18 ms·

It's currently posssible to make a PR to the github dmca repo that merges youtube-dl, and so violate their TOS. When you make that PR, you do not transfer any

by joeyh 6y ago

It's currently posssible to make a PR to the github dmca repo that merges youtube-dl, and so violate their TOS. When you make that PR, you do not transfer any of youtube-dl to github. Their repo already has those objects. So all you have done is pushed a repo containing a specific hash, which is now a TOS violation, in that specific case at least. I wrote "Certain commit hashes are rapidly heading toward being illegal" because of that specificity.

eminence32 6y ago
Thanks for clarifying. I do understand that these specific hashes are effectively forbidden in the dmca repo. Are you aware of any specific instances where the presence of youtube-dl hashes in other repos have been found by github and used as the grounds for disciplinary action? That would be noteworthy indeed.
nine_k 6y ago
So, in addition to illegal primes, we are getting a collection of illegal random numbers? (I wonder when illegal transcendental numbers will become a thing.)
- bathtub365 6y ago
  What are the random numbers? Commit hashes are deterministic and based on the commit contents
  - __david__ 6y ago
    I believe they were using "random" to mean "assorted" (which is perfectly cromulent).
  - jaytaylor 6y ago
    edit- thanks commenters for the correction! Git commit hashes are indeed deterministic, though it depends on the inputs. From StackOverflow [0]: Git uses the following information to generate the sha-1: * The source tree of the commit (which unravels to all the subtrees and blobs) * The parent commit sha1 * The author info (with timestamp) * The committer info (right, those are different!, also with timestamp) * The commit message [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/34764586/293064 https://stackoverflow.com/a/34764586/293064
    - wldlyinaccurate 6y ago
      Git commit hashes _are_ deterministic. Run `git cat-file -p <hash>` on your two hashes. The timestamp in the committer field will be different. That is why the hash changed.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      It's deterministic, you've just changed the inputs. The "committer date" is usually excluded from logs so you don't see it, but it's the only missing input. Here is a demo: $ git rev-parse HEAD 78d66a4f169fec9cb9b3252f7a22bb020e967cd2 $ git log HEAD commit 78d66a4f169fec9cb9b3252f7a22bb020e967cd2 (HEAD -> master) Author: XXXX Date: Mon Nov 2 20:44:04 2020 -0500 temp2 $ git reset --soft HEAD\^ $ GIT_COMMITTER_DATE='Mon Nov 2 20:44:04 2020 -0500' GIT_AUTHOR_DATE='Mon Nov 2 20:44:04 2020 -0500' git commit -m temp2 [master 78d66a4] temp2 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 b $ git rev-parse HEAD 78d66a4f169fec9cb9b3252f7a22bb020e967cd2
- dfox 6y ago
  Most so called “illegal primes” involve encoding some information (eg. encryption key, that is an random number) as a prime number with the idea that transforming the information into prime makes it into “mathematical result” or something like that. It is intended as an argument why there should not be any “illegal data” which I find absurd because the idea that such transformation is somehow relevant is even larger nonsense that the idea of making some kinds of information “illegal”.
  - chc4 6y ago
    That's not true. They are illegal primes because encryption keys are just pairs of prime numbers used for public key cryptosystems, so posting the primes that make them up is sharing the encryption keys and thus against DMCA. There is no transformation involved - it is not just encoding normal illegal content into a numeric form.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      >One of the earliest illegal prime numbers was generated in March 2001 by Phil Carmody. Its binary representation corresponds to a compressed version of the C source code of a computer program implementing the DeCSS decryption algorithm, which can be used by a computer to circumvent a DVD's copy protection.[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > so posting the primes that make them up is sharing the encryption keys and thus against DMCA Except it's not. You can post the numbers alone, without including information (directly or by reference) to the application about which information is banned, all you want.
