I can write a program that counts up to 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but apparently that would be illegal, because whoever owns HD-DVD claims they own the number. Perhaps the DMCA has gone too far when numbers are copyrightable?
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Isn’t the reason that the 486 became the pentium because you couldn’t copyright a number?
Posted 02 May 2007 at 10:46 am ¶Are you sure that they *own* the number?
Posted 02 May 2007 at 11:20 am ¶Own is probably not the correct legal term, but effectively the strong-arm of their letter at chilling effects is that this number cannot be disseminated. I don’t know the ramifications of what it means to disseminate the number without relation to HD-DVD or decryption, if it would still count as a “circumvention offering” by the definition of the DMCA.
Honestly, I just wanted to underscore the fact that the string in hex is not what this actually is — it’s just a magic number.
See: http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?NoticeID=7189
Posted 02 May 2007 at 12:39 pm ¶Your blog post leads to some interesting thoughts about the “copyrightability” of numbers.
Actually that already exists albeit not with such small numbers as any text can be represented by numbers and actually is, once it ends up in a computer.
Probably starting in the 500-digit range of numbers…
Posted 03 May 2007 at 12:19 am ¶The real question is what is the smallest amount of text which is copyrightable, and if that text is then converted into number form, is it still copyrighted in that form, or is it only copyrighted when reproduced in text?
Posted 03 May 2007 at 10:09 am ¶Post a Comment