Positions Towards the Future of Copyright in the "Digital Age"

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 intellectual property should be in the public domain and available for all to use. "Information wants to be free" and copyright restricts people's possibilities concerning the utilization of digital content. An enforced copyright will lead to a further digital divide as copyright creates unjust monopolies in the basic commodity of the "information age". Also the increased ease of copying effectively obviates copyright, which is a relict of the past and should be expunged.

Enlarge Copyright

Realizing the growing economic importance of intellectual property, especially the holders of copyright (in particular the big publishing, distribution and other core copyright industries) - and therefore recipients of the royalties - adhere to the idea of enlarging copyright. In their view the basic foundation of copyright - the response to the need to provide protection to authors so as to give them an incentive to invest the time and effort required to produce creative works - is also relevant in a digital environment.

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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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Copyright Management and Control Systems: Post-Infringement

Post-infringement technologies allow the owners of copyrighted works to identify infringements and thus enhance enforcement of intellectual property rights and encompass systems such as:

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 copyright management information.

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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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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Bureaucratic data bunkers



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. CAE speak of the bureaucracy as a "concrete form of uninterruptible, official and legitimised memory."

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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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How the Internet works

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 server. Therefore the Internet's architecture is called client-server architecture.

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 TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol).

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 gateways and might take a different route. It is not possible to determine in advance which ways these packets will take. At the receiving end the packets are checked and reassembled.

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 bandwidth needed is deployed on several packets sent on different routes. Detailed information about routing in the Internet can be obtained at http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/comms/iproute.html.

One of the Internet's (and of the Matrix's) beginnings was the ARPANet, whose design was intended to withstand any disruption, as for example in military attacks. The ARPANet was able to route data around damaged areas, so that the disruption would not impede communication. This design, whith its origin in strategic and military considerations, remained unchanged for the Internet. Yet the design of the ARPANet's design cannot be completely applied to the Internet.

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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Economic structure; transparent customers

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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Problems of Copyright Management and Control Technologies

Profiling and Data Mining

At their most basic copyright management and control technologies might simply be used to provide pricing information, negotiate the purchase transaction, and release a copy of a work for downloading to the customer's computer. Still, from a technological point of view, such systems also have the capacity to be employed for digital monitoring. Copyright owners could for example use the transaction records generated by their copyright management systems to learn more about their customers. Profiles, in their crudest form consisting of basic demographic information, about the purchasers of copyrighted material might be created. Moreover copyright owners could use search agents or complex data mining techniques to gather more information about their customers that could either be used to market other works or being sold to third parties.

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 intellectual property. The currently by copyright law supported practice of fair use might potentially be restricted or even eliminated. While information in analogue form can easily be reproduced, the protection of digital works through copyright management systems might complicate or make impossible the copying of material for purposes, which are explicitly exempt under the doctrine of fair use.

Provisions concerning technological protection measures and fair use are stated in the DMCA, which provides that "Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense e to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited." Also the proposed EU Directive on copyright and related rights in the information society contains similar clauses. It distinguishes between the circumvention of technical protection systems for lawful purposes (fair use) and the circumvention to infringe copyright. Yet besides a still existing lack of legal clarity also very practical problems arise. Even if the circumvention of technological protection measures under fair use is allowed, how will an average user without specialized technological know-how be able to gain access or make a copy of a work? Will the producers of copyright management and control systems provide fair use versions that permit the reproduction of copyrighted material? Or will users only be able to access and copy works if they hold a digital "fair use license" ("fair use licenses" have been proposed by Mark Stefik, whereby holders of such licenses could exercise some limited "permissions" to use a digital work without a fee)?

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Challenges for Copyright by ICT: Internet Service Providers

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, information residing on systems or networks of ISPs at the directions of users and transitory communication.

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 DMCA or the proposed EU Directive on copyright and related rights in the information society (amended version) have provided exceptions for ISPs concerning particular acts of reproduction that are considered technical copies (caching). Nevertheless the exemption of liability for ISPs only applies if they meet a variety of specific conditions. In the course of the debate about caching also suggestions have been made to subject it to an implied license or fair use defense or make it (at least theoretically) actionable.

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 (intellectual property) related problems of ISPs (BBSs (Bulletin Board Service Operators), systems operators and other service providers) see:

Harrington, Mark E.: On-line Copyright Infringement Liability for Internet Service Providers: Context, Cases & Recently Enacted Legislation. In: Intellectual Property and Technology Forum. June 4, 1999.

Teran, G.: Who is Vulnerable to Suit? ISP Liability for Copyright Infringement. November 2, 1999.

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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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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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Challenges for Copyright by ICT: Copyright Owners

The main concern of copyright owners as the (in terms of income generation) profiteers of intellectual property protection is the facilitation of pirate activities in digital environments.

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 copyright management information.

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Intellectual Property and the "Information Society" Metaphor

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 "intellectual property". Although intellectual property in some ways represents a novel form of property, it has quickly been integrated in the traditional property framework. Whether material or immaterial products, within the capitalist system they are both treated the same - as property.

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Basics: Infringement and Fair Use

The rights of a copyright holder are infringed when one of the acts requiring the authorization of the owner is done by someone else without his consent. In the case of copyright infringement or the violation of neighboring rights the remedies for the copyright owner consist of civil redress. The unauthorized copying of protected works for commercial purposes and the unauthorized commercial dealing in copied material is usually referred to as "piracy".

Yet copyright laws also provide that the rights of copyright owners are subject to the doctrine of "fair use". That allows the reproduction and use of a work, notwithstanding the rights of the author, for limited purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and research. Fair use may be described as the privilege to use the copyrighted material in a reasonable manner without the owner's consent. To determine whether a use is fair or not most copyright laws consider:

- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes (usually certain types of educational copying are allowed)

- the nature of the copyrighted work (mostly originals made for commercial reasons are less protected than their purely artistic counterparts)

- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (as a general rule copying may be permitted if it is unlikely to cause economic harm to the original author)

Examples of activities that may be excused as fair use include: providing a quotation in a book review; distributing copies of a section of an article in class for educational purposes; and imitating a work for the purpose of parody or social commentary.

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The Flesh Machine

This is the tile of a book by the Critical Art Ensemble which puts the development of artifical life into a critical historical and political context, defining the power vectors which act as the driving force behind this development. The book is available in a print version (New York, Autonomedia 1998) and in an online version at http://www.critical-art.net/fles/book/index.html

INDEXCARD, 1/31
 
Instinet

Instinet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reuters Group plc since 1987, is the world's largest agency brokerage firm and the industry brokerage leader in after hours trading. It trades in over 40 global markets daily and is a member of seventeen exchanges in North America, Europe, and Asia. Its institutional clients represent more than 90 percent of the institutional equity funds under management in the United States. Instinet accounts for about 20 percent of the NASDAQ daily trading volume and trades approximately 170 million shares of all U.S. equities daily.

INDEXCARD, 2/31
 
skytale

The skytale (pronunciation: ski-ta-le) was a Spartan tool for encryption. It consisted of a piece of wood and a leather-strip. Any communicating party needed exactly the same size wooden stick. The secret message was written on the leather-strip that was wound around the wood, unwound again and sent to the recipient by a messenger. The recipient would rewound the leather and by doing this enciphering the message.

INDEXCARD, 3/31
 
America Online

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.

http://www.aol.com

http://www.aol.com/
INDEXCARD, 4/31
 
Blue Box

The blue box-system works with a special blue colored background. The person in front can act as if he/she was filmed anywhere, also in the middle of a war.

INDEXCARD, 5/31
 
News Corporation

The News Corporation Ltd., a global media holding company, which governed News Limited (Australia), News International (U.K.), and News America Holdings Inc. (U.S.) was founded by the Australian-born newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's corporate interests center on newspaper, magazine, book, and electronic publishing; television broadcasting; and film and video production, principally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

INDEXCARD, 6/31
 
Roman smoke telegraph network, 150 A.D.

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling.