      - lifthrasiir 6y ago
        This is also my understanding, but certainly not what RIAA and folks do want because this loophole allows for much more efficient distribution of those illegal numbers. Therefore they are motivated to overblock, whether the number is accompanied with instructions or not.
- dmurray 6y ago
  There already are some illegal transcendental numbers. For example, you can't publish the transcendental number which is the circumference of a circle whose diameter in metres is 485650789657397829309841894694286137707442087351357924019652073668698513401047237446968797439926117510973777701027447528049058831384037549709987909653955227011712157025974666993240226834596619606034851742497735846851885567457025712547499964821941846557100841190862597169479707991520048667099759235960613207259737979936188606316914473588300245336972781813914797955513399949394882899846917836100182597890103160196183503434489568705384520853804584241565482488933380474758711283395989685223254460840897111977127694120795862440547161321005006459820176961771809478113622002723448272249323259547234688002927776497906148129840428345720146348968547169082354737835661972186224969431622716663939055430241564732924855248991225739466548627140482117138124388217717602984125524464744505583462814488335631902725319590439283873764073916891257924055015620889787163375999107887084908159097548019285768451988596305323823490558092032999603234471140776019847163531161713078576084862236370283570104961259568184678596533310077017991614674472549272833486916000647585917462781212690073518309241530106302893295665843662000800476778967984382090797619859493646309380586336721469695975027968771205724996666980561453382074120315933770309949152746918356593762102220068126798273445760938020304479122774980917955938387121000588766689258448700470772552497060444652127130404321182610103591186476662963858495087448497373476861420880529443
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    ??
    - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
      It's the DVD decryption key one of the first "illegal prime" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
      - TwistedWave 6y ago
        It's not just the decryption key. It is a gzip file containing the full source code of the decoder!
      - 6y ago
- mannykannot 6y ago
  Ha! - but I don't think it is physically possible to publish a transcendental number, is it? (Nor any other non-rational real?)
  - moomin 6y ago
    Depends what you mean. If it can be specified by a finite sequence of operations, I’d say it’s publishable. If you’re going to restrict “publishing” to binary fixed point, arguably 1/3 is unpublishable.
    - schoen 6y ago
      The real (no pun intended!) distinction is between computable and noncomputable reals, as first identified by Alan Turing in "On Computable Numbers". The integers are a subset of the rationals, which are a subset of the algebraic numbers, which are a subset of the computable numbers, which (most mathematicians would accept) are a subset of the reals. There are lots of subtleties about this. In fact Scott Aaronson just started a series that is in some sense about some of those subtleties, which I hope to be able to understand some day!
    - mannykannot 6y ago
      > If it can be specified by a finite sequence of operations... Hmm... are you saying that, for example, pi is the one-step sequence of operations of dividing a circle's circumference by its diameter? But first, you have to get both those values...
      - lopmotr 6y ago
        An algorithm for computing pi would be a finite sequence of operations. Even if the operations include "do an infinite loop".
        eru 6y ago
        Pedantically enough, by formal definitions algorithms have to finish. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm In practice, speaking informally, people talk about programs that may run forever all the time. People have developed lots of theory around those as well. Of specific interest here would be the class of programs that provably only runs for a finite time before it produces the next bit of output. You need that latter class of programs to talk about producing digits of pi, or running the main loop of an OS. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming
