At 10:37 AM 5/7/99 -0500, Elyn Wollensky wrote:
>Here's Lance Rose's take on the Bernstein decision:
>Sorry to say, but the 9th Circuit took the dumb approach I mentioned in my
>earlier post.
> Their whole approach to "source code as speech" is misguided -
>unless we are talking about
>people talking to machines! Source code is specifically designed and
>constrained to make a computer operate in exactly specified ways.
> While programmers and cryptographers may exchange source code to
>understand each other's techniques, etc., this is like potters exchanging
>pottery. The discussion between people, like the discussion between
>potters, is first amendment protectable, but this does not render the code
>itself protected under 1st amendment.
These wanna-be tech lawyers really need to learn about what they
plan on spewing opinions about.
Programmers exchange source like composers exchange compositions: because
there is no simpler way to communicate. The fact that some people
can't read music (or code) is their inadequacy. The fact that
machines can interpret musical (or algorithmic) notation is useful,
but irrelevant. For instance, there are many domain-specific algorithmic
languages which can be hand-simulated but haven't been implemented.
Certain kinds of natural philosophy ("logic") employ such systems, for
instance.
When a person reads english, the symbols trigger more-or-less defined
changes in the reader's internal representations. Similarly for a person
reading code, music, law, or a blueprint. In these latter fields, the
meaning of symbols has been honed over time, to make them more or less
precise (consider that the algorithmic language "C" was not originally well
defined e.g., in the sense of the size of its integers). But the
precision of one's speech cannot be used to limit first amendment protections.
