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 all?) cases.
The question is naturally asked: if I make some number produce something illegal is that number then illegal? The engineers among us like absolute rules and certainty as a general rule. I've had a discussion with someone else about how a group of people could route each other's packets and then hypothetically law enforcement couldn't prove who they came from. The same argument comes up with "an IP address is not a person" arguments.
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.
So when it comes to numbers, one has to remember that numbers encode information (See [1]). So for a small integer to encode, say, an obscene image or a program that circumvents copy protection, it would require another program that actually does that. So if the number 7 produced a DeCSS circumvention program with a given program A, then program A is the problem, not the number 7.
Now to turn any number into a video or a program or an image requires another program or infrastructure. Even if it's juaw the raw bytes of an i386/ELF program, you still need a kernel and a filesystem to run it. The test here, as I imagine the law would apply (IANAL), is whether the required infrastructure is general purpose or not.
Turning the number 7 into something obscene can't be done with something general purpose. Turning a 1400 digit number into a program can.
I don't like the stance of the US on IP, particularly the Obama administration, which has to be the most pro-IP anti-tech administration in US history (IMHO). I also don't like how selective enforcement is here. Share a few songs on Limewire and you'd up for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Really? At the same time, every city has a place you can go to buy pirate DVDs or counterfeit goods (eg Canal St in NYC). Why is this, which is actual trafficking for profit, ignored while the administration tries to elevate file-sharing to terrorism (the original ACTA draft)?
Anyway, numbers are simply a way to represent information and that information is the problem, not the number.
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.
While people may not grasp this technical point, I think the common-sense reaction conforms to it.
For example, if I started publishing a sequence of all the binary numbers between 0 and (something huge), I don't think anyone would argue that I'm violating copyrights.
But if I added to that data stream a statement like "take the Nth number from this series and feed it through Encoder X and you'll get Movie Y", I'd argue that's both the additional information and the intentionality needed to make it a copyright violation.
I just want to mention every movie ever translated to a digital format, every song rendered as an mp3, and every image or sound ever made digital is in effect a very long number in binary form that can be interpreted by decoders to produce copyrighted material. Are all those numbers illegal to distribute, or even copy if you already have an instance of such a number? That is a lot of numbers. Big numbers too.
When more and more everything is digitized, it seems like pro-property-ownership will mean pro-idea-ownership and vice versa. Finally Nous of Anaxagoras becomes true.
> 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.
> I've had a discussion with someone else about how a group of people could route each other's packets and then hypothetically law enforcement couldn't prove who they came from.
Combine it with encryption and you'll get something like Tor or i2p. Not just hypothetical, but works very well in practice too. Things like Silk Road have been running there for years with LEOs not being able to do anything about it.
>So for a small integer to encode, say, an obscene image or a program that circumvents copy protection, it would require another program that actually does that.
so winzip is the problem, not the zipped file? ridiculous statement, bro
fine, you still need to play the file, so media player is the problem? obviously, it's the source file, not the generic tools that work on everything
He is saying that the problem is those components of the total system used to produce the infringing output that is not generic.
So in the case of a zipped file, the zipped file and not winzip would be the problem, because winzip is generic, and have general purpose uses, while the zipped file is a very large specific number that is translatable by a generic process into a specific protected work.
On the other extreme, the number "7" on the other hand, does not encode enough information to on its own contain the information about the infringing content. Even if you were to write a "decoder" that turns the number "7" into a movie, in this case the "decoder" is the problem, as the decoder embodies enough specific information about the content that in effect the number you feed in is little more than a key to unlock access to that content.
That's actually the parent's point. Except specific to large integers, because there aren't enough small ones to encode anything meaningful that can be decoded by a general purpose program.
> 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.
Hah, you still think that the legal system makes an ounce of sense. Read the below, weep, weep again and then ask yourself how you didn't realise that you were living in the dark ages up until now.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you care to know, read up on the reoffending rates of prisoners and the types of systems which have particularly low ones. Look around you at all of the seemingly civilized people who call for blood when their sensibilities are offended strongly enough.
Where we now stand, in this aspect, is not at the heart of civilization but on the very fringe of it - and hardly anyone has noticed the fact. The legal system, just like everything else to do with humanity, is solidly anchored in emotion, not logic.
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 all?) cases.
The question is naturally asked: if I make some number produce something illegal is that number then illegal? The engineers among us like absolute rules and certainty as a general rule. I've had a discussion with someone else about how a group of people could route each other's packets and then hypothetically law enforcement couldn't prove who they came from. The same argument comes up with "an IP address is not a person" arguments.
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.
So when it comes to numbers, one has to remember that numbers encode information (See [1]). So for a small integer to encode, say, an obscene image or a program that circumvents copy protection, it would require another program that actually does that. So if the number 7 produced a DeCSS circumvention program with a given program A, then program A is the problem, not the number 7.
Now to turn any number into a video or a program or an image requires another program or infrastructure. Even if it's juaw the raw bytes of an i386/ELF program, you still need a kernel and a filesystem to run it. The test here, as I imagine the law would apply (IANAL), is whether the required infrastructure is general purpose or not.
Turning the number 7 into something obscene can't be done with something general purpose. Turning a 1400 digit number into a program can.
I don't like the stance of the US on IP, particularly the Obama administration, which has to be the most pro-IP anti-tech administration in US history (IMHO). I also don't like how selective enforcement is here. Share a few songs on Limewire and you'd up for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Really? At the same time, every city has a place you can go to buy pirate DVDs or counterfeit goods (eg Canal St in NYC). Why is this, which is actual trafficking for profit, ignored while the administration tries to elevate file-sharing to terrorism (the original ACTA draft)?
Anyway, numbers are simply a way to represent information and that information is the problem, not the number.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory