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This is getting even more offtopic, but I'm kind of curious if anyone knows if it would be illegal to distribute a copy of something copyrighted, if it's "encry

This is getting even more offtopic, but I'm kind of curious if anyone knows if it would be illegal to distribute a copy of something copyrighted, if it's "encrypted with itself" -- for example, an encrypted eBook with plaintext metadata that tells you how to derive a decryption key from a long sample of words in the book. In theory the copy is random bytes until you possess the book, which should mean you have the right to possess the copy for personal/backup/interoperability purposes. (The usecase in mind, which perhaps applies best to books, is being able to turn physical media into high-fidelity, open digital formats that can be distributed lawfully, without the cooperation of the copyright holder.)

coldtea 11y ago
>In theory the copy is random bytes until you possess the book, which should mean you have the right to possess the copy for personal/backup/interoperability purposes. In what theory? We can very well theoritically conceive that you just ask for those "sample words" from someone else who has the book either legitimately or illegitmately, and he gives them to you. Even if the set of sample words is different for each metadata file, the book would be the same, so you just need a person willing to share the words with someone that doesn't own the book.
- scintill76 11y ago
  Yes, but in such cases you can also just borrow the entire book, photocopy it, and keep the copy. It's still legal to loan books or have photocopiers, but using them together without license is illegal. The point is to make it so that the distributors can reasonably argue they are not actually distributing copyrighted material and have made some effort to ensure the recipients have a license to the work, and that there are no reasonable physical prohibitions the law or copyright holders can make to stop this (i.e., banning the sharing of books isn't reasonable -- for the moment.) It's the responsibility of the decrypting party to only decrypt lawfully, just as it's currently with disc copying/ripping. Now, an actual lawyer might obliterate this through some logic I don't know, and/or appeal to "bit color" as others are pointing out. P.S. I do have to admit my idea reminds me of warrant canaries, a "clever hack" around the law that I ultimately believe can't really be lawful. P.P.S. CleanFlicks et al may be relevant case law, as from what I understand they made varying efforts to "ensure" their customers held a license, but were basically still distributing copies of works they didn't own.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Yes, but in such cases you can also just borrow the entire book, photocopy it, and keep the copy. Yeah, but this way you get the electronic version that you want + the key (from some other user). In the end it comes to those distributing they keys, and it's not different from site offering trial-versions and others giving out serials and cracks. >The point is to make it so that the distributors can reasonably argue they are not actually distributing copyrighted material Just because it's encrypted it doesn't mean it's not copyrighted material. If I encrypt "Star Wars" and give it for download (letting others give the key), they'll still be all over my ass.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
Ianal but I think it would be illegal. Bits have flavour. Even if you randomly generate them with the intent of matching them with an existing copyrighted bits is enough to give them enough flavour to get you in trouble
- gknoy 11y ago
  Colour of bits [0] was an eye-opening read. 0: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
- robryk 11y ago
  Does this also apply to sha256(a_copyrighted_work)? Note that retrieving any "useful information" about the original is believed to be similarly impossible from sha256(a_copyrighted_work) and encrypt_{sha_256(a_copyrighted_work)}(a_copyrighted_work).
drewcrawford 11y ago
> In theory the copy is random bytes There is not any such thing as random bytes. Here's a byte: 0xca. Is it random? Well, if I got it from a fair die, perhaps. But if I got it by printing the hex of a Java program, of course not. Bytes cannot be random, they can only be created in a random way (or not). In your hypothetical you are not creating the bytes in a random way, you are creating them from a book. So the bytes have nothing to do with so-called "random bytes", but are in fact a derivative work of the book, at the very least.
- kedean 11y ago
  Now your just getting into semantics. Do you have a problem with the term 'random number' too? Because that's all a byte is, a number between 0 and 256.
  - drewcrawford 11y ago
    As a matter of fact, I do; as do many people who take cryptography seriously: > Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method. - John Von Neumann But to your broader point, no, this is not a question of semantics. There is an actual syntactical difference being asserted here. That difference is this: randomness has nothing to do with numbers. 0xca--the same number--can be either "random" or "non-random" depending on how you got ahold of it. When we talk about numbers--prime numbers, even numbers, rational numbers, etc., we are talking about properties of the number; whether they are divisible by 2 and so on. But "random numbers" have no property by which we could recognize them. It is entirely a question of where the numbers were made, not what they are or what they look like.
- scintill76 11y ago
  I guess this is bit color, then (a similar "random" example is used in the Colour essay somebody else linked.) Thanks for mentioning "derivative work", it's a good key word to look into this further. After skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work I guess one question is, is applying cryptography "transformative"? To take it in a slightly different direction, since parody has been upheld, what about a deterministic, reversible, mechanical parodic transformation? AFAIK machine-created works can't be given a copyright, but I'm not asking for that, merely that a machine can create a sufficiently transformative derivative work. In fact, maybe it doesn't even need to be parody. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com.... search engines were permitted to serve thumbnails of copyrighted images because the copies "served a different function than [the original] use – improving access to information on the Internet versus artistic expression." In the same way, an e-book could be "improving access" rather than offering "artistic expression." I guess establishing "transformation" is a bit tricky -- presumably ASCII-encoding an English book's text is not transformative. But it seems like somehow you could come up with something interesting and legal, even if it's not quite like my original formulation. Google Books' excerpts are probably like this. Oh, and after re-reading the Colour article, I see I am not even all that innovative: http://monolith.sourceforge.net/ http://monolith.sourceforge.net/

coldtea 11y ago

>In theory the copy is random bytes until you possess the book, which should mean you have the right to possess the copy for personal/backup/interoperability purposes. In what theory? We can very well theoritically conceive that you just ask for those "sample words" from someone else who has the book either legitimately or illegitmately, and he gives them to you. Even if the set of sample words is different for each metadata file, the book would be the same, so you just need a person willing to share the words with someone that doesn't own the book.

