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 Piracy "Industry"

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 intellectual property by permitting still easier copying, electronic sales and transmissions of illegally reproduced copyrighted works on a grand scale.

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 copy-protection security measures.

Lately the International Intellectual Property Alliance has published a new report on the estimated trade losses due to piracy. (The IIPA assumes that their report actually underestimates the loss of income due to the unlawful copying and distribution of copyrighted works. Yet it should be taken into consideration that the IIPA is the representative of the U.S. core copyright industries (business software, films, videos, music, sound recordings, books and journals, and interactive entertainment software).)

Table: IIPA 1998 - 1999 Estimated Trade Loss due to Copyright Piracy (in millions of US$)





Motion Pictures

Records & Music

Business Applications

Entertainment Software

Books





1999

1998

1999

1998

1999

1998

1999

1998

1999

1998

Total Losses

1323

1421

1684

1613

3211

3437

3020

2952

673

619



Total Losses (core copyright industries)

1999

1998

9910.0

10041.5




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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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Timeline 1600 - 1900 AD

17th century Cardinal Richelieu invents an encryption-tool called grille, a card with holes for writing messages on paper into the holes of those cards. Afterwards he removes the cards and fills in the blanks, so the message looks like an ordinary letter. The recipient needs to own the same card

- Bishop John Wilkins invents a cryptologic system looking like music notes. In a book he describes several forms of steganographic systems like secrets inks, but also the string cipher. He mentions the so-called Pig Latin, a spoken way of encryption that was already used by the ancient Indians

- the English scientist, magician and astrologer John Dee works on the ancient Enochian alphabet; he also possesses an encrypted writing that could not been broken until today

1605/1623 Sir Francis Bacon (= Francis Tudor = William Shakespeare?) writes several works containing ideas about cryptography. One of his most important advises is to use ciphers in such a way that no-one gets suspicious that the text could be enciphered. For this the steganogram was the best method, very often used in poems. The attempt to decipher Shakespeare's sonnets (in the 20th century) lead to the idea that his works had been written by Francis Bacon originally.

1671 Leibniz invents a calculating machine that uses the binary scale which we still use today, more advanced of course, called the ASCII code

18th century this is the time of the Black Chambers of espionage in Europe, Vienna having one of the most effective ones, called the "Geheime Kabinettskanzlei", headed by Baron Ignaz von Koch. Its task is to read through international diplomatic mail, copy letters and return them to the post-office the same morning. Supposedly about 100 letters are dealt with each day.

1790's Thomas Jefferson and Robert Patterson invent a wheel cipher

1799 the Rosetta Stone is found and makes it possible to decipher the Egyptian Hieroglyphs

1832 or 1838 Sam Morse develops the Morse Code, which actually is no code but an enciphered alphabet of short and long sounds. The first Morse code-message is sent by telegraph in 1844.

1834 the Braille Code for blind people is developed in today's form by Louis Braille

1844 the invention of the telegraph changes cryptography very much, as codes are absolutely necessary by then

1854 the Playfair cipher is invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone

1859 for the first time a tomographic cipher gets described

1861 Friedrich W. Kasiski does a cryptoanalysis of the Vigenère ciphers, which had been supposed to be uncrackable for ages

1891 Major Etienne Bazeries creates a new version of the wheel cipher, which is rejected by the French Army

1895 the invention of the radio changes cryptography-tasks again and makes them even more important

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History: "Indigenous Tradition"

In preliterate societies the association of rhythmic or repetitively patterned utterances with supernatural knowledge endures well into historic times. Knowledge is passed from one generation to another. Similar as in the Southern tradition intellectual property rights are rooted in a concept of 'collective' or 'communal' intellectual property existing in perpetuity and not limited to the life of an individual creator plus some number of years after his or her death. Often rights are exercised by only one individual in each generation, often through matrilineal descent.


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Product Placement

With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was "The Spot", a story about the ups and downs of an American commune. The Spot not only within short time attracted a large audience, but also pioneered in the field of online product placement. Besides Sony banners, the companies logo is also placed on nearly every electronic product appearing in the story. Appearing as a site for light entertainment, The Spots main goal is to make the name Sony and its product range well known within the target audience.

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Znet

ZNet provides forum facilities for online discussion and chatting on various topics ranging from culture and ecology to international relations and economics. ZNet also publishes daily commentaries and maintains a Web-zine, which addresses current news and events as well as many other topics, trying to be provocative, informative and inspiring to its readers.

Strategies and Policies

Daily Commentaries: Znet's commentaries address current news and events, cultural happenings, and organizing efforts, providing context, critique, vision, and analysis, but also references to or reviews of broader ideas, new books, activism, the Internet, and other topics that strike the diverse participating authors as worthy of attention.

