Mormon Church v. Sandra and Jerald Tanner
In a ruling of December 1999, a federal judge in Utah temporarily barred two critics of the Mormon Church from posting on their website the Internet addresses of other sites featuring pirated copies of a Mormon text. The Judge said that it was likely that Sandra and Jerald Tanner had engaged in contributory copyright infringement when they posted the addresses of three Web sites that they knew, or should have known, contained the copies.
Kaplan, Carl S.:
Universal Studios v. Movie-List
The website Movie-List, which features links to online, externally hosted movie trailers has been asked to completely refrain from linking to any of Universal Studio's servers containing the trailers as this would infringe copyright.
Cisneros, Oscar S.: Universal: Don't Link to Us. In:
More cases concerned with the issue of linking,
Ross, Alexandra: Copyright Law and the Internet:
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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
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
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This process works even better on the Internet because of the latter's interactive nature. "The Internet is a dream to direct marketers", said Wil Lansing, CEO of the American retailer
Many web sites also are equipped with
One frequent way of obtaining such personal information of a user is by offering free web mail accounts offered by a great many companies, internet providers and web portals (e.g.
However, the intention of collecting users personal data and create consumer profiles based on online behaviour can also take on more creative and playful forms. One such example is
The particular way in which sites such as sixdegrees.com and others are structured mean that not only to users provide initial information about them, but also that this information is constantly updated and therefore becomes even more valuable. Consequently, many free online services or web mail providers cancel a user's account if it has not been uses for some time.
There are also other online services which offer free services in return for personal information which is then used for marketing purposes, e.g. Yahoo's
A further way of collecting consumer data that has recently become popular is by offering free PCs. Users are provided with a PC for free or for very little money, and in return commit themselves to using certain services rather than others (e.g. a particular internet provider), providing information about themselves, and agree to have their online behaviour monitored by the company providing the PC, so that accurate user profiles can be compiled. For example, the
A good inside view of the world of direct marketing can be gained at the website of the
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Today the talk about the so-called "information society" is ubiquitous. By many it is considered as the successor of the industrial society and said to represent a new form of societal and economical organization. This claim is based on the argument, that the information society uses a new kind of resource, which fundamentally differentiates from that of its industrial counterpart. Whereas industrial societies focus on physical objects, the information society's raw material is said to be knowledge and information. Yet the conception of the capitalist system, which underlies industrial societies, also continues to exist in an information-based environment. Although there have been changes in the forms of manufacture, the relations of production remain organized on the same basis. The principle of property.
In the context of a capitalist system based on industrial production the term property predominantly relates to material goods. Still even as in an information society the raw materials, resources and products change, the concept of property persists. It merely is extended and does no longer solely consider physical objects as property, but also attempts to put information into a set of property relations. This new kind of knowledge-based property is widely referred to as "
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Presumably the major player in the field of international
Information on WIPO administered agreements in the field of industrial property (Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883), Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (1891) etc.) can be found on:
Information on treaties concerning copyright and neighboring rights (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) etc.) is published on:
The most recent multilateral agreement on copyright is the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. Among other things it provides that computer programs are protected as literary works and also introduces the protection of databases, which "... by reason of the selection or arrangement of their content constitute intellectual creations." Furthermore the
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Other biometric technologies not specified here include ear recognition, signature dynamics, key stroke dynamics, vein pattern recognition, retinal scan, body odour recognition, and DNA recognition. These are technologies which are either in early stages of development or used in highly specialised and limited contexts.
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The result of this informatisation is the creation of a virtual body which is the exterior of a man or woman's social existence. It plays the same role that the physical body, except located in virtual space (it has no real location). The virtual body holds a certain emancipatory potential. It allows us to go to places and to do things which in the physical world would be impossible. It does not have the weight of the physical body, and is less conditioned by physical laws. It therefore allows one to create an identity of one's own, with much less restrictions than would apply in the physical world.
But this new freedom has a price. In the shadow of virtualisation, the data body has emerged. The data body is a virtual body which is composed of the files connected to an individual. As the
The virtual character of the data body means that social regulation that applies to the real body is absent. While there are limits to the manipulation and exploitation of the real body (even if these limits are not respected everywhere), there is little regulation concerning the manipulation and exploitation of the data body, although the manipulation of the data body is much easier to perform than that of the real body. The seizure of the data body from outside the concerned individual is often undetected as it has become part of the basic structure of an informatised society. But data bodies serve as raw material for the "New Economy". Both business and governments claim access to data bodies. Power can be exercised, and democratic decision-taking procedures bypassed by seizing data bodies. This totalitarian potential of the data body makes the data body a deeply problematic phenomenon that calls for an understanding of data as social construction rather than as something representative of an objective reality. How data bodies are generated, what happens to them and who has control over them is therefore a highly relevant political question.