scintill76 11y ago
Yes, but in such cases you can also just borrow the entire book, photocopy it, and keep the copy. It's still legal to loan books or have photocopiers, but using them together without license is illegal. The point is to make it so that the distributors can reasonably argue they are not actually distributing copyrighted material and have made some effort to ensure the recipients have a license to the work, and that there are no reasonable physical prohibitions the law or copyright holders can make to stop this (i.e., banning the sharing of books isn't reasonable -- for the moment.) It's the responsibility of the decrypting party to only decrypt lawfully, just as it's currently with disc copying/ripping. Now, an actual lawyer might obliterate this through some logic I don't know, and/or appeal to "bit color" as others are pointing out. P.S. I do have to admit my idea reminds me of warrant canaries, a "clever hack" around the law that I ultimately believe can't really be lawful. P.P.S. CleanFlicks et al may be relevant case law, as from what I understand they made varying efforts to "ensure" their customers held a license, but were basically still distributing copies of works they didn't own.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Yes, but in such cases you can also just borrow the entire book, photocopy it, and keep the copy. Yeah, but this way you get the electronic version that you want + the key (from some other user). In the end it comes to those distributing they keys, and it's not different from site offering trial-versions and others giving out serials and cracks. >The point is to make it so that the distributors can reasonably argue they are not actually distributing copyrighted material Just because it's encrypted it doesn't mean it's not copyrighted material. If I encrypt "Star Wars" and give it for download (letting others give the key), they'll still be all over my ass.

LoSboccacc 11y ago

Ianal but I think it would be illegal. Bits have flavour. Even if you randomly generate them with the intent of matching them with an existing copyrighted bits is enough to give them enough flavour to get you in trouble

gknoy 11y ago
Colour of bits [0] was an eye-opening read. 0: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
robryk 11y ago
Does this also apply to sha256(a_copyrighted_work)? Note that retrieving any "useful information" about the original is believed to be similarly impossible from sha256(a_copyrighted_work) and encrypt_{sha_256(a_copyrighted_work)}(a_copyrighted_work).

drewcrawford 11y ago

> In theory the copy is random bytes There is not any such thing as random bytes. Here's a byte: 0xca. Is it random? Well, if I got it from a fair die, perhaps. But if I got it by printing the hex of a Java program, of course not. Bytes cannot be random, they can only be created in a random way (or not). In your hypothetical you are not creating the bytes in a random way, you are creating them from a book. So the bytes have nothing to do with so-called "random bytes", but are in fact a derivative work of the book, at the very least.

kedean 11y ago
Now your just getting into semantics. Do you have a problem with the term 'random number' too? Because that's all a byte is, a number between 0 and 256.
- drewcrawford 11y ago
  As a matter of fact, I do; as do many people who take cryptography seriously: > Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method. - John Von Neumann But to your broader point, no, this is not a question of semantics. There is an actual syntactical difference being asserted here. That difference is this: randomness has nothing to do with numbers. 0xca--the same number--can be either "random" or "non-random" depending on how you got ahold of it. When we talk about numbers--prime numbers, even numbers, rational numbers, etc., we are talking about properties of the number; whether they are divisible by 2 and so on. But "random numbers" have no property by which we could recognize them. It is entirely a question of where the numbers were made, not what they are or what they look like.
scintill76 11y ago
I guess this is bit color, then (a similar "random" example is used in the Colour essay somebody else linked.) Thanks for mentioning "derivative work", it's a good key word to look into this further. After skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work I guess one question is, is applying cryptography "transformative"? To take it in a slightly different direction, since parody has been upheld, what about a deterministic, reversible, mechanical parodic transformation? AFAIK machine-created works can't be given a copyright, but I'm not asking for that, merely that a machine can create a sufficiently transformative derivative work. In fact, maybe it doesn't even need to be parody. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com.... search engines were permitted to serve thumbnails of copyrighted images because the copies "served a different function than [the original] use – improving access to information on the Internet versus artistic expression." In the same way, an e-book could be "improving access" rather than offering "artistic expression." I guess establishing "transformation" is a bit tricky -- presumably ASCII-encoding an English book's text is not transformative. But it seems like somehow you could come up with something interesting and legal, even if it's not quite like my original formulation. Google Books' excerpts are probably like this. Oh, and after re-reading the Colour article, I see I am not even all that innovative: http://monolith.sourceforge.net/ http://monolith.sourceforge.net/