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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During the last 20 years the old
"Digital divide" describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who
do and people who do not have access to (or the education to handle with) modern information technologies, e.g. cellular telephone, television, Internet. This digital divide is concerning people all over the world, but as usually most of all people in the formerly so called third world countries and in rural areas suffer; the poor and less-educated suffer from that divide.
More than 80% of all computers with access to the Internet are situated in larger cities.
"The cost of the information today consists not so much of the creation of content, which should be the real value, but of the storage and efficient delivery of information, that is in essence the cost of paper, printing, transporting, warehousing and other physical distribution means, plus the cost of the personnel manpower needed to run these `extra' services ....Realizing an autonomous distributed networked society, which is the real essence of the Internet, will be the most critical issue for the success of the information and communication revolution of the coming century of millennium."
(Izumi Aizi)
for more information see:
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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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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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Intellectual property, very generally, relates to the output, which result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Traditionally intellectual property is divided into two branches:
1) Industrial Property
a)
b)
c)
d) Unfair competition (trade secrets)
e) Geographical indications (indications of source and appellations of origin)
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. Those rights apply to the intellectual creation as such, and not to the physical object in which the work may be embodied.
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Until recent years, the problem of piracy (the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works (for commercial purposes)) was largely confined to the copying and physical distribution of tapes, disks and CDs. Yet the emergence and increased use of global data networks and the WWW has added a new dimension to the piracy of
This new development, often referred to as Internet piracy, broadly relates to the use of global data networks to 1) transmit and download digitized copies of pirated works, 2) advertise and market pirated intellectual property that is delivered on physical media through the mails or other traditional means, and 3) offer and transmit codes or other technologies which can be used to circumvent
Lately the
Table: IIPA 1998 - 1999 Estimated Trade Loss due to Copyright Piracy (in millions of US$)
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Generally copyright vests in the author of the work. Certain national laws provide for exceptions and, for example, regard the employer as the original owner of a copyright if the author was, when the work was created, an employee and employed for the purpose of creating that work. In the case of some types of creations, particularly audiovisual works, several national laws provide for different solutions to the question that should be the first holder of copyright in such works.
Many countries allow copyright to be assigned, which means that the owner of the copyright transfers it to another person or entity, which then becomes its holder. When the national law does not permit assignment it usually provides the possibility to license the work to someone else. Then the owner of the copyright remains the holder, but authorizes another person or entity to exercise all or some of his rights subject to possible limitations. Yet in any case the "
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Other biometric technologies not specified here include ear recognition, signature dynamics, key stroke dynamics, vein pattern recognition, retinal scan, body odour recognition, and DNA recognition. These are technologies which are either in early stages of development or used in highly specialised and limited contexts.
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The U.S. Data Encryption Standard (= DES) is the most widely used encryption algorithm, especially used for protection of financial transactions. It was developed by IBM in 1971. It is a symmetric-key cryptosystem. The DES algorithm uses a 56-bit encryption key, meaning that there are 72,057,594,037,927,936 possible keys.
for more information see:
Oscar Flingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854-1900) is one of the best and most famous poets and novelists of England of his time. His satirical and amusing texts exposed the false moral of the Bourgeoisie publicly. Besides, his life as a dandy made him the leader of aesthetics in England, until he was sent to prison because of homosexuality. Afterwards he lived in Paris where he died lonely and nearly forgotten in a hotel in 1900. His poems, fairy tales, novels and dramas survived.
IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) manufactures and develops cumputer hardware equipment, application and sysem software, and related equipment.
IBM produced the first PC (Personal Computer), and its decision to make Microsoft DOS the standard operating system initiated Microsoft's rise to global dominance in PC software.
Business indicators:
1999 Sales: $ 86,548 (+ 7,2 % from 1998)
Market capitalization: $ 181 bn
Employees: approx. 291,000
Corporate website:
Ross Perot, founder of
Official website:
Unofficial website:
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
The largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. The corporation resulted from the merger of the publisher Time Inc. and the media conglomerate Warner Communications Inc. in 1989. It acquired the Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS) in 1996. Time Warner Inc.'s products encompass magazines, hardcover books, comic books, recorded music, motion pictures, and broadcast and cable television programming and distribution. The company's headquarters are in New York City. In January 2000 Time Warner merged with AOL (America Online), which owns several online-services like Compuserve, Netscape and Netcenter in a US$ 243,3 billion deal.
Newsgroups are on-line discussion groups on the Usenet. Over 20,000 newsgroups exist, organized by subject into hierarchies. Each subject hierarchy is further broken down into subcategories. Covering an incredible wide area of interests and used intensively every day, they are an important part of the Internet.
For more information, click here (
American corporation that became the best-known purveyor of child and adult entertainment in the 20th century. Its headquarters are in Burbank, Calif. The company was founded in 1929 and produced animated motion-picture cartoons.
In 1955 the company opened the Disneyland amusement park, one of the world's most famous. Under a new management, in the 1980s, Disney's motion-picture and animated-film production units became among the most successful in the United States. In 1996 the Disney corporation acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which owned the ABC television network. The Disney Company also operates the Disney Channel, a pay television programming service.
The Ku Klux Klan has a long history of violence. It emerged out of the resentment and hatred many white Southerners. Black Americans are not considered human beings. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over the years, it has never vanished.
Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Palo Alto, USA, Sun Microsystems manufactures computer workstations,
For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: