Democracy


How is democracy concerned with propaganda and disinformation?
"Democratic governments must tolerate a free press, regardless of criticism. It is a measure of their democracy." (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p. 147)
Disinformation is not at all the contrary of democracy.
The idea that democracy means a system to disclose disinformation or even to be the opposite of disinformation, is itself a disinforming message, because democracies themselves frequently use that tool, if it serves their purposes, like in war, economy and elections.
No (contemporary) political/ideological system is safe from propaganda and disinformation. All of them are using them if it seems necessary and appropriate. Democracy, always pretending to be the most liberal and most human system, is no exception.

For Military disinformation/propaganda see:
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/ArmsPropaganda.asp

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Enforcement: Copyright Management and Control Technologies

With the increased ease of the reproduction and transmission of unauthorized copies of digital works over electronic networks concerns among the copyright holder community have arisen. They fear a further growth of copyright piracy and demand adequate protection of their works. A development, which started in the mid 1990s and considers the copyright owner's apprehensions, is the creation of copyright management systems. Technological protection for their works, the copyright industry argues, is necessary to prevent widespread infringement, thus giving them the incentive to make their works available online. In their view the ideal technology should be "capable of detecting, preventing, and counting a wide range of operations, including open, print, export, copying, modifying, excerpting, and so on." Additionally such systems could be used to maintain "records indicating which permissions have actually been granted and to whom".

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Intellectual property

Intellectual property, very generally, relates to the output that result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Traditionally intellectual property is divided into two branches: 1) industrial property (inventions, marks, industrial designs, unfair competition and geographical indications), and 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.

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Barnes and Noble

Massive online retail bookstore housing more than a million titles. Includes a book recommendation "personalizer,", a comprehensive list of The New York Times bestsellers, a "live" community events calendar with a daily survey and several forums, "highlighted" books from 19 subject areas, browsable categories such as antiques, ethnic studies, and pop culture, Books in the News, and weekly features such as reviews, excerpts, recommendations, interviews, events, "roundups" of popular titles, and quizzes.

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