- inopinatus 6y ago
  Gödel encoding expands your options considerably.
  - eru 6y ago
    Primes are very common. So as long as you have a few bits to fiddle with in your file, you can probably make it a prime very quickly. Given an arbitrary stopping point x, you have approximately x / log x primes between 1 and x. In other words, for a file of length n, you have to try about O(n) slight variations to find a prime number.
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      A nice example are the drawings using prime numbers. For example see "The Trinity Hall Prime - Numberphile" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQ8IiTWHhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQ8IiTWHhg "The Emerging Art of Drawing in Prime Numbers" https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a28649996/the-emerging-art-of-drawing-in-prime-numbers/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a28649996/the-...
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  Every file stored and processed by computers is just a really big number. Information theory seems to agree. It's all just bits. When framed this way, so many laws become ridiculous. Copyright is about establishing a monopoly on numbers. It's illegal for normal people to know certain numbers because they represent classified information. People go to jail because of numbers stored in their hard drives.
  - gorgoiler 6y ago
    Maybe. Numbers in real life — the domain of the legal system — tend to be either for counting or measuring. Numbers that are huge and precise are data, information, something quite different. The thing with illegal primes is that they are small enough to really feel like numbers rather than a concatenation of things forced to look like a number (“the shape of my bedroom is 201809!”)
    - jjgreen 6y ago
      What is the ontological status of "the smallest number which is outside the domain of the legal system in this sense"?
      - dmichulke 6y ago
        I don't think it exists because you can always copyright some piece of self-created digital art so that it hashes to the number (if the hash maps to enough bits to represent that number). I think there is a biggest number though, and it should be higher than 64bit-1 because your processor would otherwise occasionally handle illegal numbers, thereby (probably) making it illegal as well.
        jjgreen 6y ago
        My point is rather than if we agree that large-enough numbers can be data, then there is a number at which they start to be data, N say, then "all numbers greater than or equal to N are data" uses N not as data, but as "counting and measuring". So this distinction is self-contradictory, so incoherent.
- eru 6y ago
  It's fun to think about, but any digital file is just a big long number. And prime numbers are surprisingly common. So finding a variant of one offending digital file that's also a prime is a rather straightforward process. What fascinates me more is all the illegal bits people put into the bitcoin block chain; and how bitcoin people deal with that. Especially since you can make random looking strings illegal after the fact: I have an illegal file A. I produce a random binary file R of the same size as A. I publish (R xor A) and R in two different venues, both mathematically-perfectly random files on their own. But together, they produce illegal file A.
  - t0mas88 6y ago
    How do the bitcoin people deal with it? I thought they just accepted it as a fact of life?
    - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
      The blockchain has been illegal for years, hasn't it?
    - eru 6y ago
      Not sure. See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-21/bitcoins-blockchain-has-been-linked-to-child-pornography/9571384 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-21/bitcoins-blockchain-h... for an article.
    - IshKebab 6y ago
      That seems quite naive. I don't think "I just accepted child porn had to be on my computer as a fact of life." would go down well in court.
      - t0mas88 6y ago
        It looks like they didn't solve it and just left it there. So I'm afraid a lot of bitcoin users are that naive.

