The Net connections can be based on wire-line and wireless access technolgies.
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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
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
Scheduled privatization of intergovernmental satellite consortia:
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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
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Source: Analysys Satellite Communications Database
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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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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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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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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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Identity has to do with "place". In less mobile societies, the place where a person finds him/herself tells us something about his/her identity. In pre-industrial times, gatekeepers had the function to control access of people to particular places, i.e. the gatekeepers function was to identify people and then decide whether somebody's identity would allow that person to physically occupy another place - a town, a building, a vehicle, etc.
In modern societies, the unambiguous nature of place has been weakened. There is a great amount of physical mobility, and ever since the emergence and spread of electronic communication technologies there has been a "virtualisation" of places in what today we call "virtual space" (unlike place, space has been a virtual reality from the beginning, a mathematical formula) The question as to who one is no longer coupled to the physical abode. Highly mobile and virtualised social contexts require a new generation of gatekeepers which biometric technology aims to provide.
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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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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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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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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
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (~4 BC - 65 AD), originally coming from Spain, was a Roman philosopher, statesman, orator and playwright with a lot of influence on the Roman cultural life of his days. Involved into politics, his pupil
An operating system is software that controls the many different operations of a computer and directs and coordinates its processing of programs. It is a remarkably complex set of instructions that schedules the series of jobs (user applications) to be performed by the computer and allocates them to the computer's various hardware systems, such as the
Nero's full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-68 AD). Nero was Roman Emperor from 54-68 AD; during the first years in power he stood under the influence of his teacher
Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets are used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, who began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to a few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers.
Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China.
Since the end of June in France anonymous publishing - on the World Wide Web, in newsgroups, mailing lists or chat rooms - is prohibited. The use of pseudonyms, so popular in chat rooms, e.g., is not restricted, but the true identities of those who "publish" on the Net must be known to the users' Internet service and Internet content providers. Additionally, Internet providers are obliged to point out the possibility of blocking access to material to their customers and to offer them appropriate technology for blocking access.
Loi sur la communication audiovisuelle, http://www.legalis.net/jnet/2000/loi-audio/projetloi-fin.htm
Source: Florian Rötzer, Frankreich hat mit der Anonymität im internet Schluss gemacht, in:
Japanese SONY KK, major Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronics products. Headquarters are in Tokyo. The company was incorporated in 1946 and spearheaded Japan's drive to become the world's dominant consumer electronics manufacturer in the late 20th century. The company was one of the first to recognize the potential of the consumer videotape market. In 1972 it formed an affiliate to market its Betamax colour videocassette system. In 1987-88 Sony purchased the CBS Records Group from CBS Inc., thus acquiring the world's largest record company. It followed that purchase with the purchase in 1989 of Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc.
Initially computer programmers had to write instructions in machine language. This
ISO (International Organization for Standardization), founded in 1946, is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. Among the standards it fosters is
Source: Whatis.com