Ansuz
ansuz.sooke.bc.ca · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Ansuz is the personal blog of Ben Sooke, covering software, copyright, fonts and social topics, best known for an essay on bits.
What HN saysHN commenters repeatedly cite 'What colour are your bits?' as a classic essay explaining why copyright depends on a work's origin and intent, not its bits.
215HN people shared it
182linked it in comments
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Most-shared posts
- 1What colour are your bits? (2004)179 people · 309 points · first shared 2010 · 35 comments on HN
- 2What Colour are your bits?21 people · 55 points · first shared 2007 · 11 comments on HN
- 3Colour, social beings, and undecidability4 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 4Mastodon WTF timeline (2017)3 people · 126 points · first shared 2017 · 144 comments on HN
- 5The Terrible Secret of OpenType Glyph Substitution (2010)3 people · 7 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 6Alden: Detachable terminal sessions without breaking scrollback2 people · 8 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 7Some Thoughts on the Cost Disease1 people · 81 points · first shared 2017 · 73 comments on HN
- 8The fundamental attribution error (2013)1 people · 46 points · first shared 2018 · 3 comments on HN
- 9Mountain-climbing addresses for code lines1 people · 16 points · first shared 2015 · 2 comments on HN
- 10What Colour are your bits? Why XOR can't circumvent copyright [2004 classic]1 people · 5 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 11Take It to Zdrabko1 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 12Caves of Golorp, a Roguelike Game in Prolog1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 13Chessudoku1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 14The imagination gap, part 11 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 15Public Health Backgrounder #713 [slightly NSFW text]1 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
timhh · 2024-08-28
No you can't, any more than you can encode a Disney film as a prime number or in the digits of pi and avoid copyright that way.
Read this classic essay: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
yifanl · 2024-08-22
This reminded me of the classic blogpost: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
There's intent that can't be stored: I can write down the word potato on a shopping list, and again on a recipe, and they represent totally different ideas with exactly the same characters. I interpret the first by going to the market, the other in the kitchen.
I'm sure there are many people eagerly trying to solve this problem by just storing more metadata so we can interpret which interpreter we want, but now we need increasingly more layers of interpreters, and now you're asking for a machine that simulates the universe. I find myself aligning that just processing "data" forever has limits, and our continued refusal to recognize that is going to be very costly.
jameshart · 2023-10-05
That’s a naive ‘what color are my bits’[1] mistake - classic software developer mindset.
Level one programmer naïveté is just ‘bits are bits, it doesn’t matter where they come from. Bitwise identical things are indistinguishable’.
Level 2 naïveté is when you accept that bits have color depending on how they came to be arranged thus, and that there are processes that get rid of the old color on some bits, and replace it with a new one. But then you figure - like a programmer - that if you compose that process with some other process you can get rid of the colors you don’t like.
Enlightenment is realizing that the law cares not one jot for the specific processes you apply to bits or their colors but criminalizes (or at least proscribes) particular actions and cares about things like intent.
[1] https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
IshKebab · 2023-09-07
This misunderstanding of copyright is extremely common among programmers. He probably should have read this classic before writing so much:
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
skybrian · 2023-08-19
They’ll likely just decide it’s not different enough. Courts aren’t computers; they can look at intent.
A classic essay:
What colour are your bits?
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
abetusk · 2023-04-21
This was inevitable. Copyright law has always used a "color of your bits" argument [0]. GPL and other libre/free/open licenses were a great hack to circumvent draconian copyright laws but the laws themselves are not designed for a rigorous treatment of similarity (maybe even by design?).
Also, it's worth noting in the example of ChatGPT emitting LGPL code without attribution or license, the code is actually different [1]. Is the difference enough to circumvent a copyright violation claim? I don't know but a big part of determining whether it does is now muddled because of the way the system was designed. Even if we could get an entropy distribution on which training data was used to generate the text, it's not even clear the courts could use it in any meaningful way.
[0] https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
[1] https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554
kfarr · 2023-02-18
These articles debating consciousness of gpt variants reminds me of the debate about what “colour” are your bits:
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
If the outcome is the same does it matter if the bits that constructed the outcome were “coloured” as Conscious or Not?
Then we get into the classic p-zombie debate which afaik has no resolution: because it’s private qualia you can never know for sure if your fellow human actually feels sentience or is just faking it. Even more so for a computer, right?
TheDong · 2023-01-14
I think this touches on the core mismatch between the legal perspective and technical perspective.
Yes, on a technical level, those chunks are random data. On the legal side, however, those chunks are illegal copyright infringement because that is their intent, and there is a process that allows the intent to happen.
