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Illegal prime

en.wikipedia.org — An illegal prime is a prime number which contains information forbidden by law to possess or distribute.

Who dugg this? Made popular Apr 15, 2006

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  • karamba_kid, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18349310 83597 02850 19002 75777 67239 07649 57284 90777 21502 08632 08075 01840 97926 27885 09765 88645 57802 01366 00732 86795 44734 11283 17353 67831 20155 75359 81978 54505 48115 71939 34587 73300 38009 93261 95058 76452 50238 20408 11018 98850 42615 17657 99417 04250 88903 70291 19015 87003 04794 32826 07382 14695 41570 33022 79875 57681 89560 16240 30064 11151 69008 72879 83819 42582 71674 56477 48166 84347 92846 45809 29131 53186 00700 10043 35318 93631 93439 12948 60445 03709 91980 04770 94629 21558 18071 11691 53031 87628 84778 78354 15759 32891 09329 54473 50881 88246 54950 60005 01900 62747 05305 38116 42782 94267 47485 34965 25745 36815 11706 55028 19055 52656 22135 31463 10421 00866 28679 71144 46706 36692 19825 86158 11125 15556 50481 34207 68673 23407 65505 48591 08269 56266 69306 62367 99702 10481 23965 62518 00681 83236 53959 34839 56753 57557 53246 19023 48106 47009 87753 02795 61868 92925 38069 33052 04238 14996 99454 56945 77413 83356 89906 00587 08321 81270 48611 33682 02651 59051 66351 87402 90181 97693 93767 78529 28722 10955 04129 25792 57381 86605 84501 50552 50274 99477 18831 29310 45769 80909 15304 61335 94190 30258 81320 59322 77444 38525 50466 77902 45186 97062 62778 88919 79580 42306 57506 15669 83469 56177 97879 65920 16440 51939 96071 69811 12615 19561 02762 83233 98257 91423 32172 69614 43744 38105 64855 29348 87634 92103 09887 02878 74532 33132 53212 26786 33283 70279 25099 74996 94887 75936 91591 76445 88032 71838 47402 35933 02037 48885 06755 70658 79194 61134 19323 07814 85443 64543 75113 20709 86063 90746 41756 41216 35042 38800 29678 08558 67037 03875 09410 76982 11837 65499 20520 43682 55854 64228 85024 29963 32268 53691 24648 55000 75591 66402 47292 40716 45072 53196 74499 95294 48434 74190 21077 29606 82055 81309 23626 83798 79519 66199 79828 55258 87161 09613 65617 80745 66159 24886 60889 81645 68541 72136 29208 46656 27913 14784 66791 55096 51543 10113 53858 62081 96875 83688 35955 77893 91454 53935 68199 60988 08540 47659 07358 97289 89834 25047 12891 84162 65878 96821 85380 87956 27903 99786 29449 39760 54675 34821 25675 01215 17082 73710 76462 70712 46753 21024 83678 15940 00875 05452 54353 Okay just to cover my ass I'm going to leave out this last digit which is the number seven
  • Bigcat1021, on 10/12/2007, -5/+95This would make a great t-shirt.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+66"Kinda funny that a number could be illegal?"


    interestingly, a CD or disc or any data stored digitally is really just one really big number...
  • MikeKnoop, on 10/12/2007, -6/+67Make sure when you print the t-shirt, to leave in the last line "Okay just to cover my ass I'm going to leave out this last digit which is the number seven"

    -Mike
  • fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+56Your neighborhood DMCA.
    Making numbers illegal for your protection since 2001.
  • fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -5/+46Numbers aren't natural... they're a construct of human invention to facilitate in the quantification of things.
  • jsleno, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35"Yo! cuz, what up? I got the Mersennes! I got the Mersennes that you need! I got dime bags, printouts, and USB sticks! I got the Mersennes dawg!"
  • gxti, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29But since it's in base 10 (not a power of 2), trimming off that last digit completely changes the binary representation.
  • t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28Interesting. Kinda funny that a number could be illegal? Although what counts as possessing it?
  • robotsongs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28I can't believe that a google search for "49310 83597 02850 19002 75777 67239 07649 57284 90777 21502 08632 08075 01840" turned up something.

    awesome.
  • lollerskates, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24But aren't digits also natural and thus not inventable, just discoverable?

