On Jun 21, 2007, at 15:19:35, Stephen Clark wrote:
David Schwartz wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:55:10 -0700 "David Schwartz"
<[email protected]> wrote:
A key is a number. A signature is a number. They are neither
statements nor instructions. The argument that GPLv2 prohibits
Tivoization is really and truly absurd. It has neither a legal
nor a moral leg to stand on.
A computer program is a number too.
No, it's not. It can be expressed as a number, but it is not a
number.
??? can be expressed as a number, but it is not a number ??? sure
its a number.
Keys are purely numbers, they are nothing else. Signatures are
pure primitive facts encoded as numbers (authority X blessed
object Y).
A computer program is a set of instructions to accomplish a
particular result. It can be expressed as a number, but that
doesn't mean it is a number.
It might be true in principle to develop a scheme whereby every
physical object uniquely corresponds to an extremely large number.
That doesn't turn physical objects into numbers.
Both of you lose this argument. All irrational numbers, for example,
"break" every copyright that could possibly exist. For example, you
can find any arbitrary sequence of Base-N digits when you express PI
in base-N form. I can simultaneously express both the laws of
physics (not copyrightable) and the latest episode of the TV show
"Numbers" (thoroughly copyrighted) as numbers. In fact, we do both
all the time (you can express both the latest equations for
theoretical physics and a TV show as bits (IE: numbers) on an HDD.
Ergo "$FOO is a number" says *NOTHING* about whether or not copyright
applies to $FOO. In case you haven't noticed, the whole damn point
of math is that you can express *EVERYTHING* as numbers, albeit maybe
horribly unbelievably complex ones.
Now, back to actual legal issues: Since most copyright laws
explicitly prevent copyrighting of pure math, the only actual
protection you have for some collection of so-called numbers is
whether or not the numbers *REPRESENT* something which may be
copyrighted. Furthermore, copyright has _always_ been independent of
representation; a person owns copyright on a book regardless of
whether it's hardback, softcover, digital, memorized, etc. The
person who owns the copyright on a book is able to prevent someone
who has memorized the book from giving public recitals of said book,
and the neuron-linkage-based storage the brain uses is about as far
as you can possibly get from twiddling magnetic bits on a disk drive
or dumping carbon-based inks on a page made of plant cellulose.
Cheers,
Kyle Moffett
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