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Comment by kinghajj | Hacker News Reader

The more one studies computer science, the less one believes that information can be owned in any meaningful way. I remember reading a paper on a "lightnet" that basically XORed arbitrary blocks of data together, then produced a recipe on how to recover some original data by XORing the appropriate blocks. With just this recipe you could ask other nodes for the random blocks, then recover the original data locally. The paper made a good argument that however you try to define ownership of a block, it will lead to some contradiction. The system was implemented but I can't recall its name. I think it was hosted on SourceForge.

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I'm sure most everyone on HN has read it already, but "What Colour are your bits?" http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 is always a good reference in this sort of discussion. The system you mention sounds like what the Colour essay is railing against; trying to create a mathematical solution to a problem which is rooted in the law, and cannot be resolved by mathematical manipulations, but only by legal manipulations.

Do you recall the title or author of that paper? I'd be interested in reading about the contradiction argument you mention.

I think parent is talking about Monolith[1], which in fact that article specifically references:

    I think Colour is what the designers of Monolith are trying to challenge, 
    although I'm afraid I think their understanding of the issues is superficial
    on both the legal and computer-science sides. (...)

[1]: http://monolith.sourceforge.net/

I like that article as well, insofar as it helps both sides understand each other better, rather than continuously talking past each other. In order to do so effectively, that article pointedly avoids taking a position on the issue. However, the article also doesn't suggest that people shouldn't hold a position on that issue.

I personally feel comfortable taking the position that anyone claiming that bits have color has an objectively wrong view of reality. I don't think that position needs much advocacy, though; reality always tends to win in the long term. It could certainly use a little help sometimes, though.

The followup "Colour, social beings, and undecidability" http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/24 is also pretty good.

I feel this is dealt with by the fact that law has a concept intention. Handing out the recipe for reconstructing the pirated material counts as aiding piracy, I would say.

There's definitely the undecidable concept of intention, but there's also an undecidable concept of identity: for example, when is an MP3 file "the same" as a copyrighted song? You can encode a copyrighted song into different bitrates, swap left/right channels, slightly pitch shift, apply equalization, etc. Most likely, given some algorithm that tests audio identity, you could always come up with a way to create a copy that sounds the same to a human but is missed by the computer.

Granted, the fingerprinting algorithm used by YouTube is pretty good: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~parallax/

>when is an MP3 file "the same" as a copyrighted song?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

I have to say, I find the concept of intent a little difficult to grasp when it comes to this stuff.

As an, albeit somewhat contrived, example:

Let's say I have a music player on my computer that, when fed the works of Shakespeare, it plays the Gaga's latest hit and when fed with the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it plays Jingle Bells.

My actual intent is to read Shakespeare and to listen to Jingle Bells, but that is going to be a pretty difficult case to prove in a real court of law. The assumption will be made that I had the player and copy of Shakespeare so that I could listen to Gaga.

Theoretically, unless Shakespeare has been interpreted by said program, I have not committed any crime. But precedence disagrees. Just having the right sequence of bits on your computer is enough to prove intent, whether your actual intention was to use it to violate copyright or not. That is where I get lost.

Yes, in much the same way that any given number could be random, pseudorandom or nonrandom given its context, it can also be in violation or accordance with copyright law depending on its legal context.

Don't confuse a random number with the value returned by a function that returns nondeterministic values with a somewhat predictable pattern.

In case anyone is interested, the program to which I referred is "OFF System". Its home page is supposed to be http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/, but unfortunately it's down now and the project seems dead. The paper was on the site, but I can't find any link to it now.

EDIT: I think I found it at http://www.findthatfile.com/search-31270472-hPDF/download-do... . The name of the file is "CopyNumbCJ.pdf".

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