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With the development of new transmission, distribution and publishing technologies and the increasing digitalization of information copyright has become the subject of vigorous debate. Among the variety of attitudes towards the future of traditional copyright protection two main tendencies can be identified:
Eliminate Copyright
Anti-copyrightists believe that any
Enlarge Copyright
Realizing the growing economic importance of intellectual property, especially the holders of copyright (in particular the big publishing, distribution and other
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On the Internet, when you want to retrieve a document from another computer, you request a service from this computer. Your computer is the client, the computer on which the information you want to access is stored, is called the
A common set of standards allows the exchange of data and commands independent from locations, time, and operating systems through the Internet. These standards are called communication protocols, or the Internet Protocol Suite, and are implemented in Internet software. Sometimes the Internet Protocol Suite is erroneously identified with
Any information to be transferred is broken down into pieces, so-called packets, and the Internet Protocol figures out how the data is supposed to get from A to B by passing through routers.
Each packet is "pushed" from router to router via
The technique of breaking down all messages and requests into packets has the advantage that a large data bundle (e.g. videos) sent by a single user cannot block a whole network, because the
One of the Internet's (and of the Matrix's) beginnings was the
Routing around depends on the location of the interruption and on the availability of intersecting points between networks. If, for example, an E-mail message is sent from Brussels to Athens and in Germany a channel is down, it will not affect access very much, the message will be routed around this damage, as long as a major Internet exchange is not affected. However, if access depends on a single backbone connection to the Internet and this connection is cut off, there is no way to route around.
In most parts of the world the Internet is therefore vulnerable to disruption. "The idea of the Internet as a highly distributed, redundant global communications system is a myth. Virtually all communications between countries take place through a very small number of bottlenecks, and the available bandwidth isn't that great," says Douglas Barnes. These bottlenecks are the network connections to neighboring countries. Many countries rely on a one single connection to the Net, and in some places, such as the Suez Canal, there is a concentration of fiber-optic cables of critical importance.
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Personal data are collected, appropriated, processed and used for commercial purposes on a global scale. In order for such a global system to operate smoothly, there a server nodes at which the data streams converge. Among the foremost of these are the data bases of credit card companies, whose operation has long depended on global networking.
On top of credit card companies such as Visa, American Express, Master Card, and others. It would be erroneous to believe that the primary purpose of business of these companies is the provision of credit, and the facilitation of credit information for sale transactions. In fact, Information means much more than just credit information. In an advertisement of 1982, American Express described itself in these terms: ""Our product is information ...Information that charges airline tickets, hotel rooms, dining out, the newest fashions ...information that grows money funds buys and sells equities ...information that pays life insurance annuities ...information that schedules entertainment on cable television and electronically guards houses ...information that changes kroners into guilders and figures tax rates in Bermuda ..."
Information has become something like the gospel of the New Economy, a doctrine of salvation - the life blood of society, as Bill Gates expresses it. But behind information there are always data that need to be generated and collected. Because of the critical importance of data to the economy, their possession amounts to power and their loss can cause tremendous damage. The data industry therefore locates its data warehouses behind fortifications that bar physical or electronic access. Such structures are somewhat like a digital reconstruction of the medieval fortress
Large amounts of data are concentrated in fortress-like structures, in data bunkers. As the
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Even with the best techniques it is impossible to invent a cryptographic system that is absolutely safe/unbreakable. To decipher a text means to go through many, sometimes nearly - but never really - endless attempts. For the computers of today it might take hundreds of years or even more to go through all possibilities of codes, but still, finally the code stays breakable. The much faster quantum computers will proof that one day.
Therefore the decision to elect a certain method of enciphering finally is a matter of trust.
For the average user of computers it is rather difficult to understand or even realize the dangers and/or the technological background of electronic transmission of data. For the majority thinking about one's own necessities for encryption first of all means to trust others, the specialists, to rely on the information they provide.
The websites explaining the problems behind (and also the articles and books concerning the topic) are written by experts of course as well, very often in their typical scientific language, merely understandable for laymen. The introductions and other superficial elements of those articles can be understood, whereas the real background appears as untouchable spheres of knowledge.
The fact that dangers are hard to see through and the need for security measures appears as something most people know from media reports, leads directly to the problem of an underdeveloped democracy in the field of cryptography. Obviously the connection between cryptography and democracy is rather invisible for many people. Those mentioned media reports often specialize in talking about the work computer hackers do (sometimes being presented as criminals, sometimes as heroes) and the danger to lose control over the money drawn away from one's bank account, if someone steals the credit card number or other important financial data. The term "security", surely connected to those issues, is a completely different one from the one that is connected to privacy.
