Can a number be illegal?

Can specific numbers be illegal?

Videos on illegal numbers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnEyjwdoj7g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo19Y4tw0l8

Wikipedia article on illegal numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

Well, nearly anything we call information can be put into the form of a number. Any proprietary information, any national security secrets, any computer software, copyrighted material, any video or music performance... each of these can be put into the form of a number, generally a very large number, but a number.

A simple example: the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

I will use a simple code in which every letter is uniquely paired with an integer.

1 = a
2 = b
3 = c
4 = d
5 = e
6 = f
7 = g
8 = h
9 = i
10 = j
11 = k
12 = l
13 = m

14 = n
15 = o
16 = p
17 = q
18 = r
19 = s
20 = t
21 = u
22 = v
23 = w
24 = x
25 = y
26 = z

We'll use the ACSII decimal code for space -- 32 -- which, in binary, is: 00100000

And we translate our decimal strings into binary strings:

2085
100000100101

17219311
1000001101011111011101111

218152314
1101000000001011110101111010

61524
1111000001010100

1021131654
111100110111010011101110000110

1522518
101110011101101010110

2085
100000100101

1212625
100101000000011010001

4157
1000000111101

In decimal, we have the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog written as a number: 208532172193113221815231432615243210211316543261524321021131654321021131654321522518322085321212625324157

Which, in binary, looks something like this (I haven't bothered to check for errors in transcription): 1000001001010010000010000011010111110111011110010000011010000000010111101011110100010000011110000010101000010000011110011011101001110111000011000100001011100111011010101100010000010000010010100100000100101000000011010001001000001000000111101

The above string looks like any old boring computer command. Because computers use the binary (on/off) system. (The problem of overlapping numbers, as in does 117 mean 1,17 or 11,7 -- a, q or k, g -- is solved by various mathematical and computer means, which I do not address here.)

But, suppose a number -- no doubt much longer -- represents a computer program, which runs a movie or a musical performance. Or suppose the number encapsulates copyrighted material. Or what if it encapsulates top secret national security information?

So, can a number by itself be proprietary? Or classified? The difficulty is that, if you publish the raw number of something that is supposedly under information control, you may say that you are publishing a very long integer. Integers aren't intellectual property, are they? The infringement would seem to occur when someone uses that number to run a program that either entertains someone or informs them without the permission of those holding the "property" rights. But surely the number itself isn't property.

Yet, when you publish that number, you give others the means of replicating the desired information, something CIA folks might frown on. Yet, can the CIA and other spook agencies claim to own numbers? Well, I guess so. They say their ciphers and codes are classified secret. But again, people have a right to write down long numbers if they wish to do so, don't they? Had Edward Snowden given only the computer numbers associated with all the NSA surveillance of Americans he exposed, the government would have been in quite a pickle, I'd say. But then journalists, though they may have savvy on apps and technicalities related to their trade, tend to come up somewhat short in the computer science department; it's unlikely they would have known what to do with the numbers.

In any case, there is something philosophically odd about making specific numbers illegal to distribute or even to possess.

ACSII code
https://theasciicode.com.ar/

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