by joeyh 6y ago

eminence32 6y ago

Thanks for clarifying. I do understand that these specific hashes are effectively forbidden in the dmca repo. Are you aware of any specific instances where the presence of youtube-dl hashes in other repos have been found by github and used as the grounds for disciplinary action? That would be noteworthy indeed.

nine_k 6y ago

So, in addition to illegal primes, we are getting a collection of illegal random numbers? (I wonder when illegal transcendental numbers will become a thing.)

bathtub365 6y ago
What are the random numbers? Commit hashes are deterministic and based on the commit contents
- __david__ 6y ago
  I believe they were using "random" to mean "assorted" (which is perfectly cromulent).
- jaytaylor 6y ago
  edit- thanks commenters for the correction! Git commit hashes are indeed deterministic, though it depends on the inputs. From StackOverflow [0]: Git uses the following information to generate the sha-1: * The source tree of the commit (which unravels to all the subtrees and blobs) * The parent commit sha1 * The author info (with timestamp) * The committer info (right, those are different!, also with timestamp) * The commit message [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/34764586/293064 https://stackoverflow.com/a/34764586/293064
  - wldlyinaccurate 6y ago
    Git commit hashes _are_ deterministic. Run `git cat-file -p <hash>` on your two hashes. The timestamp in the committer field will be different. That is why the hash changed.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    It's deterministic, you've just changed the inputs. The "committer date" is usually excluded from logs so you don't see it, but it's the only missing input. Here is a demo: $ git rev-parse HEAD 78d66a4f169fec9cb9b3252f7a22bb020e967cd2 $ git log HEAD commit 78d66a4f169fec9cb9b3252f7a22bb020e967cd2 (HEAD -> master) Author: XXXX Date: Mon Nov 2 20:44:04 2020 -0500 temp2 $ git reset --soft HEAD\^ $ GIT_COMMITTER_DATE='Mon Nov 2 20:44:04 2020 -0500' GIT_AUTHOR_DATE='Mon Nov 2 20:44:04 2020 -0500' git commit -m temp2 [master 78d66a4] temp2 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 b $ git rev-parse HEAD 78d66a4f169fec9cb9b3252f7a22bb020e967cd2
dfox 6y ago
Most so called “illegal primes” involve encoding some information (eg. encryption key, that is an random number) as a prime number with the idea that transforming the information into prime makes it into “mathematical result” or something like that. It is intended as an argument why there should not be any “illegal data” which I find absurd because the idea that such transformation is somehow relevant is even larger nonsense that the idea of making some kinds of information “illegal”.
- chc4 6y ago
  That's not true. They are illegal primes because encryption keys are just pairs of prime numbers used for public key cryptosystems, so posting the primes that make them up is sharing the encryption keys and thus against DMCA. There is no transformation involved - it is not just encoding normal illegal content into a numeric form.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    >One of the earliest illegal prime numbers was generated in March 2001 by Phil Carmody. Its binary representation corresponds to a compressed version of the C source code of a computer program implementing the DeCSS decryption algorithm, which can be used by a computer to circumvent a DVD's copy protection.[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > so posting the primes that make them up is sharing the encryption keys and thus against DMCA Except it's not. You can post the numbers alone, without including information (directly or by reference) to the application about which information is banned, all you want.
    - lifthrasiir 6y ago
      This is also my understanding, but certainly not what RIAA and folks do want because this loophole allows for much more efficient distribution of those illegal numbers. Therefore they are motivated to overblock, whether the number is accompanied with instructions or not.
dmurray 6y ago
There already are some illegal transcendental numbers. For example, you can't publish the transcendental number which is the circumference of a circle whose diameter in metres is 485650789657397829309841894694286137707442087351357924019652073668698513401047237446968797439926117510973777701027447528049058831384037549709987909653955227011712157025974666993240226834596619606034851742497735846851885567457025712547499964821941846557100841190862597169479707991520048667099759235960613207259737979936188606316914473588300245336972781813914797955513399949394882899846917836100182597890103160196183503434489568705384520853804584241565482488933380474758711283395989685223254460840897111977127694120795862440547161321005006459820176961771809478113622002723448272249323259547234688002927776497906148129840428345720146348968547169082354737835661972186224969431622716663939055430241564732924855248991225739466548627140482117138124388217717602984125524464744505583462814488335631902725319590439283873764073916891257924055015620889787163375999107887084908159097548019285768451988596305323823490558092032999603234471140776019847163531161713078576084862236370283570104961259568184678596533310077017991614674472549272833486916000647585917462781212690073518309241530106302893295665843662000800476778967984382090797619859493646309380586336721469695975027968771205724996666980561453382074120315933770309949152746918356593762102220068126798273445760938020304479122774980917955938387121000588766689258448700470772552497060444652127130404321182610103591186476662963858495087448497373476861420880529443
- jtbayly 6y ago
  ??
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    It's the DVD decryption key one of the first "illegal prime" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
    - TwistedWave 6y ago
      It's not just the decryption key. It is a gzip file containing the full source code of the decoder!
    - 6y ago
mannykannot 6y ago
Ha! - but I don't think it is physically possible to publish a transcendental number, is it? (Nor any other non-rational real?)