It is especially the latter that touches the main elements of democracy.
for the question of security see:
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Profiling and Data Mining
At their most basic
Fair Use
Through the widespread use of copyright management and control systems the balance of control could excessively be shifted in favor of the owners of
Provisions concerning technological protection measures and fair use are stated in the
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Intellectual property, very generally, relates to the output, which result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Traditionally intellectual property is divided into two branches:
1) Industrial Property
a)
b)
c)
d) Unfair competition (trade secrets)
e) Geographical indications (indications of source and appellations of origin)
2) Copyright
The protection of intellectual property is guaranteed through a variety of laws, which grant the creators of intellectual goods, and services certain time-limited rights to control the use made of their products. Those rights apply to the intellectual creation as such, and not to the physical object in which the work may be embodied.
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Within the EU's goal of establishing a European single market also
An overview of EU activities relating to intellectual property protection is available on the website of the European Commission (DG Internal Market):
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The glamour of the data body economy clouds economic practices which are much less than glamorous. Through the seizure of the data body, practices that in the real political arena were common in the feudal age and in the early industrial age are being reconstructed. The data body economy digitally reconstructs exploitative practices such as slavery and wage labour. However, culturally the data body is still a very new phenomenon: mostly, people think if it does not hurt, it cannot be my body. Exploitation of data bodies is painless and fast. Nevertheless, this can be expected to change once the awareness of the political nature of the data body becomes more widespread. As more and more people routinely move in digitised environments, it is to be expected that more critical questions will be asked and claims to autonomy, at present restricted to some artistic and civil society groups trying to get heard amidst the deafening noise of the commercial ICT propaganda, will be articulated on a more general level.
The more problematic aspect of this development may be something else: the practices of the data body economy, themselves a reconstruction of old techniques of seizure, have begun to re-colonise real political space. Simon Davis, Director of the London-based privacy campaigners
The constant adaptation process required from the modern individual has anonymised and structuralized punishment, which now appears in the guise of error messages and the privatisation of risk.
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The Net consists of thousands of thousands of governmental and private networks linked together. No legal authority determines how and where networks can be connected together, this is something the managers of networks have to agree about. So there is no way of ever gaining ultimate control of the Internet. Although each of these networks is operated and controlled by an organization, no single organization operates and controls the Net. Instead of a central authority governing the Net, several bodies assure the operability of the Net by developing and setting technical specifications for the Net and by the control of the technical key functions of the Net as the coordination of the domain name system and the allocation of IP numbers.
Originally, the Net was a research project funded and maintained by the US Government and developed in collaboration by scientists and engineers. As the standards developed for ensuring operability ensued from technical functionality, technical coordination gradually grew out of necessity and was restricted to a minimum and performed by volunteers.
Later, in the 1980s, those occupied with the development of technical specifications organized themselves under the umbrella of the Internet Society in virtual organizations as the Internet Engineering Task Force, which were neither officially established nor being based on other structures than mailing lists and commitment, but nonetheless still serve as task forces for the development of standards ensuring the interoperability on the Net.
Since the late 80s and the early 90s, with the enormous growth of the Net - which was promoted by the invention of
Since the year 2000, a new model for technical coordination has been emerging: Formerly performed by several bodies, technical coordination is transferred to a single non-governmental organization: the Internet Coordination of Assigned Numbers and Names.
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Generally copyright vests in the author of the work. Certain national laws provide for exceptions and, for example, regard the employer as the original owner of a copyright if the author was, when the work was created, an employee and employed for the purpose of creating that work. In the case of some types of creations, particularly audiovisual works, several national laws provide for different solutions to the question that should be the first holder of copyright in such works.
Many countries allow copyright to be assigned, which means that the owner of the copyright transfers it to another person or entity, which then becomes its holder. When the national law does not permit assignment it usually provides the possibility to license the work to someone else. Then the owner of the copyright remains the holder, but authorizes another person or entity to exercise all or some of his rights subject to possible limitations. Yet in any case the "
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Providers of digital information might be confronted with copyright related problems when using some of the special features of hypertext media like
Framing
Frames are often used to help define, and navigate within, a content provider's website. Still, when they are used to present (copyrighted) third party material from other sites issues of passing off and misleading or deceptive conduct, as well as copyright infringement, immediately arise.
Hyperlinking
It is generally held that the mere creation of a hyperlink does not, of itself, infringe copyright as usually the words indicating a link or the displayed URL are unlikely to be considered a "work". Nevertheless if a link is clicked on the users browser will download a full copy of the material at the linked address creating a copy in the RAM of his computer courtesy of the address supplied by the party that published the link. Although it is widely agreed that the permission to download material over the link must be part of an implied license granted by the person who has made the material available on the web in the first place, the scope of this implied license is still the subject of debate. Another option that has been discussed is to consider linking
Furthermore hyperlinks, and other "information location tools", like online directories or search engines could cause their operators trouble if they refer or link users to a site that contains infringing material. In this case it is yet unclear whether providers can be held liable for infringement.
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The laws of almost all countries provide that protection is independent of any formalities. Copyright protection then starts as soon as the work is created.
