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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 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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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; 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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Internet services The Internet can be used in in different ways: for distributing and retrieving information, for one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communication, and for the access services. Accordingly, there are different services on offer. The most important of these are listed below. |
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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 Enlarge Copyright Realizing the growing economic importance of intellectual property, especially the holders of copyright (in particular the big publishing, distribution and other |
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Copyright Management and Control Systems: Metering Hardware Devices Those have to be acquired and installed by the user. For example under a debit card approach, the user purchases a debit card that is pre-loaded with a certain amount of value. After installation, the debit card is debited automatically as the user consumes copyrighted works. Digital Certificates Hereby a certification authority issues to a user an electronic file that identifies the user as the owner of a public key. Those digital certificates, besides Centralized Computing Under this approach all of the executables remain at the server. Each time the executable is used, the user's computer must establish contact with the server, allowing the central computer to meter access. Access Codes Access code devices permit users to "unlock" protective mechanisms (e.g. date bombs or functional limitations) embedded in copyrighted works. Copyright owners can meter the usage of their works, either by unlocking the Copyright Clearinghouses Under this approach copyright owners would commission "clearinghouses" with the ability to license the use of their works. A user would pay a license fee to obtain rights concerning the intellectual property. |
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Roberto d'Aubuisson Roberto D'Aubuisson is another Salvadorian graduate of the |
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Microsoft Network Microsoft Network is the online service from http://www.msn.com |
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Punch card, 1801 Invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard, an engineer and architect in Lyon, France, the punch cards laid the ground for automatic information processing. For the first time information was stored in binary format on perforated cardboard cards. In 1890 Hermann Hollerith used Joseph-Marie Jacquard's punch card technology for processing statistical data retrieved from the US census in 1890, thus speeding up data analysis from eight to three years. His application of Jacquard's invention was also used for programming computers and data processing until electronic data processing was introduced in the 1960's. - As with Paper tapes are a medium similar to Jacquard's punch cards. In 1857 Sir Charles Wheatstone applied them as a medium for the preparation, storage, and transmission of data for the first time. By their means, telegraph messages could be prepared off-line, sent ten times quicker (up to 400 words per minute), and stored. Later similar paper tapes were used for programming computers. |
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Charles Babbage b. December 26, 1791, London, England d. October 18, 1871, London, England English mathematician and inventor who is credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer. The idea of mechanically calculating mathematical tables first came to Babbage in 1812 or 1813. Later he made a small |
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WTO An international organization designed to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO (World Trade Organization) is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947 and liberalized the world's trade over the next five decades. The WTO came into being on Jan. 1, 1995, with 104 countries as its founding members. The WTO is charged with policing member countries' adherence to all prior GATT agreements, including those of the last major GATT trade conference, the Uruguay Round (1986-94), at whose conclusion GATT had formally gone out of existence. The WTO is also responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. |
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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. |
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Writing 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. |
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Seneca 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 |
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Telephone The telephone was not invented by Alexander Graham Bell, as is widely held to be true, but by Philipp Reiss, a German teacher. When he demonstrated his invention to important German professors in 1861, it was not enthusiastically greeted. Because of this dismissal, no financial support for further development was provided to him. And here Bell comes in: In 1876 he successfully filed a patent for the telephone. Soon afterwards he established the first telephone company. |
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Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) Founded in 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries, SWIFT is responsible for maintaining the world's most important network dedicated to financial transaction processing. Although facing competition from smart cards, e.g., SWIFT can rely on an increasing clientèle. In September 1999 SWIFT served 6,710 live users in 189 countries. |
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Netiquette Although referred to as a single body of rules, there is not just one Netiquette, but there are several, though overlapping largely. Proposing general guidelines for posting messages to newsgroups and mailing lists and using the Well-known Netiquettes are the |
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