Is there or has there ever been information illegal to possess or have?
from Patnou@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 20:48
https://lemmy.world/post/35971933

#nostupidquestions

threaded - newest

jordanlund@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 20:51 next collapse

For a while it was illegal to export Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP from the US.

FTP servers in the US removed it for fear of legal action.

So I imported it from a University in Scotland. 😉

www.openpgp.org

neidu3@sh.itjust.works on 15 Sep 21:41 collapse

Not just PGP, but any encryption strength above a certain level was considered “munitions” from a legal standpoint. Because of this, finding a windows Ssh client was a PITA for quite a while.

Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 22:44 collapse

Wait does imply that other encryption is broken since what would it matter if you used encryption greater than something the government allowed you to

neidu3@sh.itjust.works on 15 Sep 23:10 collapse

Nah, this was ages ago. I don’t remember the exact encryption strength, but it was pretty low, even by yesteryear standards. This was a remnant from when cryptography was ruled by whichever government could find the biggest autistic savant.

supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz on 15 Sep 20:59 next collapse

KEVIN Birmingham’s new book about the long censorship fight over James Joyce’s Ulysses braids eight or nine good stories into one mighty strand.

It’s about women’s rights and heroic female editors, the First World War, anarchism and modernism, tenderness and syphilis, moral panic and about the Lost Generation and the tent it pitched at Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookstore. It isolates a great love story, that of Joyce and Nora Barnacle, one that comes with a finger-burning side order of some of the most cheerfully filthy correspondence in literary history.

scotsman.com/…/the-battle-to-publish-james-joyces…

And what a quest it was. “Ulysses” was illegal to own in most of the English-speaking world for more than a decade. It was banned, burned, debated, smuggled, and finally legalized following a 1933 court ruling. In Birmingham’s highly readable and erudite book, he infuses this story with drama, reminding us that the right to express oneself can never be taken for granted.

Readers will quickly realize the immense scope of “The Most Dangerous Book.” Modernism, obscenity, the power once held by postal authorities, vice squads, 19th century English law, Joyce’s sex life and health problems, The Lost Generation, early literary magazines, Wall Street lawyers, the suffrage movement, anarchy in America, and even the Enlightenment are all seamlessly woven into this most fascinating tapestry.

www.wbur.org/news/…/kevin-birmingham-ulysses

Mighty@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 21:06 next collapse

So much. I mean that’s what the book burning was all about. There’s blacklisted authors. There’s state secrets. It might be information that’s legal only for certain people. I mean, if we’re being pedantic, it’s illegal for you to have information about me if I’m not giving it to you.

Tramort@programming.dev on 15 Sep 21:06 next collapse

child pornography would fit this description

benignintervention@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 21:07 next collapse

In the US it’s illegal to grow poppy if you know what it is

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 15 Sep 22:48 next collapse

They can’t prove I know what it is tho. 😏

“What do you mean I had to know because I was making heroin? You mean my calming sleepy flower juice from those cool flowers I found?”

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 23:03 next collapse

The little seeds on bagels?

RFKJrsBrainworm@sh.itjust.works on 15 Sep 23:09 collapse

Yup

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 23:14 collapse

But…why are bagel seeds illegal to grow? And why aren’t bagel producers getting in legal trouble?

modular950@lemmy.zip on 16 Sep 02:15 collapse

nice try! you can’t prove that I know anything!

shalafi@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 23:51 collapse

Only the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The rest are just fine.

jbrjake@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 21:12 next collapse

When the first DVD cracking util was released, DeCSS, it violated the DMCA and people were getting sued and threatened with felonies for sharing it. Very quickly people figured out loopholes to make it an archivable creative work, like putting it on tshirts and encoding it as a prime number: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

kersploosh@sh.itjust.works on 15 Sep 21:56 next collapse

I remember an mp3 going around where a guy turned it into a song, complete with the chorus, “I don’t like the DMCA.”

floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 15 Sep 22:17 next collapse

Damn, I came to post about the pirate pride flag but you beat me to it

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 16 Sep 01:53 collapse

I had a green DeCSS shirt. It was awesome. I ditched it while coming over the border.

BertramDitore@lemmy.zip on 15 Sep 21:51 next collapse

High level leaks of classified material is the first example that comes to mind. The raw Wikileaks data, for example, was widely accessible and easily found by anyone with a quick search, and yet possessing that material was technically illegal, because it was never declassified.

eightpix@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 23:47 next collapse

Julian Assange has something to say about this.

Edward Snowden has something to say about this.

Reality Winner has something to say about this.

Chelsea Manning has something to say about this.

Woodward and Bernstein had something to say about this.

BertramDitore@lemmy.zip on 15 Sep 23:53 collapse

No doubt. It being illegal doesn’t mean it wasn’t morally justified and right in most cases. Just means it took more courage and personal risk to do the right thing.

clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works on 16 Sep 01:56 collapse

You’ve been banned from /r/warthunderforums

TheKracken@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 22:08 next collapse

I’d say classified documents if you don’t have the clearance and process to legally possess them

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 15 Sep 22:46 next collapse

Literally some of the 34 things Trump was convicted of has to do with this!

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 15 Sep 23:02 collapse

So it’s illegal, but nothing comes of getting convicted. No actual consequences.

Got it.

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 15 Sep 23:03 collapse

Only if you have money and/or power, tho. If you’re just some guy, you’re 100℅ fucked.

FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website on 15 Sep 22:39 next collapse

Having info on the heliocentric solar system could land you in a dungeon or worse back in the day.

DagwoodIII@piefed.social on 15 Sep 23:56 next collapse

"Pornography" was illegal to own. Things like abortion information or anything mentioning homosexuality was pornographic.

[deleted] on 16 Sep 00:15 next collapse
.
jrs100000@lemmy.world on 16 Sep 00:49 next collapse

War plans. Classified information in general will cause some trouble, but mostly for the person who leaked it. War plans, on the other hand, will be recovered by any means necessary, up to and including lethal force without warning.

clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works on 16 Sep 01:58 next collapse

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

A cryptographic key for Blu-Rays. The MPAA used to send out C&Ds and DMCA takedowns left and right to hide this code.

howrar@lemmy.ca on 16 Sep 02:06 collapse

I remember when this Streisanded hard on Digg. Good times.

Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org on 16 Sep 02:46 next collapse

Instructions how to build a nuclear bomb.

They have been so very illegal during the very first years of the internet that the scanning of content by police and 3 letter agencies was invented especially because of that.

Then many people made fun of the fact, for example by putting fake hints into the footers of their e-mails or forum posts, and maybe this was the beginning of all memes.

bran_buckler@lemmy.world on 16 Sep 02:52 collapse

This video goes over some things that are illegal to say