Illegal prime facts for kids
An illegal prime is a prime number that stands for information that is not allowed to be owned or shared in certain places. One of the first illegal primes was found in 2001. When you read it in a special way, it describes a computer program. This program helps to get around the copy protection used on DVDs. Sharing such a program in the United States is against the law because of a rule called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An illegal prime is a type of illegal number.
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What is an Illegal Prime?
An illegal prime is a special kind of prime number. It's called "illegal" because the information it represents is not allowed. Imagine a very long number. If you turn this number into computer code, that code might do something forbidden. For example, it could unlock something that is meant to be locked.
The First Illegal Prime
One of the first illegal prime numbers was created in March 2001. A person named Phil Carmody made it. This number, when written in binary (using only 0s and 1s), was a hidden message.
What the Number Represented
The hidden message was a computer program. This program was a compressed version of the C source code for something called the DeCSS decryption algorithm. This algorithm is a set of steps that a computer can follow. It was designed to get around the copy protection on DVDs. This meant people could copy DVDs even if the movie makers didn't want them to.
Why it was Illegal
In many countries, especially the United States, it is against the law to share tools that bypass copy protection. This is because of laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So, even though it was just a number, it became "illegal" because of what it represented. It was a way to share forbidden information.
Illegal Numbers
An illegal prime is part of a bigger idea called an illegal number. An illegal number is any number that, when interpreted, represents something illegal. This could be a computer program, a secret code, or any other kind of data. The idea behind illegal numbers shows how laws can apply to information itself, not just physical objects.
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