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The main concern of copyright owners as the (in terms of
Reproduction and Distribution
Unlike copies of works made using analog copiers (photocopy machines, video recorders etc.) digital information can be reproduced extremely fast, at low cost and without any loss in quality. Since each copy is a perfect copy, no quality-related limits inhibit pirates from making as many copies as they please, and recipients of these copies have no incentive to return to authorized sources to get another qualitatively equal product. Additionally the costs of making one extra copy of intellectual property online are insignificant, as are the distribution costs if the copy is moved to the end user over the Internet.
Control and Manipulation
In cross-border, global data networks it is almost impossible to control the exploitation of protected works. Particularly the use of anonymous remailers and other existing technologies complicates the persecution of pirates. Also digital files are especially vulnerable to manipulation, of the work itself, and of the (in some cases) therein-embedded
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In the phrase "the rise of the citizen as a consumer", to be found on the
When the citizen becomes a consumer, the state must become a business. In the data body business, the key word behind this new identity of government is "outsourcing". Functions, that are not considered core functions of government activity are put into the hands of private contractors.
There have long been instances where privately owned data companies, e.g. credit card companies, are allowed access to public records, e.g. public registries or electoral rolls. For example, in a normal credit card transaction, credit card companies have had access to public records in order to verify identity of a customer. For example, in the UK citizen's personal data stored on the Electoral Roll have been used for commercial purposes for a long time. The new British Data Protection Act now allows people to "opt out" of this kind of commercialisation - a legislation that has prompted protests on the part of the data industry:
While this may serve as an example of an increased public awareness of privacy issues, the trend towards outsourcing seems to lead to a complete breakdown of the barriers between commercial and public use of personal data. This trend can be summarised by the term "outsourcing" of government functions.
Governments increasingly outsource work that is not considered core function of government, e.g. cooking meals in hospitals or mowing lawns in public parks. Such peripheral activities marked a first step of outsourcing. In a further step, governmental functions were divided between executive and judgemental functions, and executive functions increasingly entrusted to private agencies. For these agencies to be able to carry out the work assigned to them, the need data. Data that one was stored in public places, and whose handling was therefore subject to democratic accountability. Outsourcing has produced gains in efficiency, and a decrease of accountability. Outsourced data are less secure, what use they are put to is difficult to control.
The world's largest data corporation,
Technically the linking of different systems is already possible. It would also create more efficiency, which means generate more income. The question, then, whether democracy concerns will prevent it from happening is one that is capable of creating
But what the EDS example shows is something that applies everywhere, and that is that the data industry is whether by intention or whether by default, a project with profound political implications. The current that drives the global economy deeper and deeper into becoming a global data body economy may be too strong to be stopped by conventional means.
However, the convergence of political and economic data bodies also has technological roots. The problem is that politically motivated surveillance and economically motivated data collection are located in the same area of information and communication technologies. For example, monitoring internet use requires more or less the same technical equipment whether done for political or economic purposes. Data mining and data warehousing techniques are almost the same. Creating transparency of citizens and customers is therefore a common objective of intelligence services and the data body industry. Given that data are exchanged in electronic networks, a compatibility among the various systems is essential. This is another factor that encourages "leaks" between state-run intelligence networks and the private data body business. And finally, given the secretive nature of state intelligence and commercial data capturing , there is little transparency. Both structures occupy an opaque zone.
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Steganography
Applied to electronic files, steganography refers to the process of hiding information in files that can not be easily detected by users. Steganography can be used by intellectual property owners in a variety of ways. One is to insert into the file a "digital watermark" which can be used to prove that an infringing file was the creation of the copyright holder and not the pirate. Other possibilities are to encode a unique serial number into each authorized copy or file, enabling the owner to trace infringing copies to a particular source, or to store
Agents
Agents are programs that can implement specified commands automatically. Copyright owners can use agents to search the public spaces of the Internet to find infringing copies. Although the technology is not yet very well developed full-text search engines allow similar uses.
Copyright Litigation
While not every infringement will be the subject of litigation, the threat of litigation helps keep large pirate operations in check. It helps copyright owners obtain relief for specific acts of infringement and publicly warns others of the dangers of infringement.
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ISPs (Internet Service Providers) (and to a certain extent also telecom operators) are involved in the copyright debate primarily because of their role in the transmission and storage of digital information. Problems arise particularly concerning
Caching
Caching it is argued could cause damage because the copies in the cache are not necessarily the most current ones and the delivery of outdated information to users could deprive website operators of accurate "hit" information (information about the number of requests for a particular material on a website) from which advertising revenue is frequently calculated. Similarly harms such as defamation or infringement that existed on the original page may propagate for years until flushed from each cache where they have been replicated.
Although different concepts, similar issues to caching arise with mirroring (establishing an identical copy of a website on a different server), archiving (providing a historical repository for information, such as with newsgroups and mailing lists), and full-text indexing (the copying of a document for loading into a full-text or nearly full-text database which is searchable for keywords or concepts).
