with these arguments, this isn't how the legal system works. The law doesn't work on absolutely provable certainty. It works on reasonable doubt, intent and (hopefully) facts.

But is this how the legal system should work? The legal system has obvious flaws. At the very least it needs to move away from duelling expert witnesses to a more scientific method based approach.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#27

Post by wmf » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 12:33 AM UTC

rolux wrote: post #17

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 .

This is covered in "color", already posted in this thread.

Re: Illegal Numbers

#28

Post by Leszek » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 12:36 AM UTC

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 could be represented as an RGB colour, and you could have a "child pornography flag" analogous to the free speech flag here, albeit a lot longer. Does this make it ok to distribute this number or this flag, because it's just a number/sequence of colours?

Re: Illegal Numbers

#29

Post by derekp7 » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 12:39 AM UTC

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 random text until put together. Further, someone else, Bill, produces a "random" number by XORing the Bob's one-time pad with an infringing work, and uses the result as a one-time pad to encrypt another non-infringing work, and posts both of those files. The two one-time pads can recreate the infringing work by XORing them together. But you can't prove who's "random" file was actually randomly created, and which one was produced as a derivative work. Who do you send the take-down notice to?

Re: Illegal Numbers

#30

Post by wmf » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 12:44 AM UTC

ewillbefull wrote: post #12

shasta wrote: post #4

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…

A non-lawyerly devil's advocate:

I would argue that a secret key by itself does not qualify as a circumvention tool and thus should not be banned by the DMCA. Unfortunately, by my reading the law does not agree with me and specifically bans distribution of a circumvention "device, component, or part thereof"; it seems like a key is a part of a circumvention device.

Looking at circumvention code itself, I would argue that such code should have no artistic or political expression when boiled down to its functional essence, in which case there is no meaningful free speech issue. If the code did have artistic or political aspects, arguably those aspects could be separated from the part of the code which performs circumvention. For example, the political opinion of being opposed to the DMCA can be easily expressed without using any code.