Forum System: Znet provides a private (and soon also a public) forum system. The fora are among others concerned with topics such as: activism, cultural, community/race/religion/ethnicity, ecology, economics/class, gender/kinship/sexuality, government/polity, international relations, ParEcon, vision/strategy and popular culture. Each forum has a set of threaded discussions, also the fora hosted by commentary writers like Chomsky, Ehrenreich, Cagan, Peters and Wise.

ZNet Daily WebZine: ZNet Daily WebZine offers commentaries in web format.

Z Education Online (planned): The Z Education Online site will provide instructionals and courses of diverse types as well as other university-like, education-aimed features.

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In Search of Reliable Internet Measurement Data

Newspapers and magazines frequently report growth rates of Internet usage, number of users, hosts, and domains that seem to be beyond all expectations. Growth rates are expected to accelerate exponentially. However, Internet measurement data are anything thant reliable and often quite fantastic constructs, that are nevertheless jumped upon by many media and decision makers because the technical difficulties in measuring Internet growth or usage are make reliable measurement techniques impossible.

Equally, predictions that the Internet is about to collapse lack any foundation whatsoever. The researchers at the Internet Performance Measurement and Analysis Project (IPMA) compiled a list of news items about Internet performance and statistics and a few responses to them by engineers.

Size and Growth

In fact, "today's Internet industry lacks any ability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP (Internet service provider, M. S.), or prepare systematically for the growing expectations of its users. Historic or current data about traffic on the Internet infrastructure, maps depicting ... there is plenty of measurement occurring, albeit of questionable quality", says K. C. Claffy in his paper Internet measurement and data analysis: topology, workload, performance and routing statistics (http://www.caida.org/Papers/Nae/, Dec 6, 1999). Claffy is not an average researcher; he founded the well-known Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA).

So his statement is a slap in the face of all market researchers stating otherwise.
In a certain sense this is ridiculous, because since the inception of the ARPANet, the offspring of the Internet, network measurement was an important task. The very first ARPANet site was established at the University of California, Los Angeles, and intended to be the measurement site. There, Leonard Kleinrock further on worked on the development of measurement techniques used to monitor the performance of the ARPANet (cf. Michael and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net). And in October 1991, in the name of the Internet Activities Board Vinton Cerf proposed guidelines for researchers considering measurement experiments on the Internet stated that the measurement of the Internet. This was due to two reasons. First, measurement would be critical for future development, evolution and deployment planning. Second, Internet-wide activities have the potential to interfere with normal operation and must be planned with care and made widely known beforehand.
So what are the reasons for this inability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP? First, in early 1995, almost simultaneously with the worldwide introduction of the World Wide Web, the transition of the stewardship role of the National Science Foundation over the Internet into a competitive industry (bluntly spoken: its privatization) left no framework for adequate tracking and monitoring of the Internet. The early ISPs were not very interested in gathering and analyzing network performance data, they were struggling to meet demands of their rapidly increasing customers. Secondly, we are just beginning to develop reliable tools for quality measurement and analysis of bandwidth or performance. CAIDA aims at developing such tools.
"There are many estimates of the size and growth rate of the Internet that are either implausible, or inconsistent, or even clearly wrong", K. G. Coffman and Andrew, both members of different departments of AT & T Labs-Research, state something similar in their paper The Size and Growth Rate of the Internet, published in First Monday. There are some sources containing seemingly contradictory information on the size and growth rate of the Internet, but "there is no comprehensive source for information". They take a well-informed and refreshing look at efforts undertaken for measuring the Internet and dismantle several misunderstandings leading to incorrect measurements and estimations. Some measurements have such large error margins that you might better call them estimations, to say the least. This is partly due to the fact that data are not disclosed by every carrier and only fragmentarily available.
What is measured and what methods are used? Many studies are devoted to the number of users; others look at the number of computers connected to the Internet or count IP addresses. Coffman and Odlyzko focus on the sizes of networks and the traffic they carry to answer questions about the size and the growth of the Internet.
You get the clue of their focus when you bear in mind that the Internet is just one of many networks of networks; it is only a part of the universe of computer networks. Additionally, the Internet has public (unrestricted) and private (restricted) areas. Most studies consider only the public Internet, Coffman and Odlyzko consider the long-distance private line networks too: the corporate networks, the Intranets, because they are convinced (that means their assertion is put forward, but not accompanied by empirical data) that "the evolution of the Internet in the next few years is likely to be determined by those private networks, especially by the rate at which they are replaced by VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) running over the public Internet. Thus it is important to understand how large they are and how they behave." Coffman and Odlyzko check other estimates by considering the traffic generated by residential users accessing the Internet with a modem, traffic through public peering points (statistics for them are available through CAIDA and the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research), and calculating the bandwidth capacity for each of the major US providers of backbone services. They compare the public Internet to private line networks and offer interesting findings. The public Internet is currently far smaller, in both capacity and traffic, than the switched voice network (with an effective bandwidth of 75 Gbps at December 1997), but the private line networks are considerably larger in aggregate capacity than the Internet: about as large as the voice network in the U. S. (with an effective bandwidth of about 330 Gbps at December 1997), they carry less traffic. On the other hand, the growth rate of traffic on the public Internet, while lower than is often cited, is still about 100% per year, much higher than for traffic on other networks. Hence, if present growth trends continue, data traffic in the U. S. will overtake voice traffic around the year 2002 and will be dominated by the Internet. In the future, growth in Internet traffic will predominantly derive from people staying longer and from multimedia applications, because they consume more bandwidth, both are the reason for unanticipated amounts of data traffic.

