At 05:10 PM 11/21/05 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:

Yes, I basically agree. But on the other hand, a bootleg in the old

days

meant braking laws regarding illicit recording of an event. (As I remember) you also broke a law regarding the copyright of the performance. Cassette copies of vinyl were a tiny bit tricky, and the "gap" allowed for copying for home use and maybe for a few friends.

Lossy (cassette) copies were illegal if you sold or disseminated to too-broad a category of "associates". Perfect (digital) copies are not illegal if the associates are limited; the past several jobs I've had, I've shared my ripped collection of physical-CDs without worry, inside the local net.

Basically, this was what I was wondering. When we move from the analog domain to the digital, how does one identify the data? It's no longer a

series of 1s and 0s, because I can change the 1s in 0s in a non-correctable way (which is what happens with lossy compression) and still go to jail for transmitting that bitstream.

You want something operational, so: a very low-res copy is the same. This works for MP3s vs. CDs, etc. In practice, a judge will say that perceptually similar (semantic) copies are copies. This is also true for eg trademarks.

Unlike some Cypherpunks, I'm more litely anti-statist: One can only claim legitimacy for a state if the laws are well defined enough so as to allow for nonarbitrary enforcement (and I only said "claim", so I don't need killin...yet).

A state which protects individuals against harm from others is pretty much defensible. Those that need killing (impeachment, fragging, etc) are those who abuse this "right" of violence. There are some who don't hold that the State has any justification for that role, but that is amoral. In the vacuum, thugs rule. (Cf any state which has no effective power.)

Of course, there are probably legal arguments made somewhere that refer to the perceived identity of a track or sample, so I guess what I'm really

asking is if anyone knows what they are and if they make any sense (aside from giving big corporates the ability to whack any college student they want to make an example of).

The RIAA/MPAA would use low-res similarity matching, or just hire offshore listeners/watchers. Ones who grok sarcasm. Fair use exemptions are an excuse under US laws. YMMV. Of course, if I have 10 friends, and they each have 10 friends, content is toast, best charge for live performances. I watched an industrial-sports event on TV, and it had warnings that any description thereof without the consent of the commisar of that "sport" was illegal. FThatS.