//a Tera-byte of data
for(int i=0; i < 2^(1099511627776x8); i++){
Node *binary = convert_to_binary(i);
write_raw(binary);
send_email_to_friends("I own number: %d".i);
}
Implicitly, they are claiming they own a number.
Basically, meaningful numbers are so sparse that to claim there's nothing special about them is ridiculous.
Are you discriminating against me cause I'm a 3 dimensional being?[Being facetious, I actually was trying to come up with a good argument to defend against a argument like the one given before posting.]
Yes, somewhere in S is a bit string that happens to match the bit string of almost any particular encoding of almost any particular movie or musical performance. If you just distribute S to someone, they have no way practically, or even reasonably theoretically, to actually find those strings.
Now, if you gave a copy of S to someone AND told them "start at offset X and take Y bits and save these as a file with the extension .mp3", and the result of that matched a particular copyrighted piece of music then guess what--copyright infringement (depending on how you found X and Y). Specifically, if the procedure was to start with the copyrighted piece of music and somehow search the string for it to determine X, then distributing (X,Y,S) would be copyright infringement.
No one is claiming, even implicitly, to own S.
(edit: to be clear: j/k - I think most of the arguments about 'information is meant/wants to be free' are pretty funny. I'm yet to have one proponent share their bank details and password with me :)
A really simple example is to imagine giving the number "N" encoding a movie in divx format to someone in the year 1995, since they have no means of converting the number to a continuous stream of video and sound (a video animation), the number is useless to them.
On the other hand, you can give them the same movie encoded in an older format (mpeg2?); this will be an entirely different number "Q" bearing almost absolutely no relationship to "N", but it will still be the same movie.
The presence of different encoding formats is a proof that copyright does not restrict what number you reproduce.
This could be kinda worse though, because it could imply that copyright restricts the distribution of ideas.
Consider a loss-less encoding represented by A: it can be encoded in a lossy-manner in two different ways, one would produce B, the other would produce C.
Without know what A was, there's no way to link B to C.
Consider also that different versions of the same movie could different (hard-coded) subtitles, extra/deleted scenes, different resolutions, etc.
If you consider all the different permutations of the movie and then consider that each one can be encoded in many different ways (lossy encoding), you'll see that there's no single number that can be said to represent the movie.
If we have a lossy encoding so poor that you can no longer recognize it, then I'm fine with saying it is "no longer that movie".
Otherwise, it would seem that you could infringe copyrights all day and as long as the traffic was encrypted then you could argue that you're not sending MP3 files, just numbers that after some massaging with keys turns out to be data useful for feeding to an MP3 Player. (Heck, you could probably slippery slope the analogy to simply taking the twos compliment of the digital representation)
So unless I'm mistaken, they are not claiming to own a number, but rather, are claiming to own "imaginary" property in that anything digital that resembles and is being _used_ to replicate the artist's performance is infringement and thus illegal.
But I agree that the whole thing is still crazy and full of logical loop-holes.
EDIT: For a similar concept that's brewing, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
If you invent the exact same sequence completely independently, you own it. However, the problem of looking at data and saying that copying happened is one of inference; if I posted exactly the same comment you just wrote, I could have independently come up with your copyrighted comment, and hence own the copyright, but the much more likely explanation is that I copied your comment, and so judges and juries infer copying from similarity that they believe is statistically unlikely.
So if person A generates a random string from the uniform distribution, and communicates it securely to a trusted person, B, who XORs the string with your comment, and A shares the random string with the public, while B shares the XORed string, technically only B commits direct copyright infringement, because B created a derivative work by XORing, and broadcast that work (copying). If done properly, no one could prove which person was A and which was B however. In practice, however, it is likely that if both people acted with intent to distribute the work, they would both be at least secondarily liable.