Hosts

The Internet Software Consortium's Internet Domain Survey is one of the most known efforts to count the number of hosts on the Internet. Happily the ISC informs us extensively about the methods used for measurements, a policy quite rare on the Web. For the most recent survey the number of IP addresses that have been assigned a name were counted. At first sight it looks simple to get the accurate number of hosts, but practically an assigned IP address does not automatically correspond an existing host. In order to find out, you have to send a kind of message to the host in question and wait for a reply. You do this with the PING utility. (For further explanations look here: Art. PING, in: Connected: An Internet Encyclopaedia) But to do this for every registered IP address is an arduous task, so ISC just pings a 1% sample of all hosts found and make a projection to all pingable hosts. That is ISC's new method; its old method, still used by RIPE, has been to count the number of domain names that had IP addresses assigned to them, a method that proved to be not very useful because a significant number of hosts restricts download access to their domain data.
Despite the small sample, this method has at least one flaw: ISC's researchers just take network numbers into account that have been entered into the tables of the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain, and it is possible that not all providers know of these tables. A similar method is used for Telcordia's Netsizer.

Internet Weather

Like daily weather, traffic on the Internet, the conditions for data flows, are monitored too, hence called Internet weather. One of the most famous Internet weather report is from The Matrix, Inc. Another one is the Internet Traffic Report displaying traffic in values between 0 and 100 (high values indicate fast and reliable connections). For weather monitoring response ratings from servers all over the world are used. The method used is to "ping" servers (as for host counts, e. g.) and to compare response times to past ones and to response times of servers in the same reach.

Hits, Page Views, Visits, and Users

Let us take a look at how these hot lists of most visited Web sites may be compiled. I say, may be, because the methods used for data retrieval are mostly not fully disclosed.
For some years it was seemingly common sense to report requested files from a Web site, so called "hits". A method not very useful, because a document can consist of several files: graphics, text, etc. Just compile a document from some text and some twenty flashy graphical files, put it on the Web and you get twenty-one hits per visit; the more graphics you add, the more hits and traffic (not automatically to your Web site) you generate.
In the meantime page views, also called page impressions are preferred, which are said to avoid these flaws. But even page views are not reliable. Users might share computers and corresponding IP addresses and host names with others, she/he might access not the site, but a cached copy from the Web browser or from the ISP's proxy server. So the server might receive just one page request although several users viewed a document.

Especially the editors of some electronic journals (e-journals) rely on page views as a kind of ratings or circulation measure, Rick Marin reports in the New York Times. Click-through rates - a quantitative measure - are used as a substitute for something of intrinsically qualitative nature: the importance of a column to its readers, e. g. They may read a journal just for a special column and not mind about the journal's other contents. Deleting this column because of not receiving enough visits may cause these readers to turn their backs on their journal.
More advanced, but just slightly better at best, is counting visits, the access of several pages of a Web site during one session. The problems already mentioned apply here too. To avoid them, newspapers, e.g., establish registration services, which require password authentication and therefore prove to be a kind of access obstacle.
But there is a different reason for these services. For content providers users are virtual users, not unique persons, because, as already mentioned, computers and IP addresses can be shared and the Internet is a client-server system; in a certain sense, in fact computers communicate with each other. Therefore many content providers are eager to get to know more about users accessing their sites. On-line registration forms or WWW user surveys are obvious methods of collecting additional data, sure. But you cannot be sure that information given by users is reliable, you can just rely on the fact that somebody visited your Web site. Despite these obstacles, companies increasingly use data capturing. As with registration services cookies come here into play.

For

If you like to play around with Internet statistics instead, you can use Robert Orenstein's Web Statistics Generator to make irresponsible predictions or visit the Internet Index, an occasional collection of seemingly statistical facts about the Internet.

Measuring the Density of IP Addresses

Measuring the Density of IP Addresses or domain names makes the geography of the Internet visible. So where on earth is the most density of IP addresses or domain names? There is no global study about the Internet's geographical patterns available yet, but some regional studies can be found. The Urban Research Initiative and Martin Dodge and Narushige Shiode from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the University College London have mapped the Internet address space of New York, Los Angeles and the United Kingdom (http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/telecom.html and http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/gisruk98.html).
Dodge and Shiode used data on the ownership of IP addresses from RIPE, Europe's most important registry for Internet numbers.





