Best idea I’ve seen in a long time

I’ll start you out with this quote:

There is problem with free speech in the USA:

Judge Gwin of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio has recently held that software is not protected by the First Amendment because it is a “functional device” like a telephone circuit.

For more read Editorial in Slahdot: Open Software & Constitutionally Protected Speech

So software != speech, right?

What if it did?

Enter c2txt2c: Accurate language to inaccurate language (and back) translator.

It turns code written in the C programming langage into English language. It can also turn the English back into C.

Take a moment and read what Judge Gwin says again. Software is not language, and is not speech, ergo it is not protected under the First Amendment. What about language describing software? What if you developed an algorithm which can understand language describing software and produced working software from it? What if you released it as free software under the GNU public license? The algorithm itself wouldn’t be protected, according to Judge Gwin. But what if you implemented c2txt2c in C, then used it on its own source code? That would make it protected speech (in theory, as long as algorithms implemented in the English language, count as protected speech).

I’m really interested in seeing where this goes. If the concept of code translated into conventional language is struck down, it would seem to place speech itself (or at least algorithms in the form of speech) into the same category as “functional devices”. It seems that this would pretty much snuff out free speech in this country.

Note: to see it in action, check out the blowfish cryptographic algorithm in English.