Re: [NTLK] Harry Potter and such

From: Anton Aylward (anton_at_the-wire.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 11:40:11 PDT


Interesting detail, but you're missing my point.

If ROT13 is 'encryption' then so is a foreign language.
Neither is intelligible without special knowledge and a transformation.
This is classical information theory stuff.

If I were to translate a book for payment or even read a book out loud
for payment there are legal issues (think: Copyright as it applies to
Talking Books).

If I play a CD I own for other people, for example in the car while
driving the kids to the beach, that is an allowable use. But if its in
a language they don't understand and I translate ...

On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 14:25, James Elliott wrote:
> Interesting, but it wasn't that simple. They didn't just speak in
> their native language. What I've read mentioned using Navajo words
> to spell things out. The first letters of each word of the English
> translation would spell the English message.
>
> -James
>
> >Hmmm.
> >Didn't the US use native Indian speakers during the Second World War as
> >"unbreakable encryption"? (In that the Axis forces never did break it).
> >Surely, therefore, if I read the "dead tree" book that was printed in
> >English, translating on the fly for my Francophone newphew, I am, by
> >those terms and references, "breaking the encryption".
> >

-- 
Anton Aylward <anton_at_the-wire.com>
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