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Challenges for Copyright by ICT: Introduction

Traditional copyright and the practice of paying royalties to the creators of intellectual property have emerged with the introduction of the printing press (1456). Therefore early copyright law has been tailored to the technology of print and the (re) production of works in analogue form. Over the centuries legislation concerning the protection of intellectual property has been adapted several times in order to respond to the technological changes in the production and distribution of information.

Yet again new technologies have altered the way of how (copyrighted) works are produced, copied, made obtainable and distributed. The emergence of global electronic networks and the increased availability of digitalized intellectual property confront existing copyright with a variety of questions and challenges. Although the combination of several types of works within one larger work or on one data carrier, and the digital format (although this may be a recent development it has been the object of detailed legal scrutiny), as well as networking (telephone and cable networks have been in use for a long time, although they do not permit interactivity) are nothing really new, the circumstance that recent technologies allow the presentation and storage of text, sound and visual information in digital form indeed is a novel fact. Like that the entire information can be generated, altered and used by and on one and the same device, irrespective of whether it is provided online or offline.


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Timeline 1900-1970 AD

1913 the wheel cipher gets re-invented as a strip

1917 William Frederick Friedman starts working as a cryptoanalyst at Riverbank Laboratories, which also works for the U.S. Government. Later he creates a school for military cryptoanalysis

- an AT&T-employee, Gilbert S. Vernam, invents a polyalphabetic cipher machine that works with random-keys

1918 the Germans start using the ADFGVX-system, that later gets later by the French Georges Painvin

- Arthur Scherbius patents a ciphering machine and tries to sell it to the German Military, but is rejected

1919 Hugo Alexander Koch invents a rotor cipher machine

1921 the Hebern Electric Code, a company producing electro-mechanical cipher machines, is founded

1923 Arthur Scherbius founds an enterprise to construct and finally sell his Enigma machine for the German Military

late 1920's/30's more and more it is criminals who use cryptology for their purposes (e.g. for smuggling). Elizabeth Smith Friedman deciphers the codes of rum-smugglers during prohibition regularly

1929 Lester S. Hill publishes his book Cryptography in an Algebraic Alphabet, which contains enciphered parts

1933-1945 the Germans make the Enigma machine its cryptographic main-tool, which is broken by the Poles Marian Rejewski, Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing's team at Bletchley Park in England in 1939

1937 the Japanese invent their so called Purple machine with the help of Herbert O. Yardley. The machine works with telephone stepping relays. It is broken by a team of William Frederick Friedman. As the Japanese were unable to break the US codes, they imagined their own codes to be unbreakable as well - and were not careful enough.

1930's the Sigaba machine is invented in the USA, either by W.F. Friedman or his colleague Frank Rowlett

- at the same time the British develop the Typex machine, similar to the German Enigma machine

1943 Colossus, a code breaking computer is put into action at Bletchley Park

1943-1980 the cryptographic Venona Project, done by the NSA, is taking place for a longer period than any other program of that type

1948 Shannon, one of the first modern cryptographers bringing mathematics into cryptography, publishes his book A Communications Theory of Secrecy Systems

1960's the Communications-Electronics Security Group (= CESG) is founded as a section of Government Communications Headquarters (= GCHQ)

late 1960's the IBM Watson Research Lab develops the Lucifer cipher

1969 James Ellis develops a system of separate public-keys and private-keys

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Global Data Flows

Fiber-optic cables, coaxial cables, copper wires, electric power lines, microwaves, satellite communication, mobile telephony, computer networks: Various telecommunication networks following a variety of standards with bewildering abbreviations - DSL, WAP, GSM, UMTS, Ipv4 etc. - and carrying endless flows of capital and information are the blood veins of modern societies.

In the space of flows constituted by today's global data networks the space of places is transcended. Visualizations of these global data flows show arches bridging seas and continents, thereby linking the world's centres of research and development, economics and politics. In the global "Network Society" (Manuel Castells) the traditional centres of power and domination are not discarded, in the opposite, they are strengthened and reinforced by the use of information and communication technologies. Political, economical and symbolical power becomes increasingly linked to the use of modern information and communication technologies. The most sensitive and advanced centres of information and communication technologies are the stock markets. Excluded from the network constituted by modern information and communication technologies, large parts of Africa, Asia and South America, but also the poor of industrialized countries, are ranking increasingly marginal to the world economy.

