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Bits are not copyrighted. This is just such a weird misunderstanding of information theory. If bits were copyrighted, you could just transform them into differ
by Houshalter 11y ago
Bits are not copyrighted. This is just such a weird misunderstanding of information theory.
If bits were copyrighted, you could just transform them into different bits. Change a single bit and then it's no longer copyrighted. Or xor them all. Or only every other bit. Or xor the whole thing with a different file, like a one time pad.
You could also change the content itself. Say it's a video. Shift all the pixels to the right. Or tint it slightly red. Or play it on a monitor and record it with a camera, then invert the resulting video.
There are an infinite number of possible transforms that result an infinite number of possible bits. What matters is information, not bits. They are not the same thing! Information is the bits, and the method you use to transform them together.
Often it's proposed that you can compress a file by storing the index where it occurs in pi. The problem is the index where your file starts will be bigger than the actual file! So you no longer need the file, but you still need this other set of bits that represents the index. The bits have changed, but the information has not.
If you don't have the index, then the whole procedure is entirely useless. Yes, pi theoretically contains season 5 of breaking bad - and an infinite number of variations and derivative works of it. But you will never ever find it unless you already know where to look.
And no computer could possibly calculate pi to that many digits in millions of years, so the whole thing is impractical anyway.
- kzrdude 11y agoMaybe I should cry, that such an obvious joke can be taken seriously in this copyright-poisoned world.
- Houshalter 11y agoYeah that ended up being way longer and more serious than I intended. I unfortunately can't edit or delete it now so there it is. I know the parent comment was a joke, but the idea is serious. I've seen a lot of people have really weird ideas about copyright and illegal numbers.
- brianpgordon 11y agoSome sequences of bits are copyrighted, or otherwise illegal to distribute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
- Houshalter 11y agoYes but it's the information that they contain that's illegal, not the bits themselves. You could xor them all and they would still be illegal to distribute. Likewise no one would care if you spread them but didn't give any context to what their use was. Anyway those examples are trade secrets and other legal issues, they weren't copyrighted.