5 ms·
Another lame argument I hear is that all IP is essentially some number, and since you can't copyright a number, there is no such thing as IP.
by yters 18y ago
Another lame argument I hear is that all IP is essentially some number, and since you can't copyright a number, there is no such thing as IP.
- tocomment1 18y agoThat's a good argument
- carlio 18y agohttp://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Jun/pi.html http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Jun/pi.html
- tocomment 18y agoHas anyone found anything copyrighted in Pi yet? That would be awsome to share at song by saying "the 1e74 + 2 digit of Pi for 6000 digits."
- yters 18y agoIt's lame because the number is irrelevant, so it is not the core of the IP. The important thing is whether a certain number maps to a mechanism. The mapping is the thing people are really copyrighting when they copyright IP, and that is not a number.
- softbuilder 18y agoI like the information entropy argument. Always makes me chuckle.
- rw 18y agoRepresentation is arbitrary. IP laws identify "intellectual property" by representation. IP laws are not adapting, and they aren't able to adapt. The situation is hopeless and unenforceable: encrypt a DVD-rip or music file and then ask someone to identify it as such. It's impossible. We have to move beyond believing in copyright and IP laws because they are not enforceable.
- tptacek 18y agoWhy is this true? Why do you think DVD copy protection is doomed to fail? Smart tech people who think this are usually falling into the trap of assuming DVD copy protection has to be perfect. It doesn't; it just has to make large-scale copying and distribution economically irrational. So far, the BD+ scheme on Blu-Ray disks has had to be bypassed title by title, with Slysoft's breaks being corrected by Macrovision and Slysoft averaging 2.5 weeks on each of the refreshes. Nobody has come up with a scheme that completely defeats BD+. And BD+ is the first system of its kind; subsequent systems will be even more of a bitch to deal with. Add to that the fact that Slysoft has a really smart team that does almost nothing but this. Take another example: DirecTV. The current DTV smartcards are unbroken, despite a ~7 year track record of breaks leading up to them. Take another example: iTMS FairPlay. Last time I checked, there still isn't an equivalent break to JHymn, which does a direct decryption of audio files. Take still another example, of protected media pathways on Windows kernels; currently shipping Intel hardware has chipset-enforceable RSA/SHA/AES locks on kernel integrity, which is something you want anyways, because without it you can't trust your kernel against malware. And of course, all of this assumes that the goal is to keep people from copying at all. The industry could also solve the revocation problem, so that when copies are detected, players are shut off, accounts are closed, or people are sued. Ed Felten beat early watermarking attempts, but come on, do we really think watermarking is an intractable problem? It's the covert channel problem turned around to favor the defender; the media companies will win it. I'm not making a moral stand here (although I really think that if you don't want to pay for DRM'd Miley Cyrus tracks, or pay for Miley Cyrus at all, you simply shouldn't give your money to Warner Music Group). But I object to the knee-jerk dogma that copy protection can't work. I think it can.