The main concern of copyright owners as the (in terms of
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
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Think tanks are most common in the U.S. and also very widespread in Europe. Still they are an international phenomenon, with at least one or two such institutions in nearly every country of the world.
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While the digital divide might bring up the idea that enterprises will be able to sell more and more computers during the next years another truth looks as if there was no hope for a certain percentage of the population to get out of their marginalization, their position of being "have nots".
Studies show that the issue of different colors of skin play a role in this, but more than "racial" issues it is income, age and education that decides about the have and have nots.
There exist ~ 103 million households in the USA.
~6 million do not even have telephone access. Why should they care about computers?
The digital divide cuts the world into centers and peripheries, not into nations, as it runs through the boarder between the North and the South as well as through nations.
The most different institutions with various interests in their background work in that field; not rarely paid by governments, which are interested in inhabitants, connected to the net and economy.
see also:
Searching information about the digital divide one will find informations saying that it is growing all the time whereas other studies suggest the contrary, like this one
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Fleishman-Hillard, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is the world's fifth largest public relations agency, with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia, and affiliates in Latin America. Its 1998 net fees accounted for US$ 160,692,000.
Claude Chappe built a fixed optical network between Paris and Lille. Covering a distance of about 240kms, it consisted of fifteen towers with semaphores.
Because this communication system was destined to practical military use, the transmitted messages were encoded. The messages were kept such secretly, even those who transmit them from tower to tower did not capture their meaning, they just transmitted codes they did not understand. Depending on weather conditions, messages could be sent at a speed of 2880 kms/hr at best.
Forerunners of Chappe's optical network are the
For more information on early communication networks see