Cities are centres of communications, trade and power. The higher the percentage of urban population, the more it is likely that the telecommunications infrastructure is generally good to excellent. This goes hand in hand with lower telecommunications costs. Those parts of the world with the poorest infrastructure are also the world's poorhouse. In Bangladesh for most parts of the population a personal computer is as expensive as a limousine in European one-month's salary in Europe, they have to pay eight annual salaries. Therefore telecommunications infrastructure is concentrated on the highly industrialized world: Most telephone mainlines, mobile telephones, computers, Internet accounts and Internet hosts (computers connected to the global data networks) can be found here. The same applies to media: the daily circulation of newspapers and the use of TV sets and radios. - Telecommunication and media services affordable to most parts of the population are mostly restricted to industrialized countries.

This situation will not change in the foreseeable future: Most expenditure for telecommunications infrastructure will be restricted to the richest countries in the world. In 1998, the world's richest countries consumed 75% of all cables and wires.

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Late 1970s - Present: Fourth Generation Computers

Following the invention of the first integrated circuits always more and more components could be fitted onto one chip. LSI (Large Scale Integration) was followed by VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) and ULSI (Ultra-Large Scale Integration), which increased the number of components squeezed onto one chip into the millions and helped diminish the size as well as the price of computers. The new chips took the idea of the integrated circuit one step further as they allowed to manufacture one microprocessor which could then be programmed to meet any number of demands.

Also, ensuing the introduction of the minicomputer in the mid 1970s by the early 1980s a market for personal computers (PC) was established. As computers had become easier to use and cheaper they were no longer mainly utilized in offices and manufacturing, but also by the average consumer. Therefore the number of personal computers in use more than doubled from 2 million in 1981 to 5.5 million in 1982. Ten years later, 65 million PCs were being used.

Further developments included the creation of mobile computers (laptops and palmtops) and especially networking technology. While mainframes shared time with many terminals for many applications, networking allowed individual computers to form electronic co-operations. LANs (Local Area Network) permitted computers to share memory space, information, software and communicate with each other. Although already LANs could reach enormous proportions with the invention of the Internet an information and communication-network on a global basis was established for the first time.

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1940s - 1950s: The Development of Early Robotics Technology

During the 1940s and 1950s two major developments enabled the design of modern robots. Robotics generally is based on two related technologies: numerical control and teleoperators.

Numerical control was invented during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is a method of controlling machine tool axes by means of numbers that have been coded on media. The first numerical control machine was presented in 1952 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose subsequent research led to the development of APT (Automatically Programmed Tools). APT, a language for programming machine tools, was designed for use in computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM).

First teleoperators were developed in the early 1940s. Teleoperators are mechanical manipulators which are controlled by a human from a remote location. In its typical application a human moves a mechanical arm and hand with its moves being duplicated at another location.

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2000 A.D.

2000
Convergence of telephony, audiovisual technologies and computing

Digital technologies are used to combine previously separated communication and media systems such as telephony, audiovisual technologies and computing to new services and technologies, thus forming extensions of existing communication systems and resulting in fundamentally new communication systems. This is what is meant by today's new buzzwords "multimedia" and "convergence".

Classical dichotomies as the one of computing and telephony and traditional categorizations no longer apply, because these new services no longer fit traditional categories.

Convergence and Regulatory Institutions

Digital technology permits the integration of telecommunications with computing and audiovisual technologies. New services that extend existing communication systems emerge. The convergence of communication and media systems corresponds to a convergence of corporations. Recently, America Online, the world's largest online service provider, merged with Time Warner, the world's largest media corporation. For such corporations the classical approach to regulation - separate institutions regulate separate markets - is no longer appropriate, because the institutions' activities necessarily overlap. The current challenges posed to these institutions are not solely due to the convergence of communication and media systems made possible by digital technologies; they are also due to the liberalization and internationalization of the electronic communications sector. For regulation to be successful, new categorizations and supranational agreements are needed.
For further information on this issue see Natascha Just and Michael Latzer, The European Policy Response to Convergence with Special Consideration of Competition Policy and Market Power Control, http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/workpap.htm or http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/WP01JustLatzer.doc.

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Who owns the Internet and who is in charge?

