All I want to say is… - Updated
May2
…you should not be allowed to copyright a number. It goes against the entire idea of copyright where you are trying to ENCOURAGE creation and innovation. Furthermore, preventing “curcumvention” by claiming you can’t publish a number is equally as absurd*. Therefore, the DMCA causing this is crazy. If you can copyright a number the I claim ‘e,’ ‘i,’ and ‘pi.’ Too bad… NASA can’t do anything now without paying me.
*You know what is really absurd? Giving media giants the legal power to take away the rights and protections granted to the consumer.
Update: This site has an example of why an integer as a circumvention device is absurd.
To be fair, distribution of The Number isn’t “illegal” because it’s copyrighted, but because it’s allegedly part of a circumvention device. This is a copyright-related law, but not copyright itself.
Check out Ed Felton’s analysis for details.
You’re right about that but my other complaint (that it’s that a number is the equivalent to a circumvention technology is equally absurd). It’s similar to the perl program that cracked CSS–when it’s something so simple that you could memorize it or print it on a t-shirt it’s hard to claim that it should be banned. You can always pull out the freedom of speech argument too.
p.s. check this: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070415-aacs-cracks-cannot-be-revoked-says-hacker.html