Russ, Nathan, Ryan, and I were having a random conversation last week about music piracy and Russia’s Allofmp3.com loophole, which led to talk of other possible legal loopholes for MP3s. The conversation kept revolving around the idea that a number cannot be copyrighted, and that all digital files are exactly that – a number. So this led to the idea of creating a program that could convert the binary number of a music file into an image file. Distribution of these images would not be illegal, given that the explicit purpose of the files be for visual enjoyment. The implicit ability to convert these files back into audio files would therefore not be the liability of the distributor. Well, Russ took this conversation all too seriously:
This is a segment of an image that was no-doubt created from an mp3 of his. I’m not sure what song it is, or how he actually created it, but you can view this “song” in its entirety on his latest post: “A Lost Cause“.
That looks like one of those pictures you stare at to find the hidden image.
The song is Lost Cause by Beck off the album Sea Change. I will post the full BMP. Be very wary this is a big image.