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Comment by praptak | Hacker News Reader

Code base is fair game DMCA-wise. I wonder about the private keys though. I don't think they are copyrightable (although it would cool to have a poem as the private key). So, does DMCA cover that too?

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> (although it would cool to have a poem as the private key)

Apple does this with Mac OS X. The System Management Controller contains a key, and the "Dont Steal Mac OS X" kernel extension (which checks for that key) contains a poem that must be present for Mac OS X to run.

http://osxdaily.com/2010/03/19/anti-piracy-message-in-mac-os...

That's the saddest poem I've ever read.

DMCA doesn't just cover distribution of copyrighted material, but also distribution of software / secrets intended to break copy protection measures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#Distributio...

These keys don't have anything to do with copyright protection circumvention though.

Good question. My guess is that the only thing needed to be copyrightable is the one thing which is not.

They are copyrightable as works, and even if they arent then they are as devices protecting works.

The level of creativity needed for copyright is minimal. A key pair is generated by machine, but at the request of a human according to parameters selected by the human. That is likely enough.

A key is just a long number. The AACS encryption key controversy was the subject of DCMA take downs because the key could be used to strip DRM, not because it was a number.

Since recipes are not protected under copyright law [1] it's unlikely mathematical parameter lists have sufficient "literary expression" for protection.

OTOH, a passphrase of substantial creativity [2] may be protected by copyright. Crucially (for any takedown), this would cover transformations by key derivation functions.

IANAL.

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

[2] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection...

A purely random number is almost certainly always beyond copyright, but as soon as someone puts limitations on that randomness a court may find that enough.

And what matters for a takedown is not the number, but the actually document being published. Github is not hosting the random number. It is hosting that number in the context of a larger document and it is that document that is subject to the takedown request. Things might be different if github hosted only the number without the associated labels and code.

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