[JoshTriplett]

> Since the argument here is over how the law should work

I think we've talked past each other here. I agree with you about how the law works. As much as I might want it to work differently, it currently does not. However, read the second to last paragraph of the essay: "I think it's time for computer people to take Colour more seriously - if only so that we can better explain to the lawyers why they must give up their dream of enforcing Colour inside Friend Computer, where Colour does not and cannot exist." That one sentence nicely sums up both viewpoints: the law wants bits to have color, and technology does not support properties of bits beyond the bits themselves. You've argued the former, which I agree with. I've argued the latter, and you seem to think that in doing so I've disagreed with the former.

> whereas I think it was just about trying to get the computer scientist to understand color.

I'd argue that the same article would also help lawyers understand why technology cannot represent the color of bits.

In any case, I think the sentence I quoted above makes both viewpoints very clear. And while I recognize that the law sees bits as having color, I intend to continue working to make sure technology does not attempt to care.

[shasta]

I think the few bits about lawyers not understanding the limitations of metadata weren't the thrust of the article. I do agree that the two viewpoints there aren't opposed, but that point about metadata is not the same as the wrong headed one being made by people using the phrase "illegal number."

[nitrogen]

The only thing that makes the "illegal number" view wrong headed is a belief that the law as currently on the books has the final say on what is ethically/factually/morally/intellectually right and wrong.

I believe you are too hard on those who disagree with you, as you don't seem to acknowledge that those who disagree with the law's desire to stamp a color on everything have valid reasons for their disagreement.

[shasta]

Can you point me to a coherent presentation of the alternative possibility? The only alternatives I see are that either A) there are legally protected (uncolored) numbers, or B) there is no legally protected information at all.

I don't think option A is coherent. In fact most use of the phrase "illegal number" is by people who are attempting a reductio ad absurdum argument against the legal system (but don't understand color). But note that as a practical matter, we do have protected numbers. Good luck convincing a court that you produced an identical text to the last Harry Potter novel through any means other than copying.

Option B, the anarchistic approach, is no doubt consistent but would be a radical change from our present form of copyright.

[nitrogen]

It's my understanding from watching the DeCSS fiasco unfold that the "illegal number" phrase was coined to mock the DMCA's criminalization of circumvention tools, and the first illegal numbers described were various representations of DeCSS. I don't think that position is unreasonable or wrong headed at all.

You are right that, when applied to actual copyrighted materials, the only obvious options are A: "We'll voluntarily submit to the legal fiction that bits have color (or at least shades of gray) in the form of copyright law, because we can see some benefit to doing so," and B: "We believe that a society whose rules can be fully justified by concrete logic, evolutionary morality, and the laws of physics is preferable to a society founded upon legal fictions, and abolition of the concept of intellectual property follows from this."

However, I believe a good number of people hold position C: "We believe copyright law has significantly overstepped its useful bounds, and will pretend to hold position B in order to achieve a reasonable compromise."

[shasta]

Even your use of the phrase "... the legal fiction that bits have color ..." sounds silly to me. Compare that phrase to "... the legal fiction that bicycles have an invisible ownership property ..." to see why. The entirety of the law is about similar fictions.

[nitrogen]

The idea that someone owns the part of my brain that has been indelibly imprinted with their copyrighted expression sounds silly to me.

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. -Thomas Jefferson

Ideas are fundamentally different from bicycles. One cannot share a bicycle indefinitely without each user having proportionally less access. One can share bits and ideas. Show me where in silicon the color of a bit is stored. The entire concept of colorful bits is a fabricatiion of the human imagination, not a fundamental property of the universe. The atoms comprising a bicycle, on the other hand, can indeed be under the control of the atoms comprising a human being, to the physical exclusion of others.