Illegal number

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The term illegal number is used for numbers that represent information that it is illegal to possess or distribute. For example, a number can allow its owner to bypass copy protection or encryption on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Plaintiffs claimed that distribution of such a number was illegal under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Whether a number can actually be illegal in this sense is controversial.

If the number is a prime number , it is called an illegal prime number .

background

A number can represent information that a security clearance or a trade secret subject and possession therefore only a few authorized persons is permitted. An example that became known in May 2007 is a key for the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) on optical media. This number - in the hexadecimal system it is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0, in the decimal system 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640 - was considered secret and its publication or unauthorized possession was considered illegal in the US . It is said to be able to help decrypt data from HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs made before this date. The authors of a series of warnings claim that the key itself is a "copyright circumvention device", ie a means of circumventing access controls , and that the publication of the key violates Title 1 of the DMCA.

In previous legal disputes about the DeCSS program , which can be used to decode certain video DVDs , and in the AACS case, it has been established in court that the alleged protection of these numbers is based on their mere possession and potential value. That makes their status and legal cases around them very different from that of copyright infringement .

In 2011, the Sony group sued George Hotz and others for circumventing manufacturer-side restrictions ( jailbreaking ) of the PlayStation 3 game console . Part of the charge was that they released keys to the PlayStation 3. Sony also threatened to sue anyone who further distributes these leaked keys. Sony later accidentally released an older dongle key through its marketing fictional character "Kevin Butler" .

Legal evaluation

Numbers that are not only used for encryption and that reproduce computer programs are affected by the subject. Any text or image file is nothing more than a very large binary number . In some jurisdictions there are pictures whose possession is illegal , for example because of profanity or a level of secrecy. Therefore, corresponding numbers may be illegal in these jurisdictions. However, laws and courts usually do not speak of the illegality of the numbers in question, even if digital data is nothing more than numbers.

In principle, a number cannot be seen as whether it is legal or illegal in any jurisdiction, because there is no property that the number has in itself , and there is no number that is immune from illegality. Since any number can be used cryptographically by any company as a key, if the courts decide in accordance with the claims of the plaintiffs - any number can in principle also be made illegal by anyone .

Protest reactions

The Free Speech Flag to protest against the AACS case. “+ C0” indicates the last of the 16 bytes and is also intended to symbolize that the publication of the number is Crime Zero (zero crime).

The possible criminalization of the dissemination of certain figures met with protests from people who see such jurisprudence as absurd or as an attack on freedom of speech .

To protest the DeCSS case, many people created steganographic versions of the illegal information, for example by somehow hiding it in flags . In the controversy surrounding the AACS key, a " Free Speech Flag " was created. Some illegal numbers are so short that a simple flag consisting of colored areas can represent the number in its RGB values . The flags make the argument clear: if short numbers can be illegal, then everything that corresponds to these numbers is also illegal, such as simple color samples.

In the Sony vs. George Hotz case, many bloggers created new " Free Speech Flags" as a tribute to the Free Speech Flag of the AACS case. Most of these were based on the dongle key released by Sony rather than the key released by Hotz.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Detlef Borchers: Online. Zeit Online, March 22, 2001, accessed July 8, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Volker Zota: Numbers, please! 48565 ... 29443 - an "illegal" prime number? heise.de, October 11, 2016, accessed on July 8, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b Phil Carmody: An Executable Prime Number? . Archived from the original on March 29, 2007. Retrieved May 8, 2007.
  4. ↑ Thomas C Greene: DVD descrambler encoded in 'illegal' prime number . In: The Register , March 19, 2001. Retrieved May 8, 2007. 
  5. ^ The Prime Glossary: ​​illegal prime . Retrieved May 9, 2007.
  6. ↑ Christoph Pöppe: Illegal prime numbers and the copyright to Pi. Spektrum.de, February 24, 2015, accessed on July 8, 2018 .
  7. ↑ AACS licensor complains of posted key . In: Chilling Effects . Retrieved May 8, 2007: "Illegal Offering of Processing Key to Circumvent AACS Copyright Protection […] are thereby providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS (hereafter, the "circumvention offering"). Doing so constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") "
  8. ↑ a b EFF: Memorandum Order, in MPAA v. Reimerdes, Corley and Kazan (NY; Feb. 2, 2000) . Archived from the original on December 13, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 9, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / w2.eff.org
  9. ↑ Sony follows up, officially sues Geohot and fail0verflow over PS3 jailbreak . Nilay Patel, Engadget (2011-01-12). Retrieved February 16, 2011.
  10. ↑ Sony lawyers now targeting anyone who posts PlayStation 3 hack . Artechnica. February 8, 2011.
  11. ↑ PS3 'jailbreak code' retweeted by Sony's Kevin Butler . Engadget. February 9, 2011.
  12. ↑ Prime Curios: 48565 ... 29443 (1401 digits) . Retrieved May 9, 2007: "What folks often forget is a program (any file actually) is a string of bits (binary digits) —so every program is a number."
  13. ^ Criminal Justice Act 1988 + amendments . Retrieved May 9, 2007.
  14. ↑ David Wells: Illegal prime . In: Prime Numbers: The Most Mysterious Figures in Math . Wiley, 2011, ISBN 978-1-118-04571-8 , pp. 126-127.
  15. ↑ http://www.yalelawtech.org/trusted-computing-drm/46-dc-ea-d3-17-fe-45-d8-09-23-eb-97-e4-95-64-10-d4 -cd-b2-c2 / ( March 10, 2011 memento on the Internet Archive ) by Ben S, Yale Law Tech