Junger et al.

[Martin Minow]

My declaration for the Junger lawsuit (available on jya.com) touched
on these issues, but the court chose not to accept my reasoning. My
quick reading of the decision is that the court took note that sourc
and object code are functional (they control a computer), and chose
to ignore their ability to express an algorithm and, hence, to
communicate
the substance of an encryption algorithm to another human being.

The court also appears to assume that, because computer source code
requires
technical skill and training understand, it somehow loses its First
Amendment privileges: this I find confusing.

Martin Minow (minow at pobox.com)

---Bill Stewart  wrote:
>
> At 03:11 AM 7/7/98 -0400, mgraffam at mhv.net wrote:
> >On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, Ernest Hua wrote:
> >> Did anyone demonstrate the "functionalness" of any arbitrary
language
> >> via a scanner and a compiler?
> >Indeed.. what we need is for someone to testify to the court about
> >natural and computer language, and maybe some relevent material from
> >information theory. 
> >
> >Pseudo-code from any computer programming textbook would be helpful
> >in making this point too.
> >
> >What about English in a voice recognition system? In this case,
English
> >can actually perform functions too, just as C does.
> 
> A particularly relevent language is the Algorithmic Language, Algol,
> which was designed for mathematicians to describe algorithms to each
other,
> though it was also designed in a way to support compilers,
> such as ALGOL-60.
> 				Thanks! 
> 					Bill
> Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
> PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
> 
> 

==
Please reply to minow at pobox.com


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