[4650] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: How to donate a clue to a lawyer?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Ellison)
Sat May 8 14:55:11 1999
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 10:39:37 -0700
To: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson@techreports.jpl.nasa.gov>
From: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>
Cc: Cryptography List <cryptography@c2.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.990507211508.20544A-100000@techreports.jpl.n
asa.gov>
At 09:18 PM 5/7/99 -0700, Jay D. Dyson wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>On Fri, 7 May 1999, Anonymous wrote:
>
>> Here's Lance Rose's take on the Bernstein decision:
>>=20
>> Sorry to say, but the 9th Circuit took the dumb approach I mentioned in=
my
>> earlier post.
>> =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 Their whole approach to "source code as speech" is=
misguided -
>> unless we are talking about people talking to machines!=A0 Source code is
>> specifically designed and constrained to make a computer operate in=20
>> exactly specified ways.
>
> With all due respect, this is absolute rubbish. That one does not
>comprehend a language does not invalidate that language's being protected
>speech. For example, I know American Sign Language and use it on a daily
>basis (and no, I'm not deaf...well...not yet). Am I to understand that
>Lance Rose considers my method of communication to not be protected by the
>First Amendment simply because he can't grok it?
>
> Methinks someone needs to think/rethink through their position.
This is not the best argument.
Source code is human speech, for human-to-human communication. It has a
side-effect of being compilable into machine code, but it is in a human=20
language and is intended for human communication.
Have you ever modified a program written by someone else? What's your first=
=20
step? You read the program, to find out what it does. You don't read the=
=20
massive paper document that describes what the program does and how ..=20
because there is no such document. You don't read the comments in the code=
=20
.. because there are lamentably few comments. Therefore, you read the=20
source code. My first system programming professor drove this point home
to us -- noting that even solitary projects require communication to some
"other" programmer: namely ourselves at a later date when we've forgotten=
=20
what was in our minds at the time we started writing the code.
QED
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Carl M. Ellison cme@acm.org http://www.pobox.com/~cme |
| PGP: 08FF BA05 599B 49D2 23C6 6FFD 36BA D342 |
+--Officer, officer, arrest that man. He's whistling a dirty song.-+