Under a literal reading of some copyright laws caching constitutes an infringement of copyright. Yet recent legislation like the
Information Residing on Systems or Networks at the Direction of Users
ISPs may be confronted with problems if infringing material on websites (of users) is hosted on their systems. Although some copyright laws like the DMCA provide for limitations on the liability of ISPs if certain conditions are met, it is yet unclear if ISPs should generally be accountable for the storage of infringing material (even if they do not have actual knowledge) or exceptions be established under specific circumstances.
Transitory Communication
In the course of transmitting digital information from one point on a network to another ISPs act as a data conduit. If a user requests information ISPs engage in the transmission, providing of a connection, or routing thereof. In the case of a person sending infringing material over a network, and the ISP merely providing facilities for the transmission it is widely held that they should not be liable for infringement. Yet some copyright laws like the DMCA provide for a limitation (which also covers the intermediate and transient copies that are made automatically in the operation of a network) of liability only if the ISPs activities meet certain conditions.
For more information on copyright (
Harrington, Mark E.: On-line Copyright Infringement Liability for Internet Service Providers: Context, Cases & Recently Enacted Legislation. In:
Teran, G.:
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Among the foremost of the data bunkers government bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are the oldest forms of bunkers and are today deeply engrained in modern societies. Bureaucracies have always had the function of collecting and administering the data of subjects. What make this process more problematic in the age of ICT is that a lot more data can be collected, they can be collected in clandestine ways (e.g. in surveillance situations), and the can be combined and merged using advanced data mining technologies. In addition, there is a greater rationale for official data collecting, as a lot more data is required for the functioning of public administration as in previous periods, as societies rush to adopt increasingly complex technologies, above all ICTs. The increasing complexity of modern societies means that an increasing number of bureaucratic decision is taken, all of which require a calculation process. Complexity, viewed through government spectacles, generates insecurity - a great deal of the bureaucratic activity therefore revolves around the topic of security.
In spite of the anti-bureaucratic rhetoric of most governments, these factors provides the bureaucracies with an increased hold on society. Foremost bureaucratic data bunkers include the following:
- Law enforcement agencies
Fiscal agencies
Intelligence agencies
Social welfare agencies
Social insurance institutions
Public health agencies
Educational institutions
These are agencies that enjoy the privileged protection of the state. Those among them that operate in the field of security are further protected against public scrutiny, as they operate in an area to which democratic reason has no access.
What makes the data repositories of these institutions different from private data bunkers is their "official", i.e. their politically binding and definitive character.
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Following the dynamics of informatised economies, the consumption habits and lifestyles if customers are of great interest. New technologies make it possible to store and combine collected data of an enormous amount of people.
User profiling helps companies understand what potential customers might want. Often enough, such data collecting takes place without the customer's knowledge and amounts to spying.
"Much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent."
(David Sobel, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
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During the last 20 years the old
"Digital divide" describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who
do and people who do not have access to (or the education to handle with) modern information technologies, e.g. cellular telephone, television, Internet. This digital divide is concerning people all over the world, but as usually most of all people in the formerly so called third world countries and in rural areas suffer; the poor and less-educated suffer from that divide.
More than 80% of all computers with access to the Internet are situated in larger cities.
"The cost of the information today consists not so much of the creation of content, which should be the real value, but of the storage and efficient delivery of information, that is in essence the cost of paper, printing, transporting, warehousing and other physical distribution means, plus the cost of the personnel manpower needed to run these `extra' services ....Realizing an autonomous distributed networked society, which is the real essence of the Internet, will be the most critical issue for the success of the information and communication revolution of the coming century of millennium."
(Izumi Aizi)
for more information see:
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Until recent years, the problem of piracy (the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works (for commercial purposes)) was largely confined to the copying and physical distribution of tapes, disks and CDs. Yet the emergence and increased use of global data networks and the WWW has added a new dimension to the piracy of
This new development, often referred to as Internet piracy, broadly relates to the use of global data networks to 1) transmit and download digitized copies of pirated works, 2) advertise and market pirated intellectual property that is delivered on physical media through the mails or other traditional means, and 3) offer and transmit codes or other technologies which can be used to circumvent
Lately the
Table: IIPA 1998 - 1999 Estimated Trade Loss due to Copyright Piracy (in millions of US$)
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Pre-infringement
Contracts
Contracts are a pre-infringement control method, which very often is underestimated. Properly formed contracts enable copyright holders to restrict the use of their works in excess of the rights granted under copyright laws.
Copy Protection
This approach was standard in the 1980s, but rejected by consumers and relatively easy to break. Still copy protection, whereby the vendor limits the number of times a file can be copied, is used in certain situations.