The Internet/Matrix still depends heavily on public infrastructure and there is no dedicated owner of the whole Internet/Matrix, but the networks it consists of are run and owned by corporations and institutions. Access to the Internet is usually provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for a monthly fee. Each network is owned by someone and has a network operation center from where it is centrally controlled, but the Internet/Matrix is not owned by any single authority and has no network operation center of its own. No legal authority determines how and where networks can be connected together, this is something the managers of networks have to agree about. So there is no way to ever gain ultimate control of the Matrix/Internet.
The in some respects decentralized Matrix/Internet architecture and administration do not imply that there are no authorities for oversight and common standards for sustaining basic operations, for administration: There are authorities for IP number and domain name registrations, e.g.
Ever since the organizational structures for Internet administration have changed according to the needs to be addressed. Up to now, administration of the Internet is a collaborative undertaking of several loose cooperative bodies with no strict hierarchy of authority. These bodies make decisions on common guidelines, as communication protocols, e.g., cooperatively, so that compatibility of software is guaranteed. But they have no binding legal authority, nor can they enforce the standards they have agreed upon, nor are they wholly representative for the community of Internet users. The Internet has no official governing body or organization; most parts are still administered by volunteers.
Amazingly, there seems to be an unspoken and uncodified consent of what is allowed and what is forbidden on the Internet that is widely accepted. Codifications, as the so-called Netiquette, are due to individual efforts and mostly just expressively stating the prevailing consent. Violations of accepted standards are fiercely rejected, as reactions to misbehavior in mailing lists and newsgroups prove daily.
Sometimes violations not already subject to law become part of governmental regulations, as it was the case with spamming, the unsolicited sending of advertising mail messages. But engineers proved to be quicker and developed software against spamming. So, in some respects, the Internet is self-regulating, indeed.
For a detailed report on Internet governance, click here.

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Virtual cartels; mergers

In parallel to the deregulation of markets, there has been a trend towards large-scale mergers which ridicules dreams of increased competition.

Recent mega-mergers and acquisitions include

SBC Communications - Ameritech, $ 72,3 bn

Bell Atlantic - GTE, $ 71,3

AT&T - Media One, $ 63,1

AOL - Time Warner, $ 165 bn

MCI Worldcom - Spring, $ 129 bn

The total value of all major mergers since the beginnings of the 1990s has been 20 trillion Dollars, 2,5 times the size of the USA's GIP.

The AOL- Time Warner reflects a trend which can be observed everywhere: the convergence of the ICT and the content industries. This represents the ultimate advance in complete market domination, and a alarming threat to independent content.

"Is TIME going to write something negative about AOL? Will AOL be able to offer anything other than CNN sources? Is the Net becoming as silly and unbearable as television?"

(Detlev Borchers, journalist)

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Legal Protection: National Legislation

Intellectual property - comprising industrial property and copyright - in general is protected by national legislation. Therefore those rights are limited territorially and can be exercised only within the jurisdiction of the country or countries under whose laws they are granted.

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Late 1950s - Early 1960s: Second Generation Computers

An important change in the development of computers occurred in 1948 with the invention of the transistor. It replaced the large, unwieldy vacuum tube and as a result led to a shrinking in size of electronic machinery. The transistor was first applied to a computer in 1956. Combined with the advances in magnetic-core memory, the use of transistors resulted in computers that were smaller, faster, more reliable and more energy-efficient than their predecessors.

Stretch by IBM and LARC by Sperry-Rand (1959) were the first large-scale machines to take advantage of the transistor technology (and also used assembly language instead of the difficult machine language). Both developed for atomic energy laboratories could handle enormous amounts of data, but still were costly and too powerful for the business sector's needs. Therefore only two LARC's were ever installed.

Throughout the early 1960s there were a number of commercially successful computers (for example the IBM 1401) used in business, universities, and government and by 1965 most large firms routinely processed financial information by using computers. Decisive for the success of computers in business was the stored program concept and the development of sophisticated high-level programming languages like FORTRAN (Formular Translator), 1956, and COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), 1960, that gave them the flexibility to be cost effective and productive. The invention of second generation computers also marked the beginning of an entire branch, the software industry, and the birth of a wide range of new types of careers.

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Global hubs of the data body industry

While most data bunkers are restricted to particular areas or contexts, there are others which act as global data nodes. Companies such as EDS (Electronic Data Systems), Experian, First Data Corporation and Equifax operate globally and run giant databases containing personal information. They are the global hubs of the data body economy.

Company

Sales in USD billions

Size of client database in million datasets





Equifax





1,7





360





Experian





1,5





779





Fist Data Corporation





5,5





260





EDS





18,5









(not disclosed)

(Sales and database sizes, 1998)

The size of these data repositories is constantly growing, so it is only a matter of time when everybody living in the technologically saturated part of the world will be registered in one of these data bunkers.

Among these companies, EDS, founded by the former US presidential candidate Ross Perot, known for his right-wing views and direct language, is of particular importance. Not only is it the world's largest data body company, it is also secretive about the size of its client database - a figure disclosed by the other companies either in company publications or upon enquiry. After all, the size of such a data base makes a company more attractive for potential customers.

For many years, EDS has been surrounded by rumours concerning sinister involvement with intelligence agencies. Beyond the rumours, though, there are also facts. EDS has a special division for government services. EDS does business with all military agencies of the US, as well as law enforcement agencies, justice agencies, and many others. The company also maintains a separate division for military equipment In 1984, the company became a subsidiary of General Motors, itself a leading manufacturer of military and intelligence systems. EDS is listed by the Federation of American Scientist's intelligence resource program as contractor to US intelligence agencies, and prides itself, amongst other things, to respond to the "rise of the citizen as a consumer".

