The term "illegal number" or "illegal hex number" has been bothering me so much that I am compelled to post yet again. Everyday I think about this and try to rationalize the concept. I don't understand it. It goes beyond my "God-given" right of freedom of speech. It's a number. It is being claimed by someone for the sole purpose of profit. Or at least protection of profit.

The entire idea of intellectual property is a quandary amongst itself. In theory, I can think of the exact same thing as someone else. We can think of the same joke, write the same story, code the same computer program. The complexities of the algorithms, the syntax of sentences, and the delivery of the joke change it enough to make it unique. Of course patents were invented to protect the inventions. We have always known great minds think alike. Copyrights for scripts and Trademarks for logos protect us in a first come basis. What we have here different. It's a number. This number was thought of by a human and is used as a key to a lock. If I purchase a lock, sans the key, don't I have every right to pick that lock with any tool I can find?

Suppose a company hired me to write the lock (encryption) for their DVDs. Suppose I was a very lazy programmer (no laughing). I have to come up with an encryption method that uses a key — a number that is stored on a chip inside your DVD player. Within 2 hours I have finished my encryption algorithm. I am too tired to mess with that base 16 (hexadecimal) stuff. All those Fs and Ds remind me of HTML colors. I kept my code short and sweet. I wrote my lock and my key. My key is the number 4.

Am I supposed to sue everyone who posts the number 4? Or am I just suing the people who say, the "key to unlock Josh's DVD encryption is the number 4"? The latter would be more reasonable but what is the difference? The key is out. Users will use far more cryptic blog posts to display the key. They found the key. They didn't steal it from my personal computer. They decrypted my super awesome encryption. It didn't take them long but now I am going to have to lobby congress to make the entire number 4 illegal. It doesn't matter what you write or what you say. Your intent doesn't matter. Number 4 will no longer be used by anyone but me and my DVDs.

This is obviously too silly to happen, but it has. They (MPAA, Congress) want you to believe it is the complexity of a base 16 number that makes it subjectable to law. It's not an everyday number, so it can belong to someone. It's their number. So a simple, everyday integer like 4 can never be illegal but a more complex number, that's up for grabs?

Have we lost this much touch with ethics? Are we unable to see this for what it is? It's the intent. It's the intent to break your lock and steal your stuff and sell it. It's not illegal if I buy a lock, pick it and open it, in my own home. I didn't intend to anything wrong. I didn't steal anything. I didn't sell anything. I just thought of a number…that I may have read somewhere.