Limited Functionality
This method allows copyright owners to provide a copy of the work, which is functionally limited. Software creators, for example, can distribute software that cannot print or save. A fully functional version has to be bought from the vendor.
Date Bombs
Here the intellectual property holder distributes a fully functional copy but locks off access at a pre-specified date or after a certain number of uses.
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All biometric technologies capture biometric data from individuals. Once these date have been captured by a system, they can, in principle, be forwarded to other locations and put to many different uses which are capable of compromising on an individuals privacy.
Technically it is easy to match biometric data with other personal data stored in government or corporate files, and to come a step closer to the counter-utopia of the transparent citizen and customer whose data body is under outside control.
While biometric technologies are often portrayed as protectors of personal data and safeguards against identity theft, they can thus contribute to an advance in "Big Brother" technology.
The combination of personalised data files with biometric data would amount to an enormous control potential. While nobody in government and industry would admit to such intentions, leading data systems companies such as EDS (Electronic Data Systems;
Biometric technologies have the function of identification. Historically, identification has been a prerequisite for the exercise of power and serves as a protection only to those who are in no conflict with this power. If the digitalisation of the body by biometric technologies becomes as widespread as its proponents hope, a new electronic feudal system could be emerging, in which people are reduced to subjects dispossessed of their to their bodies, even if these, unlike in the previous one, are data bodies. Unlike the gatekeepers of medieval towns, wear no uniforms by they might be identified; biometric technologies are pure masks.
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New opportunities for online advertisers arise with the possibility of one-to-one Web applications. Software agents for example promise to "register, recognize and manage end-user profiles; create personalized communities on-line; deliver personalized content to end-users and serve highly targeted advertisements". The probably ultimate tool for advertisers. Although not yet widely used, companies like
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John W. Hill opened the doors of his first public relations office in 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio. His early clients were banks, steel manufacturers, and other industrial companies in the Midwest. Hill managed the firm until 1962, and remained active in it until shortly before his death in New York City in 1977. In 1952, Hill and Knowlton became the first American public relations consultancy to recognize the business communication implications engendered by formation of the European Economic Community. Hill and Knowlton established a network of affiliates across Europe and by the middle of the decade had become the first American public relations firm to have wholly-owned offices in Europe. Hill and Knowlton, a member of the WPP Group integrated communications services family, has extensive resources and geographic coverage with its 59 offices in 34 countries. Hill and Knowlton is known for its hard-hitting tactics and said to have connections with intelligence services.
Amazon.Com was one of the first online bookstores. With thousands of books, CDs and videos ordered via the Internet every year, Amazon.Com probably is the most successful Internet bookstore.
A BBS (bulletin board system) is a computer that can be reached by computer modem dialing (you need to know the phone number) or, in some cases, by
Bulletin board systems originated and generally operate independently of the Internet.
Source: Whatis.com
Slobodan Milosevic (* 1941) is a Serbian political leader.
As a young man S. Milosevic joined the Communist Party, in 1984 the banker became head of the local Communist Party of Belgrade, in 1987 head of the Serb CP. Since 1989 he has been president of Serbia (since 1997 president of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). During his reign the Yugoslav Republic broke up, bringing about the independence of Slovenia and Croatia and the war in Bosnia. In 1998 the Kosovo Crisis started.
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
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,
Copper wires will not come out of use in the foreseeable future because of technologies as
For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica on telecommunication cables, click
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
Susan Dumett has written a short history of undersea cables for Pretext magazine, Evolution of a Wired World. Click
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
For maps of fiber-optic cable networks see the website of
Founded in 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries, SWIFT is responsible for maintaining the world's most important network dedicated to financial transaction processing.
Although facing competition from smart cards, e.g., SWIFT can rely on an increasing clientèle. In September 1999 SWIFT served 6,710 live users in 189 countries.
William J. Clinton (* 1946) studied law at Yale University, then taught at the University of Arkansas. He was elected Arkansas attorney general in 1976 and served as a governor until 1992. That year he became U.S.-President, the first democratic President after a row of Republicans. His sexual affairs not only cost him nearly his career but he also had to distract from his private affairs: he thought of fighting another war against
For more information see:
The ICPC aims at reducing the number of incidents of damages to submarine telecommunications cables by hazards.
The Committee also serves as a forum for the exchange of technical and legal information pertaining to submarine cable protection methods and programs and funds projects and programs, which are beneficial for the protection of submarine cables.
Membership is restricted to authorities (governmental administrations or commercial companies) owning or operating submarine telecommunications cables. As of May 1999, 67 members representing 38 nations were members.
http://www.iscpc.org
FTP enables the transfer of files (text, image, video, sound) to and from other remote computers connected to the Internet.
