Acessing the Internet

The Net connections can be based on wire-line and wireless access technolgies.

Wire-line access

Wire-less access

copper wires

Satellites

coaxial cables

mobile terrestrial antennas

electric power lines

fixed terrestrial antennas

fiber-optic cables







Usually several kinds of network connections are employed at once. Generally speaking, when an E-mail message is sent it travels from the user's computer via copper wires or coaxial cables ISDN lines, etc., to an Internet Service Provider, from there, via fibre-optic cables, to the nearest Internet exchange, and on into a backbone network, tunneling across the continent und diving through submarine fibre-optic cables across the Atlantic to another Internet exchange, from there, via another backbone network and across another regional network to the Internet Service Provider of the supposed message recipient, from there via cables and wires of different bandwidth arriving at its destination, a workstation permanently connected to the Internet. Finally a sound or flashing icon informs your virtual neighbor that a new message has arrived.

Satellite communication

Although facing competition from fiber-optic cables as cost-effective solutions for broadband data transmission services, the space industry is gaining increasing importance in global communications. As computing, telephony, and audiovisual technologies converge, new wireless technologies are rapidly deployed occupying an increasing market share and accelerating the construction of high-speed networks.

Privatization of satellite communication

Until recently transnational satellite communication was provided exclusively by intergovernmental organizations as Intelsat, Intersputnik and Inmarsat.

Scheduled privatization of intergovernmental satellite consortia:

Satellite consortia

Year of foundation

Members

Scheduled date for privatization

Intelsat

1964

200 nations under the leadership of the USA

2001

Intersputnik

1971

23 nations under the leadership of Russia

?

Inmarsat

1979

158 nations (all members of the International Maritime Organization)

privatized since 1999

Eutelsat

1985

Nearly 50 European nations

2001



When Intelsat began to accumulate losses because of management failures and the increasing market share of fiber-optic cables, this organizational scheme came under attack. Lead by the USA, the Western industrialized countries successfully pressed for the privatization of all satellite consortia they are members of and for competition by private carriers.

As of February 2000, there are 2680 satellites in service. Within the next four years a few hundred will be added by the new private satellite systems. Most of these systems will be so-called Low Earth Orbit satellite systems, which are capable of providing global mobile data services on a high-speed level at low cost.

Because of such technological improvements and increasing competition, experts expect satellite-based broadband communication to be as common, cheap, and ubiquitous as satellite TV today within the next five or ten years.

Major satellite communication projects

Project name

Main investors

Expected cost

Number of satellites

Date of service start-up

Astrolink

Lockheed Martin, TRW, Telespazio, Liberty Media Group

US$ 3.6 billion

9

2003

Globalstar

13 investors including Loral Space & Communications, Qualcomm, Hyundai, Alcatel, France Telecom, China Telecom, Daimler Benz and Vodafone/Airtouch

US$ 3.26 billion

48

1998

ICO

57 investors including British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, Inmarsat, TRW and Telefonica

US$ 4.5 billion

10

2001

Skybridge

9 investors including Alcatel Space, Loral Space & Communications, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Sharp

US$ 6.7 billion

80

2002

Teledesic

Bill Gates, Craig McCaw, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, Abu Dhabi Investment Company

US$ 9 billion

288

2004


Source: Analysys Satellite Communications Database

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Biometrics applications: privacy issues

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; http://www.eds.com) are also suppliers of biometric systems to the intelligence agencies of government and industry.

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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Recent "Digital Copyright" Legislation: U.S.

DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)

The debates in the House and Senate preceding the signing into law of the DMCA by U.S. President Clinton in October 1998 indicated that the principal object of the Act is to promote the U.S. economy by establishing an efficient Internet marketplace in copyrighted works. The DMCA implements the two 1996 WIPO treaties (WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty and WIPO Copyright Treaty) and addresses a variety of issues that arose with the increased availability of content in digital form. The Act 1) creates a series of "safe harbor" defenses (which are subject to a variety of conditions that must be met) for certain common activities of ISPs (Internet Service Provider), 2) bars the circumvention of technological protection measures that protect copyrighted works, 3) prohibits the distribution or provision of false copyright management information with the intent to induce or conceal infringement, 4) establishes an exemption for making a copy of a computer program for purposes of maintenance or repair, and 5) contains provisions concerning the "webcasting" of sound recordings on the Internet and the making of (digital) copies of copyrighted works by nonprofit libraries and archives.

A full-text version of the DMCA is available from:
The Library of Congress: Thomas (Legislative Information on the Internet): http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/z?cp105:hr796:

Moreover the U.S. Copyright Office provides a memorandum, which briefly summarizes each of the five titles of the DMCA (pdf format): http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf

The DMCA has been criticized for not clarifying the range of legal principles on the liability of ISPs and creating exceptions to only some of the provisions; therefore giving copyright owners even more rights.

Among the variety of comments on the DMCA are:

Lutzker, Arnold P.: Primer on the Digital Millennium: What the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act Mean for the Library Community. http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/primer.html

Lutzker & Lutzker law firm and the Association of Research Libraries: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Highlights of New Copyright Provision Establishing Limitation of Liability for Online Service Providers. http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/osp.html

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History: European Tradition

Only in Roman times the first rights referring to artistic works appeared. Regulations resembling a lasting exclusive right to copy did not occur until the 17th century. Before copyright was a private arrangement between guilds able to reproduce copies in commercial quantities.

In France and Western European countries "droits d'auteur" or author's rights is the core of what in the Anglo-American tradition is called copyright. Such rights are rooted in the republican revolution of the late 18th century, and the Rights of Man movement. Today in the European system the creator is front and center; later exploiters are only secondary players.

France

During the 18th century France gradually lost the ability to restrict intellectual property. Before the Revolution, all books, printers and booksellers had to have a royal stamp of approval, called a "privilege". In return for their lucrative monopoly, the French guild of printers and booksellers helped the police to suppress anything that upset royal sensibilities or ran contrary to their interests. Still there were also a whole lot of underground printers who flooded the country with pirated, pornographic and seditious literature. And thousands of writers, most at the edge of starvation.

In 1777 the King threatened the monopoly by reducing the duration of publisher's privileges to the lifetime of the authors. Accordingly a writer's work would go into the public domain after his death and could be printed by anyone. The booksellers fought back by argumenting that, no authority could take their property from them and give it to someone else. Seven months later, in August 1789, the revolutionary government ended the privilege system and from that time on anyone could print anything. Early in 1790 Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet proposed giving authors power over their own work lasting until ten years after their deaths. The proposal - the basis for France's first modern copyright law - passed in 1793.

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Linking and Framing: Cases

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.: Copyright Decision Threatens Freedom to Link. In: New York Times. December 10, 1999.

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: Wired. July 27, 1999.

More cases concerned with the issue of linking, framing and the infringement of intellectual property are published in:

Ross, Alexandra: Copyright Law and the Internet: Selected Statutes and Cases.

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Basics: Acquisition of Copyright

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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Karl Neupert

In the 1920s the Hollow Earth Theory was very popular in Germany. With the acceptance and support of the NAZI regime Karl Neupert wrote the book Geokosmos. With the help of this book the theory became a cult in Germany.

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Louis XIV.

Louis XIV. (1643-1715) became King of France when he was still a young boy. He centralized all the state's power to the crown and created a state of absolutism. In this respect Louis' most famous sentence was: L'état c'est moi. (= The state am I). During his reign the most talented and respectable men in art as well as in philosophy and policy worked for the monarchy. His favor for luxury and the steady wars with other European empires ruined the state morally and financially, but for the history he is still called Roi Soleil (King of the Sun).

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Alan Turing

b. June 23, 1912, London, England
d. June 7, 1954, Wilmslow, Cheshire

English mathematician and logician who pioneered in the field of computer theory and who contributed important logical analyses of computer processes. Many mathematicians in the first decades of the 20th century had attempted to eliminate all possible error from mathematics by establishing a formal, or purely algorithmic, procedure for establishing truth. The mathematician Kurt Gödel threw up an obstacle to this effort with his incompleteness theorem. Turing was motivated by Gödel's work to seek an algorithmic method of determining whether any given propositions were undecidable, with the ultimate goal of eliminating them from mathematics. Instead, he proved in his seminal paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem [Decision Problem]" (1936) that there cannot exist any such universal method of determination and, hence, that mathematics will always contain undecidable propositions. During World War II he served with the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, where he played a significant role in breaking the codes of the German "Enigma Machine". He also championed the theory that computers eventually could be constructed that would be capable of human thought, and he proposed the Turing test, to assess this capability. Turing's papers on the subject are widely acknowledged as the foundation of research in artificial intelligence. In 1952 Alan M. Turing committed suicide, probably because of the depressing medical treatment that he had been forced to undergo (in lieu of prison) to "cure" him of homosexuality.

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Themistocles

Themistocles, a Greek politician and general, conquered the Persians in the battle of Salamis, in 480 BC. The Persians, under their King Xerxes, who were on the edge of winning the battle, got defeated by a propaganda campaign that Themistocles launched, telling the Persians that he was on their side and willing to let them win the battle; his argument was that the Greek were so busy with their quarrels that they were not prepared to fight an aggressive battle and a lot of them would change sides if the power of the Persians was shown in a short and cruel fight. In the end Xerxes got the message that parts of the Greek army were fleeing the battlefield. This disinformation lead to a wrong assessment of Xerxes, which made it easy for the Greek to win the war.

For further details see:
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/31900_Q.html

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/kitson/ESSAYS/Them.htm

http://www.eptonline.com/comptons/ceo/31900_Q...
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/kitson/ESSAYS/Them.h...
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UNIVAC

Built by Remington Rand in 1951 the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was one of the first commercially available computers to take advantage of the development of the central processing unit (CPU). Both the U.S. Census bureau and General Electric owned UNIVACs. Speed: 1,905 operations per second; input/output: magnetic tape, unityper, printer; memory size: 1,000 12-digit words in delay line; technology: serial vacuum tubes, delay lines, magnetic tape; floor space: 943 cubic feet; cost: F.O.B. factory U.S.$ 750,000 plus U.S.$ 185,000 for a high speed printer.

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General Schwarzkopf

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf (* 1934) followed in his father's footsteps at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
In 1965 he applied to join the troops in Vietnam. For the next 20 years Schwarzkopf worked on his career. As Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command, he led U.S. and allied forces in the Gulf War (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He retired from the Army in 1992 and wrote his autobiography.

For a picture see: http://www.jesterbook.com/sections/5a_mom/gallery/schwarzkopf.htm

http://www.jesterbook.com/sections/5a_mom/gal...
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Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier is president of Counterpane Systems in Minneapolis. This consulting enterprise specialized in cryptography and computer security. He is the author of the book Applied Cryptography and inventor of the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms.

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Kosov@

The "word" Kosov@ is a compromise between the Serb name KosovO and the Albanian KosovA. It is mostly used by international people who want to demonstrate a certain consciousness about the conflict including some sort of neutrality, believing that neither the one side nor the other (and maybe not even NATO) is totally right. Using the word Kosov@ is seen as a symbol of peace.

For more explanations (in German) see: http://www.zivildienst.at/kosov@.htm

http://www.zivildienst.at/kosov@.htm
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