Who are you? Who are you? Direct marketing companies have many othe ways of appropriating data bodies. Allowing form regional and national variations, data are obtained from registration cards, telephone directories, social insurance data bass, religious groups, educational institutions, trade unions, registry offices, banks and of course from the date trace left behind in digital environments, e.g. by clicking on an advertising banner. Direct marketing companies collect als this data systemtically and enhance them, i.e. they associate a range of different indicators with a person's name. Techniques used range from simple inferences ("if you are German and your name is Claudia, you are 80 % likely to be between 25 and 33 years old") to complicated data mining programmes such as Knowledge Seeker, Enterprise Miner, or Scenario. Indicators include postal address sex size of household age group purchasing power neighbourhood quality size of town region professional and academic titles phone and fax numbers e-mail address pronness for mail-order purchasing number of children age of children marital status purchasing patterns investment behaviour credit status credit history convictions nature of products and services purchased many other social and economic indicators There can be a hundred or more indicators associated to an individual's name. Direct marketing companies such as Abacus direct and Schober maintain databases that include almost everybody with a social existence. In fact, dirct marketing in increasingly becoming the modern individual's constant companion, starting from birth: in many places, new-born babies receive gift boxes with baby food, toys and other baby products - in return for their personal data.

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Legal Protection: WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Presumably the major player in the field of international intellectual property protection and administrator of various multilateral treaties dealing with the legal and administrative aspects of intellectual property is the WIPO. 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: http://www.wipo.org/eng/general/index3.htm Information on treaties concerning copyright and neighboring rights (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) etc.) is published on: http://www.wipo.org/eng/general/index5.htm 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 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty contains provisions concerning technological measures, rights management information and establishes a new "right of communication to the public". It is available on: http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/distrib/treaty01.htm

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