IP: Illegal Prime Number?

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:07:28 -0400
>To: "David J. Farber" <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
>From: "Tice F. DeYoung" <tdeyoung@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
>
>Dave,
>
>    A friend of mine sent me this.  I have not checked its validity, so 
> reader beware.  Nevertheless, this is interesting; but I wonder where 
> people find the time to do such things?
>
>Tice
>
>Use it for IP, if you so desire.
>
>
>>This may be the first known illegal prime. What folks often forget is a
>>program (any file actually) is a string of bits (binary digits)--so
>>every program is a number. Some of these are prime.
>>
>>http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/curios/485...443.html
>>
>>When written in base 16 (hexidecimal), this prime forms a gzip file of
>>the original C-source code (sans tables) that decrypts the DVD Movie
>>encryption scheme (DeCSS). See Gallery of CSS Descramblers (and its
>>Steganography Wing) for more information. It is apparantly illegal to
>>distribute this source code in the United States, so does that make this
>>number (found by Phil Carmody) also illegal?



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