For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

INDEXCARD, 7/31
 
Colouring

In November 1997, after the assassination of (above all Swiss) tourists in Egypt, the Swiss newspaper Blick showed a picture of the place where the attack had happened, with a tremendous pool of blood, to emphasize the cruelty of the Muslim terrorists. In other newspapers the same picture could be seen - with a pool of water, like in the original. Of course the manipulated coloured version of the Blick fit better into the mind of the shocked Swiss population. The question about death penalty arose quickly ....

INDEXCARD, 8/31
 
Caching

Caching generally refers to the process of making an extra copy of a file or a set of files for more convenient retrieval. On the Internet caching of third party files can occur either locally on the user's client computer (in the RAM or on the hard drive) or at the server level ("proxy caching"). A requested file that has been cached will then be delivered from the cache rather than a fresh copy being retrieved over the Internet.

INDEXCARD, 9/31
 
International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC)

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

INDEXCARD, 10/31
 
Memex Animation by Ian Adelman and Paul Kahn


INDEXCARD, 11/31
 
François Duvalier

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.

INDEXCARD, 12/31
 
Josef Goebbels

Josef Goebbels (1897-1945) was Hitler's Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. He had unlimited influence on the press, the radio, movies and all kind of literary work in the whole Reich. In 1944 he received all power over the Total War. At the same time he was one of the most faithful followers of Hitler - and he followed him into death in 1945.

INDEXCARD, 13/31
 
Internet Society

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 Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Research Task Force, and the Internet Societal Task Force.

Its members comprise companies, government agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. The Internet Society is governed by elected trustees.

http://www.isoc.org

http://www.isoc.org/
INDEXCARD, 14/31
 
Intelsat

Intelsat, the world's biggest communication satellite services provider, is still mainly owned by governments, but will be privatised during 2001, like Eutelsat. A measure already discussed 1996 at an OECD competition policy roundtable in 1996. Signatory of the Intelsat treaty for the United States of America is Comsat, a private company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Additionally Comsat is one of the United Kingdom's signatories. Aggregated, Comsat owns about 20,5% of Intelsat already and is Intelsat's biggest shareholder. In September 1998 Comsat agreed to merge with Lockheed Martin. After the merger, Lockheed Martin will hold at least 49% of Comsat share capital.

http://www.intelsat.int/index.htm

http://www.eutelsat.org/
http://www.oecd.org//daf/clp/roundtables/SATS...
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.nyse.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
INDEXCARD, 15/31
 
Internet Research Task Force

Being itself under the umbrella of the Internet Society, the Internet Research Task Force is an umbrella organization of small research groups working on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology. It is governed by the Internet Research Steering Group.

http://www.irtf.org

http://www.irtf.org/
INDEXCARD, 16/31
 
Braille

Universally accepted system of writing used by and for blind persons and consisting of a code of 63 characters, each made up of one to six raised dots arranged in a six-position matrix or cell. These Braille characters are embossed in lines on paper and read by passing the fingers lightly over the manuscript. Louis Braille, who was blinded at the age of three, invented the system in 1824 while a student at the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children), Paris.

INDEXCARD, 17/31
 
Satellites

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 fiber optic cables, so point-to-multipoint transmission increasingly becomes the ruling satellite technology. Point-to-multipoint transmission enables the quick implementation of private networks consisting of very small aperture terminals (VSAT). Such networks are independent and make mobile access possible.

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 (http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/satellites) and the Tech Museum's satellite site (http://www.thetech.org/hyper/satellite).

http://www.whatis.com/vsat.htm
http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/satellites
INDEXCARD, 18/31
 
Internet Software Consortium

The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the production of high-quality reference implementations of Internet standards that meet production standards. Its goal is to ensure that those reference implementations are properly supported and made freely available to the Internet community.

http://www.isc.org

INDEXCARD, 19/31
 
Microsoft Network

Microsoft Network is the online service from Microsoft Corporation. Although offering direct access to the Internet, mainly proprietary content for entertainment purposes is offered. Best viewed with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

http://www.msn.com

INDEXCARD, 20/31
 
Calculator

Calculators are machines for automatically performing arithmetical operations and certain mathematical functions. Modern calculators are descendants of a digital arithmetic machine devised by Blaise Pascal in 1642. Later in the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz created a more advanced machine, and, especially in the late 19th century, inventors produced calculating machines that were smaller and smaller and less and less laborious to use.