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Basics: Introduction

Copyright law is a branch of intellectual property law and deals with the rights of intellectual creators in their works. The scope of copyright protection as laid down in Article 2 of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty "... extends to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such." Copyright law protects the creativity concerning the choice and arrangement of words, colors, musical notes etc. It grants the creators of certain specified works exclusive rights relating to the "copying" and use of their original creation.


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Other biometric technologies

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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Challenges for Copyright by ICT: Digital Content Providers

Providers of digital information might be confronted with copyright related problems when using some of the special features of hypertext media like frames and hyperlinks (which both use third party content available on the Internet to enhance a webpage or CD ROM), or operate a search engine or online directory on their website.

Framing

Frames are often used to help define, and navigate within, a content provider's website. Still, when they are used to present (copyrighted) third party material from other sites issues of passing off and misleading or deceptive conduct, as well as copyright infringement, immediately arise.

Hyperlinking

It is generally held that the mere creation of a hyperlink does not, of itself, infringe copyright as usually the words indicating a link or the displayed URL are unlikely to be considered a "work". Nevertheless if a link is clicked on the users browser will download a full copy of the material at the linked address creating a copy in the RAM of his computer courtesy of the address supplied by the party that published the link. Although it is widely agreed that the permission to download material over the link must be part of an implied license granted by the person who has made the material available on the web in the first place, the scope of this implied license is still the subject of debate. Another option that has been discussed is to consider linking fair use.

Furthermore hyperlinks, and other "information location tools", like online directories or search engines could cause their operators trouble if they refer or link users to a site that contains infringing material. In this case it is yet unclear whether providers can be held liable for infringement.

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Internet, Intranets, Extranets, and Virtual Private Networks

With the rise of networks and the corresponding decline of mainframe services computers have become communication devices instead of being solely computational or typewriter-like devices. Corporate networks become increasingly important and often use the Internet as a public service network to interconnect. Sometimes they are proprietary networks.

Software companies, consulting agencies, and journalists serving their interests make some further differences by splitting up the easily understandable term "proprietary networks" into terms to be explained and speak of Intranets, Extranets, and Virtual Private Networks.

Cable TV networks and online services as Europe Online, America Online, and Microsoft Network are also proprietary networks. Although their services resemble Internet services, they offer an alternative telecommunication infrastructure with access to Internet services for their subscribers.
America Online is selling its service under the slogan "We organize the Web for you!" Such promises are more frightening than promising because "organizing" is increasingly equated with "filtering" of seemingly objectionable messages and "rating" of content. For more information on these issues, click here If you want to know more about the technical nature of computer networks, here is a link to the corresponding article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Especially for financial transactions, secure proprietary networks become increasingly important. When you transfer funds from your banking account to an account in another country, it is done through the SWIFT network, the network of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). According to SWIFT, in 1998 the average daily value of payments messages was estimated to be above U$ 2 trillion.

Electronic Communications Networks as Instinet force stock exchanges to redefine their positions in trading of equities. They offer faster trading at reduced costs and better prices on trades for brokers and institutional investors as mutual funds and pension funds. Last, but not least clients are not restricted to trading hours and can trade anonymously and directly, thereby bypassing stock exchanges.

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Hill & Knowlton

Although it is generally hard to distinguish between public relations and propaganda, Hill & Knowlton, the worlds leading PR agency, represents an extraordinary example for the manipulation of public opinion with public relations activities. Hill & Knowlton did not only lobby for countries, accused of the abuse of human rights, like China, Peru, Israel, Egypt and Indonesia, but also represented the repressive Duvalier regime in Haiti.

It furthermore played a central role in the Gulf War. On behalf of the Kuwaiti government it presented a 15-year-old girl to testify before Congress about human rights violations in a Kuwaiti hospital. The girl, later found out to be the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., and its testimony then became the centerpiece of a finely tuned PR campaign orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton and co-ordinated with the White House on behalf of the government of Kuwait an the Citizens for a Free Kuwait group. Inflaming public opinion against Iraq and bringing the U.S. Congress in favor of war in the Gulf, this probably was one of the largest and most effective public relations campaigns in history.

Running campaigns against abortion for the Catholic Church and representing the Church of Scientology, large PR firms like Hill & Knowlton, scarcely hesitate to manipulate public and congressional opinion and government policy through media campaigns, congressional hearings, and lobbying, when necessary. Also co-operation with intelligence agencies seems to be not unknown to Hill & Knowlton.

Accused of pursuing potentially illegal proxy spying operation for intelligence agencies, Richard Cheney, head of Hill & Knowltons New York office, denied this allegations, but said that "... in such a large organization you never know if there's not some sneak operation going on." On the other hand former CIA official Robert T. Crowley acknowledged, that "Hill & Knowlton's overseas offices were perfect 'cover` for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers." Furthermore the CIA, Crowley admitted, used its Hill & Knowlton connections to "... put out press releases and make media contacts to further its positions. ... Hill & Knowlton employees at the small Washington office and elsewhere distributed this material through CIA assets working in the United States news media."

