5 ms·

seems, from the comments, like it’s time for another generation of developers to read What Colour Are Your Bits: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz

seems, from the comments, like it’s time for another generation of developers to read What Colour Are Your Bits: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Came here to repost exactly that, thanks! I second the recommendation - this piece contains insights crucial to understand the perspective of the law wrt. all things digital. If I were to shorten it to one sentence, it would be this: the law doesn't deal with static, mathematical reality. It considers provenance.
ealhad 9y ago
Well thank you, that was a really good read. And so seems to be the rest of the author’s work!
lambda 9y ago
Ooh, got to love any article about intellectual property that starts with a analogy to the game Paranoia.
rayiner 9y ago
The article is based on a false premise. The government does not make any bits legal or illegal. It prohibits specific human actions: copying, selling, using, etc. Bits have no color. But human beings do different things in order to develop different bit sequences. Take the bit sequence corresponding to a movie. The bits have no color. But that’s irrelevant. What matters is what you did to get that information. If you can prove that the bits came from an RNG that’s not copyright infringement. Likewise, if you recompress a file you copied and totally change the bit sequence, it’s still infringement. The law doesn’t care about the bits; they are tangential to human actions. Saying that “certain bit sequences are illegal” is reductio ad absurdum like saying that laws against battery amount to making certain sequences of muscle fiber contractions illegal. The law doesn’t care about the muscle fibers that contracted; that is entirely incidential to the fact that you punched someone.
- gowld 9y ago
  What is the false premise? The linked article http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 is saying the same thing you are, with an in-depth explanation. The article isn't great in how it explains, and it's unfriendly toward the legal profession, but it makes the same claims you do. rayiner: > If you can prove that the bits came from an RNG that’s not copyright infringement. article: > It doesn't matter that it looks like, or maybe even is bit-for-bit identical with, some other file that you could get from a random number generator. It happens that you didn't get it from a random number generator.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The false premise is that the law cares about any combination of bits and/or metadata. Even talking about "provenance" is misleading, because that puts the focus on the data. The law regulates human conduct; crimes require a human action combined with a human state of mind. Things (bits, guns, etc.) are relevant to the extent that people take actions with them. To address the RNG example: the law doesn't care about whether the bits came from an RNG or an original copy per se. The law cares about those things only to the extent that they imply that someone generated the bits randomly versus copying them from the original. (Note the focus on verbs.) In the RNG example the distinction does not matter, but consider something like insider information about an upcoming merger. The provenance is a leak from someone inside the company. Whether it is legal or illegal depends on what you do with it (trade on it versus publish it), and what you were thinking when you did it (even if you trade on it, if you didn't know it was insider information then there is no crime).
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- cobbzilla 9y ago
  You are talking about the "content" bits. These illegal primes do not represent copyrighted/authored works, they are the secret decoding keys (remember DeCSS?) that are crucial to securing certain forms of DRM. As such, they are more like trade secrets. But trade secrets don't have much legal protection, so the industry got wise and helped write some new laws (to call them copyright, among other things) and can now further protect/entrench themselves.

seems, from the comments, like it’s time for another generation of developers to read What Colour Are Your Bits: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Came here to repost exactly that, thanks! I second the recommendation - this piece contains insights crucial to understand the perspective of the law wrt. all things digital. If I were to shorten it to one sentence, it would be this: the law doesn't deal with static, mathematical reality. It considers provenance.

ealhad 9y ago

Well thank you, that was a really good read. And so seems to be the rest of the author’s work!

lambda 9y ago

Ooh, got to love any article about intellectual property that starts with a analogy to the game Paranoia.

rayiner 9y ago

The article is based on a false premise. The government does not make any bits legal or illegal. It prohibits specific human actions: copying, selling, using, etc. Bits have no color. But human beings do different things in order to develop different bit sequences. Take the bit sequence corresponding to a movie. The bits have no color. But that’s irrelevant. What matters is what you did to get that information. If you can prove that the bits came from an RNG that’s not copyright infringement. Likewise, if you recompress a file you copied and totally change the bit sequence, it’s still infringement. The law doesn’t care about the bits; they are tangential to human actions. Saying that “certain bit sequences are illegal” is reductio ad absurdum like saying that laws against battery amount to making certain sequences of muscle fiber contractions illegal. The law doesn’t care about the muscle fibers that contracted; that is entirely incidential to the fact that you punched someone.

gowld 9y ago
What is the false premise? The linked article http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 is saying the same thing you are, with an in-depth explanation. The article isn't great in how it explains, and it's unfriendly toward the legal profession, but it makes the same claims you do. rayiner: > If you can prove that the bits came from an RNG that’s not copyright infringement. article: > It doesn't matter that it looks like, or maybe even is bit-for-bit identical with, some other file that you could get from a random number generator. It happens that you didn't get it from a random number generator.
- rayiner 9y ago
  The false premise is that the law cares about any combination of bits and/or metadata. Even talking about "provenance" is misleading, because that puts the focus on the data. The law regulates human conduct; crimes require a human action combined with a human state of mind. Things (bits, guns, etc.) are relevant to the extent that people take actions with them. To address the RNG example: the law doesn't care about whether the bits came from an RNG or an original copy per se. The law cares about those things only to the extent that they imply that someone generated the bits randomly versus copying them from the original. (Note the focus on verbs.) In the RNG example the distinction does not matter, but consider something like insider information about an upcoming merger. The provenance is a leak from someone inside the company. Whether it is legal or illegal depends on what you do with it (trade on it versus publish it), and what you were thinking when you did it (even if you trade on it, if you didn't know it was insider information then there is no crime).
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cobbzilla 9y ago
You are talking about the "content" bits. These illegal primes do not represent copyrighted/authored works, they are the secret decoding keys (remember DeCSS?) that are crucial to securing certain forms of DRM. As such, they are more like trade secrets. But trade secrets don't have much legal protection, so the industry got wise and helped write some new laws (to call them copyright, among other things) and can now further protect/entrench themselves.