INDEXCARD, 21/31
 
Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks

This book gives a fascinating glimpse of the many documented attempts throughout history to develop effective means for long distance communications. Large-scale communication networks are not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The oldest attempts date back to millennia before Christ and include ingenious uses of homing pigeons, mirrors, flags, torches, and beacons. The first true nationwide data networks, however, were being built almost two hundred years ago. At the turn of the 18th century, well before the electromagnetic telegraph was invented, many countries in Europe already had fully operational data communications systems with altogether close to one thousand network stations. The book shows how the so-called information revolution started in 1794, with the design and construction of the first true telegraph network in France, Chappe's fixed optical network.

http://www.it.kth.se/docs/early_net/

INDEXCARD, 22/31
 
Next Generation Internet Program

A research and development program funded by the US government. Goal is the development of advanced networking technologies and applications requiring advanced networking with capabilities that are 100 to 1,000 times faster end-to-end than today's Internet.

http://www.ngi.gov

INDEXCARD, 23/31
 
Louis Braille

b. Jan. 4, 1809, Coupvray, near Paris, France
d. Jan. 6, 1852, Paris, France

Educator who developed a system of printing and writing that is extensively used by the blind and that was named for him. Himself blind Braille became interested in a system of writing, exhibited at the school by Charles Barbier, in which a message coded in dots was embossed on cardboard. When he was 15, he worked out an adaptation, written with a simple instrument, that met the needs of the sightless. He later took this system, which consists of a six-dot code in various combinations, and adapted it to musical notation. He published treatises on his type system in 1829 and 1837.

INDEXCARD, 24/31
 
PGP

A cryptographic software application that was developed by Phil Zimmerman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a cryptographic product family that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication.

INDEXCARD, 25/31
 
Black Propaganda

Black propaganda does not tell its source. The recipient cannot find out the correct source. Rather would it be possible to get a wrong idea about the sender. It is very helpful for separating two allies.

INDEXCARD, 26/31
 
First Monday

An English language peer reviewed media studies journal based in Denmark.

http://firstmonday.dk

INDEXCARD, 27/31
 
Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is Russian President, Boris Yeltsin's. Until his appointment as Prime Minister in August 1999, he was nearly unknown. He had been working for the Soviet Security Service, the KGB. In July 1998 he took charge of the Federal Security Service, FSB. In March 1999 he became secretary of the Security Council. He has no experience in being at all. Where he demonstrated power until now is the Chechnya War. Soon after the beginning of this 2nd war in the region his popularity rose.

INDEXCARD, 28/31
 
Viacom

One of the largest and foremost communications and media conglomerates in the
world. Founded in 1971, the present form of the corporation dates from 1994 when Viacom Inc., which owned radio and television stations and cable television programming services and systems, acquired the entertainment and publishing giant Paramount Communications Inc. and then merged with the video and music retailer Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. Headquarters are in New York City.

INDEXCARD, 29/31
 
Napoleon

Napoleon I. (1769-1821) was French King from 1804-1815.
He is regarded as the master of propaganda and disinformation of his time. Not only did he play his game with his own people but also with all European nations. And it worked as long as he managed to keep up his propaganda and the image of the winner.
Part of his already nearly commercial ads was that his name's "N" was painted everywhere.
Napoleon understood the fact that people believe what they want to believe - and he gave them images and stories to believe. He was extraordinary good in black propaganda.
Censorship was an element of his politics, accompanied by a tremendous amount of positive images about himself.
But his enemies - like the British - used him as a negative image, the reincarnation of the evil (a strategy still very popular in the Gulf-War and the Kosovo-War) (see Taylor, Munitions of the Mind p. 156/157).

INDEXCARD, 30/31
 
International Standardization Organization

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 Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), a universal reference model for communication protocols. Many countries have national standards organizations that participate in and contribute to ISO standards making.

http://www.iso.ch

Source: Whatis.com

http://www.iso.ch/
INDEXCARD, 31/31