    How can you claim a natural occurrence is illegal? If you look at it from another perspective, it seems wholly reasonable to restrict algorithms, but then again, from a different angle, it's ludicrous.
  • sancho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Except that leaving out the LAST digit wouldn't matter.

    "By exploitation of the fact that the gzip compression program ignores bytes after the end of a null terminated compressed file"

    Looks to me like you can pretty much append or trim anything from the end of the file until you hit the terminator that GZip looks for. The number on your t-shirt would still be illegal--it would just be less interesting, since it's not a prime number anymore.
  • pwrstick, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Making numbers illegal!? Next thing you're going to tell me is that we make plants (and funghi) that grown naturally upon the earth illegal. That's crazy talk!
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18I got seven for you: *****, Piss, *****, *****, *****, ***** and *****.
  • MrMysterious, on 10/12/2007, -9/+20Boy that article was about as exciting as reading that number for fun.
  • duality, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I like how the article contains an image of the DeCSS code. Anybody with the interest to view a larger version of the image and retype what they see into a text file can get a hold of this supposedly restricted information.
  • The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Or (and call me crazy), download it from any one of the many sites with the code.
  • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11"Is the number itself illegal, or the written representation of it?"

    This is sloppy thinking. Things cannot be illegal under our system of law. Only actions can be illegal.

    Drugs, for example, are not illegal. It is illegal to POSSESS certain drugs, or to USE certain drugs, but the drug itself is just a thing. It has no legal or illegal status.

    One of the shorthands we use in communication is to act as if the thing itself is illegal when actually it's the possession of that thing that is illegal. Like we say that marijuana is illegal or something similar. But it's the possession or use of marijuana that is actually illegal. Similarly, the DMCA makes no "thing" illegal. It makes it illegal to create certain types of things, it makes it illegal to use or possess certain types of things or use things for certain purposes, but it doesn't make the things themselves illegal.

    These numbers are not illegal. Use of them in certain ways could be. Creating some of them could be. But the number itself is just a number, a written instantiation of an abstract concept. The law does not consider it legal or illegal.
  • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11"so if i had a bunch-o-drugs and i just had em... didnt do anything with em..."

    Well, a bong doesn't become drug paraphernalia (and illegal) until you've smoked weed in it. So maybe a prime doesn't become illegal untill you've cracked a DVD with it?
  • odevans, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Bigcat: "This would make a great t-shirt."

    Somebody had a similar idea: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/ (scroll down a bit)

    Seems the product page has disapprared though -- read into that what you will.
  • webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"They're illegal to broadcast in the United States."

    Excellent - US TV can show someone being shot in the head, but they can't say "*****, someone got shot in the head." I love US law.
  • griz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7You can't just make a set of digits illegal. You can however make use of this set of digits for illegal purposes a crime. Just as you can't make selling a bong illegal because it has no been used for an illegal purpose. The possession of that set of numbers does not imply the use of it for illegal purposes. Perhaps you are a mathematician who studies these numbers. Show me a court that rules that the mere possession of this set of numbers is illegal and I'll show you a judge with his head up his ass.
  • Drumrboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9so if i had a bunch-o-drugs and i just had em... didnt do anything with em just... had em... and a cop saw me with em... he couldnt do anything?

    ;)

    i see where you were goin with that... just had to add something :P
  • OrangeJuice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Along those lines, I consider "DMCA" to be one of the "four-letter words" >:(
  • interiot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7... they're all copies of the wikipedia article, a wikipedia article which has existed since December 22 , 2002.

    WP articles are copied all around the web, film at 11...
  • aThing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Intresting how this article has so many comments with very high diggs.
  • ghelton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The computer is the bong the number is the weed.
  • jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Dugg simply because I never though about looking at whether my programs are decimal primes, or executing random numbers to see what they do.
  • loftx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's all about context - the same could be said for copyright law - If you encoded lets say a recent poem in decimal form this would still be copyright infringement if you were to distribute the poem in this form, however if the number cropped up somewhere else in say a table of prime numbers it obviously wouldn't be.

