yes it does represent something human-produced but the number is not said to be illegal because the human-produced thing is protected. The number is deemed illegal because there is a convoluted way in which it could be used illegally. My point is that the protected entity is a very abstract thing much disconnected from the number itself. And therefore it does not make sense to protect it.

Regarding your second point, it is obvious to me that it is related to the bit color issue. I was trying to make a similar point to yours, but maybe I failed. Let me try again: I don't think that making this rationale of "oh, it becomes a number therefore it can't be owned" is a proper argument. Exactly because anything can become a number and we do acknowledge properties to things (like a text of a book) that would be ridiculous for a pure number to have.

My point was that even though the "just a number" argument is bad, there are other points to be made on the stupidity of this particular protection.