What Colour are your bits?

ansuz.sooke.bc.ca

Summary: Bits don't automatically have meta-data attached to them. OP uses "Colour" to describe this meta-data and explains why it's very important when reading the law. Computer scientists are Colour-blind (bits are the same no matter where they come from), while the law cares about origin, how information is obtained etc. An example of how computer scientists actually use Colour is for user input - information that users input have special properties (such as the requirement for validation).

I really enjoyed reading this post! It brings a novel way to view meta-data.

> I really enjoyed reading this post! It brings a novel way to view meta-data.

If you liked it, you might like an essay I wrote after reading it (what can I say, OP cleared up a lot of things for me that I had only felt rather than understood): http://www.gwern.net/Copyright

Thanks for the TL;DR. Interesting concept, I suppose I'll have to read someday

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986

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