[upofadown]

I don't think that the post you were responding to was really arguing that the size of the hash was the significant factor for legality. It was instead pointing out that treating the distribution of such short hashes as illegal is absurd. There is nothing to prevent a government from making laws against, say, the distribution of bomb making information. Governments have done so. Such laws are still absurd in a world where there is no practical way to limit the distribution of such ideas. A government might just as well make a law against the darkness that occurs after the sun goes down.

[paublyrne]

>Such laws are still absurd in a world where there is no practical way to limit the distribution of such ideas.

We keep child pornography illegal, and indeed take measures to limit its distribution. It isn't clear that laws are necessarily absurd because of the difficulty of their enforcement.

The absurdity of a law might be better measured based by the effects of the thing the law prohibits on society or individuals.

[roel_v]

I'm not sure what you're arguing. Is it that IP protection laws are immoral, or that they're impractical? GP was making a moral argument (I think), you seem to be making a practical one.

So assuming that you are making a practical argument: should there be no laws that are hard to enforce? Let's take domestic abuse, or child abuse. Hard to detect, even harder to prosecute because there is usually little physical evidence. So should we just throw our hands in the air and go home?

"Such laws are still absurd in a world where there is no practical way to limit the distribution of such ideas."

Well a largish number of raids over the last years on sites hosting torrents, causing these sites to disappear, would say that you're wrong. Sure, it's hard to completely restrict all illegal distribution. That's not even a practical goal. But with TPB down, it's become quite a bit more difficult to find illegal content for people who are occasional torrenters (i.e. not people who are members of private sites, or who use IRC - a tiny subset of all people).

People have been saying for years 'you can't shut down the torrent sites!'. Well there aren't a whole lot of them left, are there? So it does seem that IP law enforcement isn't as impossible as you claim it to be.

[icebraining]

People have been saying for years 'you can't shut down the torrent sites!'. Well there aren't a whole lot of them left, are there?

Yes. Yes there are. Not to mention hundreds of sites (especially forums) where torrent files and magnet links are distributed.