Network information centers are organizations responsible for registering and maintaining the domain names on the
An international organization designed to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO (World Trade Organization) is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947 and liberalized the world's trade over the next five decades. The WTO came into being on Jan. 1, 1995, with 104 countries as its founding members. The WTO is charged with policing member countries' adherence to all prior GATT agreements, including those of the last major GATT trade conference, the Uruguay Round (1986-94), at whose conclusion GATT had formally gone out of existence. The WTO is also responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.
Backbone networks are central networks usually of very high bandwidth, that is, of very high transmitting capacity, connecting regional networks. The first backbone network was the
Calculators are machines for automatically performing arithmetical operations and certain mathematical functions. Modern calculators are descendants of a digital arithmetic machine devised by
The first half of the 20th century was the era of the vacuum tube in electronics. This variety of electron tube permitted the development of radio broadcasting, long-distance
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the independent research branch of the U.S. Department of Defense that, among its other accomplishments, funded a project that in time was to lead to the creation of the Internet. Originally called ARPA (the "D" was added to its name later), DARPA came into being in 1958 as a reaction to the success of Sputnik, Russia's first manned satellite. DARPA's explicit mission was (and still is) to think independently of the rest of the military and to respond quickly and innovatively to national defense challenges.
In the late 1960s, DARPA provided funds and oversight for a project aimed at interconnecting computers at four university research sites. By 1972, this initial network, now called the
http://www.darpa.mil
An Extranet is an Intranet with limited and controlled access by authenticated outside users, a business-to-business Intranet, e.g.
Immanuel Wallerstein (* 1930) is director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. He is one of the most famous sociologists in the Western World. With his book The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1976), which led to the expression World-System Theory about centers, peripheries and semi-peripheries in the capitalist world system, he did not only influence a whole generation of scientists, but this theory seems to get popular again, due to globalization.
Digital technologies are used to combine previously separated communication and media systems as telephony, audiovisual technologies and computing to new services and technologies, thus forming extensions of existing communication systems and resulting in fundamentally new communication systems. This is what is meant by today's new buzzwords "multimedia" and "convergence".
Classical dichotomies as the one of computing and telephony and traditional categorisations no longer apply, because these new services no longer fit traditional categories.
Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and headquartered in Redmond, USA, Microsoft Corporation is today's world-leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. As MS-DOS, the first operating system released by Microsoft, before, Windows, its successor, has become the de-facto standard operating system for personal computer. According to critics and following a recent court ruling this is due to unfair competition.
For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Microwave transmission systems based on terrestrial antennas are similar to satellite transmission system. Providing reliable high-speed access, they are used for cellular phone networks.
The implementation of the
Certain
The water-clocks are an early long-distance-communication-system. Every communicating party had exactly the same jar, with a same-size-hole that was closed and the same amount of water in it. In the jar was a stick with different messages written on. When one party wanted to tell something to the other it made a fire-sign. When the other answered, both of them opened the hole at the same time. And with the help of another fire-sign closed it again at the same time, too. In the end the water covered the stick until the point of the wanted message.
ARPAnet was the small network of individual computers connected by leased lines that marked the beginning of today's global data networks. Being an experimental network mainly serving the purpose to test the feasibility of
In 1969 ARPANET went online and links the first two computers, one of them located at the University of California, Los Angeles, the other at the Stanford Research Institute.
But ARPAnet has not become widely accepted before it was demonstrated in action to a public of computer experts at the First International Conference on Computers and Communication in Washington, D. C. in 1972.
Before it was decommissioned in 1990,
In the USA commercial users already outnumbered military and academic users in 1994.
Despite the rapid growth of the Net, most computers linked to it are still located in the United States.
Every computer using
IP numbers are divided into three classes. Class A is restricted for big-sized organizations, Class B to medium-sized ones as universities, and Class C is dedicated to small networks.
Because of the increasing number of networks worldwide, networks belonging together, as
b. June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France
d. August 19, 1662, Paris, France
French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. The establishment of his principle of intuitionism had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists.
Virtual Private Networks provide secured connections to a corporate site over a public network as the Internet. Data transmitted through secure connections are encrypted and therefore have to be encrypted before they can be read.
These networks are called virtual because connections are provided only when you connect to a corporate site; they do not rely on dedicated lines and support mobile use.
The Internet Societal Task Force is an organization under the umbrella of the Internet Society dedicated to assure that the Internet is for everyone by identifying and characterizing social and economic issues associated with the growth and use of Internet. It supplements the technical tasks of the
Topics under discussion are social, economic, regulatory, physical barriers to the use of the Net, privacy, interdependencies of Internet penetration rates and economic conditions, regulation and taxation.
b. April 14, 1907, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
d. April 21, 1971, Port-au-Prince
By name PAPA DOC, president of Haiti whose 14-year regime was of unprecedented duration in that country. A supporter of President Dumarsais Estimé, Duvalier was appointed director general of the National Public Health Service in 1946. He was appointed underminister of labour in 1948 and the following year became minister of public health and labour, a post that he retained until May 10, 1950, when President Estimé was overthrown by a military junta under Paul E. Magloire, who was subsequently elected president. By 1954 he had become the central opposition figure and went underground. Duvalier was elected president in September 1957. Setting about to consolidate his power, he reduced the size of the army and organized the Tontons Macoutes ("Bogeymen"), a private force responsible for terrorizing and assassinating alleged foes of the regime. Late in 1963 Duvalier moved further toward an absolutist regime, promoting a cult of his person as the semi divine embodiment of the Haitian nation. In April 1964 he was declared president for life. Although diplomatically almost completely isolated, excommunicated by the Vatican until 1966 for harassing the clergy, and threatened by conspiracies against him, Duvalier was able to stay in power longer than any of his predecessors.