    Edit - a better comparism might be trademarks - eg the word Apple applied to music or compuyters to cite a recent example. I can say Apple as much as I like without breaking the law, but if I try to use the word in a way which infringes the trademark then I am.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Remember a little thing we used to call Free Speech?
    Well mr bush and his pals have removed it for your protection!
  • boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Part of text from the Bible, overlaid with an MP3 of Britney Spears' "Toxic": http://monolith.sourceforge.net/
  • jsleno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is an interesting question though. At what point does a series of digits become illegal? After all, that's what software is, a series of digits.

    Is the number itself illegal, or the written representation of it? Or does it have to be in computer-readable binary form? And even then, what if it's not accompanied by code that utilizes it for any purpose? What if you run across one inadvertently working in Matlab? Is MatLab then responsible for keeping you away from that number?

    I guess it's not just one interesting question. But I'd like to know what the community thinks the answers should be.
  • yahoofrom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The idea of publishing the illegal code as one of the biggest known primes is quite clever.
  • mementh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4this just proves that all DRM in the end is useless.. :)
  • allahmohammed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The law is often about intent.

    For example, ordering the sage plant Salvia Divinorum for landscaping or incense is legal under California law.
    Ordering it as an hallucinogen is unlawful under the Analogs statute.

    Having a screwdriver in your pocket is perfectly legal. Using it to break into a domicile would incur the additional charge of possession of burglary tools.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6NEWSFLASH!!!!

    ~~Eyes are considered Illegal because they can be used to watch bootleg DVDs!!!~~

    **Rolls Eyes!**
  • johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Rhetoric, the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively. Schools don't teach it anymore, and haven't for so long most teachers weren't taught it.
  • RyanDaRin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Me and my uber photoshop skills :P

    http://img66.imageshack.us/my.php?image=illegalprime1qv.jpg
  • sporkwitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Because DRM that affects someone besides a legitimate uesr doesn't exist. All DRM only affects the people using the software legally, and only in a negative fashion. I refer to all DRM, things like StarForce are just the best example.
  • dnthomps, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"But aren't digits also natural and thus not inventable, just discoverable?"

    Then marijuana should be legal on the same grounds... right?
  • scootinger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So....what says that it has to be a prime number?
  • interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Possession of data on a DVD is illegal, even though it requires complicated machinery to allow it to be interpretted as a copy of a film that's owned by a movie company. Maybe intepretting that data in a different way shows that it's an impressionistic painting of the Eiffel Tower... it doesn't matter, posession of the data is still illegal unless you have a license for it.
  • StickWST, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Im going to stand on the corner selling floppydisks of this file.
    http://www.census.gov/housing/asec_2004_housret_extract.dat
  • billbradford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24:20 is drug slang: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/420.htm

    They can't make slang illegal.
  • SmeRndmGy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Making information illegal is about the stupidest thing a government can try to do. "You arent allowed to know that! You're going to jail unless you forget it NOW!!!!"
  • firekrakcer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow the Copyleft guys (from the link above) got sued for just making the shirt with this number. What a crazy world we live in.
  • drdewm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anyone who respects laws like this are sheep ready for the slaughter.
  • crappylinks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Seems to me you could cook up plenty of numbers that decompress to the given program and are NOT primes... why dig around for a prime? Just to show you can? Just because the phrase "illegal prime" sounds more cool than "illegal number?"
  • sporkwitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2From what I can read in the article, it would appear that the listed "illegal" uses wouldn't actually be illegal at all, due to Fair-Use. They're welcome to charge me, it'd be a fun case to fight in court.
  • sujeet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The WikiPedia entry says - "According to a strict reading of the DMCA, this number would appear to be illegal in the USA.".

    Um...so..."technically"; would the fact that my browser accessed that WikiPedia page (the one that displays this number), and/or the fact that I "could' print it out from this browser page, and/or the fact that this page and subsequently, that number on the page, would remain on my computer till I the browser cache flushed, make me a part of this "crime"?

    So...technically, by publishing the number in its complete form, isn't WikiPedia an "accessory" to this "crime"?

    So...technically, doesn't this mean that enough nerd hours have been spent dissecting this laughable 'law' by all of us wannabe legalese-speakers? Happy Easter, everybody!
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