4 ms·

How are laws for this sort of thing made? Clearly you can’t include the number in the legal code, as that would defeat the whole purpose. The next question is h

How are laws for this sort of thing made? Clearly you can’t include the number in the legal code, as that would defeat the whole purpose. The next question is how does one even know if a number is illegal?

zionic 5y ago
Strict liability crime. The law, as written, defines a nebulous and ever changing set of circumstances where you are criminally liable. To me I see no functional difference between a “democratic” rule of law where you are always commuting some infraction and being ruled by a king and subject to his whims.
rhino369 5y ago
The numbers aren't really illegal. The information that can be encoded via the number might be illegal to use/disclose/share. For example, you can take a revenge porn video and convert it into a number (like you can with ANY digital file). Sharing that number so that people can play the porn video might be illegal. But if that number happened to be used to encode a something else, its not illegal at all. This is just a rhetorical argument that "information shouldn't be, like, illegal man!"
esrauch 5y ago
It's the same way you don't have to have pictures of lockpicks for a law to make lockpicks illegal. How do you know if any piece o might actually be an illegal lockpick? Maybe you don't really, but if you have a big box of scrap metal you're not going to be charged with possessing the lockpick, you only get charged after trying to pick a lock with it. Illegal decryption keys are just the same as that.
- theli0nheart 5y ago
  > How do you know if any piece o might actually be an illegal lockpick? Maybe you don't really, but if you have a big box of scrap metal you're not going to be charged with possessing the lockpick, you only get charged after trying to pick a lock with it. Illegal decryption keys are just the same as that. That's not really true, is it? Instances of simply possessing or intention to share illegal numbers (such as the PS3 encryption keys) have been tried as criminal acts.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    > Instances of simply possessing or intention to share illegal numbers (such as the PS3 encryption keys) have been tried as criminal acts. [citation needed]. No, the article doesn't list any citations to a criminal suit against someone for sharing PS3 encryption keys. There is a civil lawsuit against someone for distributing PS3 jailbreaking firmware, of which the keys form a part (but not the totality!) of the suit, and even that is only indirectly referenced.

zionic 5y ago

Strict liability crime. The law, as written, defines a nebulous and ever changing set of circumstances where you are criminally liable. To me I see no functional difference between a “democratic” rule of law where you are always commuting some infraction and being ruled by a king and subject to his whims.

rhino369 5y ago

The numbers aren't really illegal. The information that can be encoded via the number might be illegal to use/disclose/share. For example, you can take a revenge porn video and convert it into a number (like you can with ANY digital file). Sharing that number so that people can play the porn video might be illegal. But if that number happened to be used to encode a something else, its not illegal at all. This is just a rhetorical argument that "information shouldn't be, like, illegal man!"

esrauch 5y ago

It's the same way you don't have to have pictures of lockpicks for a law to make lockpicks illegal. How do you know if any piece o might actually be an illegal lockpick? Maybe you don't really, but if you have a big box of scrap metal you're not going to be charged with possessing the lockpick, you only get charged after trying to pick a lock with it. Illegal decryption keys are just the same as that.

theli0nheart 5y ago
> How do you know if any piece o might actually be an illegal lockpick? Maybe you don't really, but if you have a big box of scrap metal you're not going to be charged with possessing the lockpick, you only get charged after trying to pick a lock with it. Illegal decryption keys are just the same as that. That's not really true, is it? Instances of simply possessing or intention to share illegal numbers (such as the PS3 encryption keys) have been tried as criminal acts.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  > Instances of simply possessing or intention to share illegal numbers (such as the PS3 encryption keys) have been tried as criminal acts. [citation needed]. No, the article doesn't list any citations to a criminal suit against someone for sharing PS3 encryption keys. There is a civil lawsuit against someone for distributing PS3 jailbreaking firmware, of which the keys form a part (but not the totality!) of the suit, and even that is only indirectly referenced.