Founded in 1992, the Internet Society is an umbrella organization of several mostly self-organized organizations dedicated to address the social, political, and technical issues, which arise as a result of the evolution and the growth of the Net. Its most important subsidiary organizations are the
Its members comprise companies, government agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. The Internet Society is governed by elected trustees.
IRC is a text-based chat system used for live discussions of groups.
For a history of IRC see Charles A. Gimon, IRC: The Net in Realtime,
On behalf of the
The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was signed into law by U.S. President Clinton in 1998 and implements the two 1996
Gopher is a menu system with hierarchically structured list of files that predates the World Wide Web.
Today Gopher is of diminishing importance and mostly replaced by the
Saddam Hussein joined the revolutionary Baath party when he was a university student. In 1958 he had the head of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qassim, killed. Since 1979 he has been President of Iraq. Under his reign Iraq fought a decade-long war with Iran. Because of his steady enmity with extreme Islamic leaders the West supported him first of all, until his army invaded Kuwait in August 1990, an incident that the USA led to the Gulf War. Since then many rumors about a coup d'état have been launched, but Saddam Hussein is still in unrestricted power.
User tracking is a generic term that covers all the techniques of monitoring the movements of a user on a web site. User tracking has become an essential component in online commerce, where no personal contact to customers is established, leaving companies with the predicament of not knowing who they are talking to. Some companies, such as
Whenever user tracking is performed without the explicit agreement of the user, or without laying open which data are collected and what is done with them, considerable
Initially computer programmers had to write instructions in machine language. This
Caching is a mechanism that attempts to decrease the time it takes to retrieve data by storing a copy at a closer location.
Being itself under the umbrella of the
Authors of copyrighted works (besides
Royalties refer to the payment made to the owners of certain types of rights by those who are permitted by the owners to exercise the rights. The
Although referred to as a single body of rules, there is not just one Netiquette, but there are several, though overlapping largely. Proposing general guidelines for posting messages to newsgroups and mailing lists and using the
Well-known Netiquettes are the
Internet exchanges are intersecting points between major networks.
List of the World's Public Internet exchanges (
According to the
Founded in 1985, America Online is the world's biggest Internet service provider serving almost every second user. Additionally, America Online operates CompuServe, the Netscape Netcenter and several AOL.com portals. As the owner of Netscape, Inc. America Online plays also an important role in the Web browser market. In January 2000 America Online merged with Time Warner, the worlds leading media conglomerate, in a US$ 243,3 billion deal, making America Online the senior partner with 55 percent in the new company.
A gateway is a computer supplying point-to-multipoint connections between computer networks.
Among privacy campaigners, the company's name has become almost synonymous with aggressive online direct marketing practices as well as user profiling and tracking. Amazon and has been involved in
Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of five artists of various specializations dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory. CAE have published a number of books and carried out innovative art projects containing insightful and ironic theoretical contributions to media art. Projects include Addictionmania, Useless Technology, The Therapeutic State, Diseases of Consciousness, Machineworld, As Above So Below, and
http://www.critical-art.net
Communications satellites are relay stations for radio signals and provide reliable and distance-independent high-speed connections even at remote locations without high-bandwidth infrastructure.
On point-to-point transmission, the transmission method originally employed on, satellites face increasing competition from
In the future, satellites will become stronger, cheaper and their orbits will be lower; their services might become as common as satellite TV is today.
For more information about satellites, see How Satellites Work (
The research and development division of
http://www.research.att.com/
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) is one of three Regional Internet
Registries (RIR), which exist in the world today, providing allocation and registration services which support the operation of the Internet globally, mainly the allocation of
http://www.ripe.net
Based at the University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center, CAIDA supports cooperative efforts among the commercial, government and research communities aimed at promoting a scalable, robust Internet infrastructure. It is sponsored by the
As a
b., March 3, 1847, Edinburgh
d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada
American audiologist and inventor wrongly remembered for having invented the telephone in 1876. Although Bell introduced the first commercial application of the telephone, in fact a German teacher called Reiss invented it.
For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,15411+1+15220,00.html
Headquartered in San Jose, USA, AboveNet Communications is a
http://www.above.net