- moomin 6y ago
  Depends what you mean. If it can be specified by a finite sequence of operations, I’d say it’s publishable. If you’re going to restrict “publishing” to binary fixed point, arguably 1/3 is unpublishable.
  - schoen 6y ago
    The real (no pun intended!) distinction is between computable and noncomputable reals, as first identified by Alan Turing in "On Computable Numbers". The integers are a subset of the rationals, which are a subset of the algebraic numbers, which are a subset of the computable numbers, which (most mathematicians would accept) are a subset of the reals. There are lots of subtleties about this. In fact Scott Aaronson just started a series that is in some sense about some of those subtleties, which I hope to be able to understand some day!
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    > If it can be specified by a finite sequence of operations... Hmm... are you saying that, for example, pi is the one-step sequence of operations of dividing a circle's circumference by its diameter? But first, you have to get both those values...
    - lopmotr 6y ago
      An algorithm for computing pi would be a finite sequence of operations. Even if the operations include "do an infinite loop".
      - eru 6y ago
        Pedantically enough, by formal definitions algorithms have to finish. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm In practice, speaking informally, people talk about programs that may run forever all the time. People have developed lots of theory around those as well. Of specific interest here would be the class of programs that provably only runs for a finite time before it produces the next bit of output. You need that latter class of programs to talk about producing digits of pi, or running the main loop of an OS. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming
inopinatus 6y ago
Gödel encoding expands your options considerably.
- eru 6y ago
  Primes are very common. So as long as you have a few bits to fiddle with in your file, you can probably make it a prime very quickly. Given an arbitrary stopping point x, you have approximately x / log x primes between 1 and x. In other words, for a file of length n, you have to try about O(n) slight variations to find a prime number.
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    A nice example are the drawings using prime numbers. For example see "The Trinity Hall Prime - Numberphile" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQ8IiTWHhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQ8IiTWHhg "The Emerging Art of Drawing in Prime Numbers" https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a28649996/the-emerging-art-of-drawing-in-prime-numbers/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a28649996/the-...
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Every file stored and processed by computers is just a really big number. Information theory seems to agree. It's all just bits. When framed this way, so many laws become ridiculous. Copyright is about establishing a monopoly on numbers. It's illegal for normal people to know certain numbers because they represent classified information. People go to jail because of numbers stored in their hard drives.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  Maybe. Numbers in real life — the domain of the legal system — tend to be either for counting or measuring. Numbers that are huge and precise are data, information, something quite different. The thing with illegal primes is that they are small enough to really feel like numbers rather than a concatenation of things forced to look like a number (“the shape of my bedroom is 201809!”)
  - jjgreen 6y ago
    What is the ontological status of "the smallest number which is outside the domain of the legal system in this sense"?
    - dmichulke 6y ago
      I don't think it exists because you can always copyright some piece of self-created digital art so that it hashes to the number (if the hash maps to enough bits to represent that number). I think there is a biggest number though, and it should be higher than 64bit-1 because your processor would otherwise occasionally handle illegal numbers, thereby (probably) making it illegal as well.
      - jjgreen 6y ago
        My point is rather than if we agree that large-enough numbers can be data, then there is a number at which they start to be data, N say, then "all numbers greater than or equal to N are data" uses N not as data, but as "counting and measuring". So this distinction is self-contradictory, so incoherent.
eru 6y ago
It's fun to think about, but any digital file is just a big long number. And prime numbers are surprisingly common. So finding a variant of one offending digital file that's also a prime is a rather straightforward process. What fascinates me more is all the illegal bits people put into the bitcoin block chain; and how bitcoin people deal with that. Especially since you can make random looking strings illegal after the fact: I have an illegal file A. I produce a random binary file R of the same size as A. I publish (R xor A) and R in two different venues, both mathematically-perfectly random files on their own. But together, they produce illegal file A.
- t0mas88 6y ago
  How do the bitcoin people deal with it? I thought they just accepted it as a fact of life?
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    The blockchain has been illegal for years, hasn't it?
  - eru 6y ago
    Not sure. See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-21/bitcoins-blockchain-has-been-linked-to-child-pornography/9571384 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-21/bitcoins-blockchain-h... for an article.
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    That seems quite naive. I don't think "I just accepted child porn had to be on my computer as a fact of life." would go down well in court.
    - t0mas88 6y ago
      It looks like they didn't solve it and just left it there. So I'm afraid a lot of bitcoin users are that naive.