(Source: Carlisle, Johan: Public Relationships: Hill & Knowlton, Robert Gray, and the CIA. http://mediafilter.org/caq/)

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Databody convergence

In the phrase "the rise of the citizen as a consumer", to be found on the EDS website, the cardinal political problem posed by the databody industry is summarised: the convergence of commercial and political interest in the data body business, the convergence of bureaucratic and commercial data bodies, the erosion of privacy, and the consequent undermining of democratic politics by private business interest.

When the citizen becomes a consumer, the state must become a business. In the data body business, the key word behind this new identity of government is "outsourcing". Functions, that are not considered core functions of government activity are put into the hands of private contractors.

There have long been instances where privately owned data companies, e.g. credit card companies, are allowed access to public records, e.g. public registries or electoral rolls. For example, in a normal credit card transaction, credit card companies have had access to public records in order to verify identity of a customer. For example, in the UK citizen's personal data stored on the Electoral Roll have been used for commercial purposes for a long time. The new British Data Protection Act now allows people to "opt out" of this kind of commercialisation - a legislation that has prompted protests on the part of the data industry: Experian has claimed to lose LST 500 mn as a consequence of this restriction - a figure that, even if exaggerated, may help to understand what the value of personal data actually is.

While this may serve as an example of an increased public awareness of privacy issues, the trend towards outsourcing seems to lead to a complete breakdown of the barriers between commercial and public use of personal data. This trend can be summarised by the term "outsourcing" of government functions.

Governments increasingly outsource work that is not considered core function of government, e.g. cooking meals in hospitals or mowing lawns in public parks. Such peripheral activities marked a first step of outsourcing. In a further step, governmental functions were divided between executive and judgemental functions, and executive functions increasingly entrusted to private agencies. For these agencies to be able to carry out the work assigned to them, the need data. Data that one was stored in public places, and whose handling was therefore subject to democratic accountability. Outsourcing has produced gains in efficiency, and a decrease of accountability. Outsourced data are less secure, what use they are put to is difficult to control.

The world's largest data corporation, EDS, is also among the foremost outsourcing companies. In an article about EDS' involvement in government outsourcing in Britain, Simon Davies shows how the general trend towards outsourcing combined with advances in computer technology allow companies EDS, outside of any public accountability, to create something like blueprints for the societies of the 21st century. But the problem of accountability is not the only one to be considered in this context. As Davies argues, the data business is taking own its own momentum "a ruthless company could easily hold a government to ransom". As the links between government agencies and citizens thin out, however, the links among the various agencies might increase. Linking the various government information systems would amount to further increase in efficiency, and a further undermining of democracy. The latter, after all, relies upon the separation of powers - matching government information systems would therefore pave the way to a kind of electronic totalitarianism that has little to do with the ideological bent of George Orwell's 1984 vision, but operates on purely technocratic principles.

Technically the linking of different systems is already possible. It would also create more efficiency, which means generate more income. The question, then, whether democracy concerns will prevent it from happening is one that is capable of creating

But what the EDS example shows is something that applies everywhere, and that is that the data industry is whether by intention or whether by default, a project with profound political implications. The current that drives the global economy deeper and deeper into becoming a global data body economy may be too strong to be stopped by conventional means.

However, the convergence of political and economic data bodies also has technological roots. The problem is that politically motivated surveillance and economically motivated data collection are located in the same area of information and communication technologies. For example, monitoring internet use requires more or less the same technical equipment whether done for political or economic purposes. Data mining and data warehousing techniques are almost the same. Creating transparency of citizens and customers is therefore a common objective of intelligence services and the data body industry. Given that data are exchanged in electronic networks, a compatibility among the various systems is essential. This is another factor that encourages "leaks" between state-run intelligence networks and the private data body business. And finally, given the secretive nature of state intelligence and commercial data capturing , there is little transparency. Both structures occupy an opaque zone.

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Transparent customers. Direct marketing online



This process works even better on the Internet because of the latter's interactive nature. "The Internet is a dream to direct marketers", said Wil Lansing, CEO of the American retailer Fingerhut Companies. Many services require you to register online, requiring users to provide as much information about them as possible. And in addition, the Internet is fast, cheap and used by people who tend to be young and on the search for something interesting.

Many web sites also are equipped with user tracking technology that registers a users behaviour and preferences during a visit. For example, user tracking technology is capable of identifying the equipment and software employed by a user, as well as movements on the website, visit of links etc. Normally such information is anonymous, but can be personalised when it is coupled with online registration, or when personal identifcation has been obtained from other sources. