[gowld]

What is the false premise? The linked article http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 is saying the same thing you are, with an in-depth explanation.

The article isn't great in how it explains, and it's unfriendly toward the legal profession, but it makes the same claims you do.

rayiner: > If you can prove that the bits came from an RNG that’s not copyright infringement.

article: > It doesn't matter that it looks like, or maybe even is bit-for-bit identical with, some other file that you could get from a random number generator. It happens that you didn't get it from a random number generator.

[rayiner]

The false premise is that the law cares about any combination of bits and/or metadata. Even talking about "provenance" is misleading, because that puts the focus on the data.

The law regulates human conduct; crimes require a human action combined with a human state of mind. Things (bits, guns, etc.) are relevant to the extent that people take actions with them. To address the RNG example: the law doesn't care about whether the bits came from an RNG or an original copy per se. The law cares about those things only to the extent that they imply that someone generated the bits randomly versus copying them from the original. (Note the focus on verbs.)

In the RNG example the distinction does not matter, but consider something like insider information about an upcoming merger. The provenance is a leak from someone inside the company. Whether it is legal or illegal depends on what you do with it (trade on it versus publish it), and what you were thinking when you did it (even if you trade on it, if you didn't know it was insider information then there is no crime).