The Copyright Industry Copyright is not only about protecting the rights of creators, but has also become a major branch of industry with significant contributions to the global economy. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance the U.S. copyright industry has grown almost three times as fast as the economy as a whole for the past 20 years. In 1997, the total copyright industries contributed an estimated US$ 529.3 billion to the U.S. economy with the core copyright industries accounting for US$ 348.4 billion. Between 1977 and 1997, the absolute growth rate of value added to the U.S. GDP by the core copyright industries was 241 %. Also the copyright industry's foreign sales in 1997 (US$ 66.85 billion for the core copyright industries) were larger than the U.S. Commerce Department International Trade Administration's estimates of the exports of almost all other leading industry sectors. They exceeded even the combined automobile and automobile parts industries, as well as the agricultural sector. In an age where knowledge and information become more and more important and with the advancement of new technologies, transmission systems and distribution channels a further increase in the production of intellectual property is expected. Therefore as copyright establishes ownership in intellectual property it is increasingly seen as the key to wealth in the future.

TEXTBLOCK 1/1 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611725/100438658710

Fiber-optic cable networks Fiber-optic cable networks may become the dominant method for high-speed Internet connections. Since the first fiber-optic cable was laid across the Atlantic in 1988, the demand for faster Internet connections is growing, fuelled by the growing network traffic, partly due to increasing implementation of corporate networks spanning the globe and to the use of graphics-heavy contents on the World Wide Web. Fiber-optic cables have not much more in common with copper wires than the capacity to transmit information. As copper wires, they can be terrestrial and submarine connections, but they allow much higher transmission rates. Copper wires allow 32 telephone calls at the same time, but fiber-optic cable can carry 40,000 calls at the same time. A capacity, Alexander Graham Bell might have not envisioned when he transmitted the first words - "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you" - over a copper wire. Copper wires will not come out of use in the foreseeable future because of technologies as DSL that speed up access drastically. But with the technology to transmit signals at more than one wavelength on fiber-optic cables, there bandwidth is increasing, too. For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica on telecommunication cables, click here. For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica focusing on fiber-optic cables, click here. An entertaining report of the laying of the FLAG submarine cable, up to now the longest fiber-optic cable on earth, including detailed background information on the cable industry and its history, Neal Stephenson has written for Wired: Mother Earth Mother Board. Click here for reading. Susan Dumett has written a short history of undersea cables for Pretext magazine, Evolution of a Wired World. Click here for reading. A timeline history of submarine cables and a detailed list of seemingly all submarine cables of the world, operational, planned and out of service, can be found on the Web site of the International Cable Protection Committee. For maps of fiber-optic cable networks see the website of Kessler Marketing Intelligence, Inc. http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0... http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffgla... http://www.pretext.com/mar98/features/story3....

INDEXCARD, 1/1