
Illegal prime - avinassh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
======
tptacek
This is the "they're all just plants, man, they grow in the earth" argument of
technologists. I wonder what goofy arguments accountants have.

If it wasn't obvious (for instance, because you've never implemented RSA
before): _all information_ can be represented as a number (and I suppose,
theoretically, as primes).

~~~
WayneBro
This article is the "they're all just plants" argument of technologists? I
thought Wikipedia articles didn't have a point of view...

Anyway... what's wrong with the "they're all just plants" argument with
regards (I'm assuming) to the completely absurd "War on Drugs"? How is that
goofy? I don't think it's goofy at all. I think it's a fairly common-sense,
level-headed reaction to the absolutely ridiculous idea that people need be
protected from putting whatever they want into their own bodies.

~~~
tedunangst
First time reading Wikipedia?

~~~
WayneBro
Nope.

But I didn't see any argument put forth in this article that equates to the
"they're all just plants" argument...

Care to point it out?

~~~
swhipple
They're both appeal to nature arguments. "Tobacco should never be regulated
because it grows in nature" and "Cryptography should never be regulated
because it uses math".

There are plenty of reasons to be anti-DRM or pro-user privacy, but the "it
uses numbers" argument is not a particularly good one.

~~~
WayneBro
OK, just to be clear: the Wikipedia article does not state this argument or
really represent in any way.

I'm just not sure who the criticism was directed towards.

------
eridius
The budding discussion in these comments reminds me of the classic post "What
Colour are your bits?" \-
[http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

------
hbosch
This concept is dizzying for me.

Is it OK to think of numbers as a landmass? Is it OK to think of that
numerical landmass to be partitioned and owned? Is it OK to hide things in
private plots of numbers? Is it OK to expect your numerical plot to be
private?

I'm not sure if I like it, or hate it.

~~~
probablybroken
Copyright and patent attempt to protect you from others stealing your research
& efforts involved in producing a product. If someone represents your idea as
a number, and then copies it with the intention of using it for their own
purposes without coming to a licencing arrangement with you, then they have
broken copyright / patent. It's incidental that the representation of the
information is numerical. Additionally the likelihood of some other useful
random number coinciding with the numerical representation of your special
information is also extremely low - hence why the OP used a prime ( which are
pretty common ), and also why it's interesting ( and therefore exceptional ).

------
kreetx
What an interesting hack to publish source code! Read the first sentence of
wikipedia quite a few times and still didn't understand, while the later text
made it clearer..

------
SurrealSoul
'An illegal prime is a prime number that represents information whose
possession or distribution is forbidden in some legal jurisdiction'

Maybe the coolest math term I heard all year.

------
qwertyuiop924
Yet another incredibly stupid idea. Thank you, legal system.

~~~
dllthomas
It's a stupid presentation of an arguably reasonable idea.

~~~
crpatino
No, it is a stupid presentation of an even more stupid idea.

Numbers are abstract constructions devoid of any meaning. For mathematics to
have any practical application, there are of course ways to assign meaning to
numbers, but there are arguable infinite amounts of mappings that can match
numbers to concepts. There are also infinite number of ways to match every
number to every other... so, if you have enough computing power, it can be
demonstrated that you could, at least theoretically, match every conceivable
concept to every other.

The idiocity of the legal implications is beyond limits. The only legal
defense to such enourmous liability is to restrict yourself, for your
practical applications to sufficiently small numbers such that there is not
enough entropy in them to hold any potentially forbidden information. Good bye
IEEE754, hello PI==3!!!

~~~
dllthomas
Your analysis here is roughly isomorphic to the original presentation.

The law doesn't care about the actual bits, except insofar as they represent
evidence of what's really at issue. The law cares that you have some pattern
of bits that you laid out with the intent that it represent BAD THING X. If it
happens to appear in the digits of PI you've been reading out, you're not at
risk. If you go to others saying "You can find the BAD THING at offset XYZ in
PI", then that's another matter - you've got the data _and the
interpretation_. On the other hand, if you happen to stumble across one of
these primes and don't notice, not a problem. The known "illegal primes" were
found specifically by looking for primes that represented illegal things.

I'm not convinced that criminalizing possession of data is a good idea, but
it's _not_ "under some arbitrary interpretation".

------
slededit
It's not the prime that's illegal, it's the prime + the connection to its
ability to circumvent specific encryption.

The number itself without that connection is not illegal.

I.e. 123 is not illegal by itself. "123 is the encryption key to XYZ's DRM" is
illegal.

------
deepnotderp
Fuck the legal system.

