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Indeed the number itself does not necessarily infringe copyright. A really simple example is to imagine giving the number "N" encoding a movie in divx format t
by hasenj 16y ago
Indeed the number itself does not necessarily infringe copyright.
A really simple example is to imagine giving the number "N" encoding a movie in divx format to someone in the year 1995, since they have no means of converting the number to a continuous stream of video and sound (a video animation), the number is useless to them.
On the other hand, you can give them the same movie encoded in an older format (mpeg2?); this will be an entirely different number "Q" bearing almost absolutely no relationship to "N", but it will still be the same movie.
The presence of different encoding formats is a proof that copyright does not restrict what number you reproduce.
This could be kinda worse though, because it could imply that copyright restricts the distribution of ideas.
- burgerbrain 16y agoThe various numbers that represent the work in different formats would all be related through a single mathematical property (in that when they are processed with various algorithms, the results are all approximations of each other). It's turtles^Wmath all the way down.
- hasenj 16y agoNot necessarily so. Consider a loss-less encoding represented by A: it can be encoded in a lossy-manner in two different ways, one would produce B, the other would produce C. Without know what A was, there's no way to link B to C. Consider also that different versions of the same movie could different (hard-coded) subtitles, extra/deleted scenes, different resolutions, etc. If you consider all the different permutations of the movie and then consider that each one can be encoded in many different ways (lossy encoding), you'll see that there's no single number that can be said to represent the movie.
- nitrogen 16y agoActually, YouTube seems to do a decent job of linking B to C with its automated infringement scanners.
- burgerbrain 16y agoI didn't say there is a single number, I said they all share a similar mthematical property: when processed by there respective algorithms, then processed again by another complex algorithm (you), they are seen to be related. If we have a lossy encoding so poor that you can no longer recognize it, then I'm fine with saying it is "no longer that movie".