I can't really say it better than this post does, so I highly recommend reading it: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
advisedwang · 2022-11-29
> It’s unclear that illegal numbers exist outside of intent to communicate the illegal ideal
Correct. Intent is important in the law. And when it comes to "Illegal numbers" and copyright in general _provenance_ is important too. I love sharing this article with people: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
cortesoft · 2022-08-12
You are thinking like a computer programmer and not a lawyer. There is a classic article that demonstrates the difference called “What colour are your bits?” https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
The law isn’t actually talking about math or numbers or encryption, even though it seems like it is to computer programmers. The math doesn’t matter to the law, what you use it for does.
tobiasSoftware · 2022-04-14
There's an excellent article that I've read multiple times about this exact idea called "What Colour are your bits". It's written in response to a company that tried to get around the legal system by pretending that intentions don't matter.
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
bryanlarsen · 2021-09-18
Read this classic essay: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
The works are identical if bits don't have color (re linked essay above). We know they don't, but in the eyes of the law they definitely do, so an exact copy is still a copy in the eyes of the law.
cmeacham98 · 2021-03-27
I don't think that's actually the argument being made. It's the standard "color of your bits"[1] distinction: intent matters. If you use GPL licensed code in your program (that does not fall into an explicit exception, eg. syscalls on linux) you must follow the GPL. No amount of technical trickery allows you to circumvent this. If however, you reimplement an API, that may or may not be copyrighted (watch for the final result on that google vs oracle case).
1: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
greenshackle2 · 2020-05-01
> No block can be copyrighted without logical contradictions, because blocks used for re-assembling a source file block are re-used for re-assembly of other source file blocks. It is undecidable who would have copyright on a block, which has several meanings. Everyone would have copyright on everything.
That's a hopelessly naive, almost sovcit-level take on law. The lawyers and judges will not give an iota of a fuck for this argument. The facts are, someone uploaded a copyrighted work to the system. Someone else downloaded it out of the system.
The classic "What Colour are your bits" is relevant here:
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
shawnz · 2020-05-01
A classic analogy for explaining the difference: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
programd · 2020-02-28
Here's the link to the original "What Colour are your bits?" blog post by Ansuz - very much worth reading
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
dublinben · 2019-11-23
This reminded me of the excellent "What color are your bits" article about the absurdity of copyright in the digital space.
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
TotempaaltJ · 2019-07-23
> The bytes they are transmitting are effectively not copywritten
Eh, that's too limited a definition of copyright. Technical implementation doesn't really matter to the law; only whether or not you are in fact transmitting copyrighted information. That is decidedly the case: the author is knowingly sending a certain piece of content, which the receiver can then access.
Here's a great article on it: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
losvedir · 2019-02-06
Related: The excellent What colour are your bits? [0]
[0] https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
konschubert · 2018-11-09
It's a long read, but it may be worth it:
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
exolymph · 2018-09-12
Classic post on the provenance of files being important for legal reasons: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
gowld · 2018-04-27
What is the false premise? The linked article http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 is saying the same thing you are, with an in-depth explanation.
The article isn't great in how it explains, and it's unfriendly toward the legal profession, but it makes the same claims you do.
rayiner:
> If you can prove that the bits came from an RNG that’s not copyright infringement.
article:
> It doesn't matter that it looks like, or maybe even is bit-for-bit identical with, some other file that you could get from a random number generator. It happens that you didn't get it from a random number generator.
adrianN · 2018-01-05
This classic essay is ever relevant http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
zero_iq · 2017-09-19
I think he's referring to this classic article (or one of its follow-ups): http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
TeMPOraL · 2017-09-05
I think it's really the time to bring out the classic - "What Colour are your bits?"[0].
This, IMO, should be a required reading for anyone participating in the discussion on copyright. The crux of the issue is that law does not operate in the same reality computers (or, for that matter, physical reality) do. Unlike bits, it recognizes the cause-and-effect history of things, so e.g. one file can be illegal while other is perfectly fine, even if those files are bit-for-bit identical.
--
[0] - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23.
ubernostrum · 2017-07-27
It likely wouldn't cause anything interesting to happen because real-world law doesn't work like "smart" contracts or computer code. You probably want to read this classic article for a good explanation:
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
Piskvorrr · 2017-06-20
That's where the famous "colored bits" come into play; "but we didn't do it personally ourselves and we didn't hold a literal gun to the telcos' heads" is ... not a great defense. http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
In other words, intent matters; we only pretend it doesn't (and let the legal system sort it out) because it's too hard to express into computer systems.
eridius · 2016-11-22
The budding discussion in these comments reminds me of the classic post "What Colour are your bits?" - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
Analemma_ · 2016-07-30
And the follow-up article, which discusses the usual objections that programmers have to the original article: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/24 . Particularly noteworthy is a comment from a lawyer that a key misunderstanding among programmers is that in law, the humans and their social interactions are the first-class entities of the system, not second-order distractions as they tend to be in engineering. This was a very enlightening moment for me in my journey towards understanding why the law seems so absurd from a mathematical perspective.
brudgers · 2013-09-09
We tend to accept that death has a color [1]. Unfortunately, we tend to let our governments decide which deaths have what color. No doubt the 500 or so US residents who died each year as a result of actions following 9/11 constitutes many individual tragedies. But there have been many many more colorless deaths around the world as a result of other government actions with 9/11 as their rationalization.
[1] http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23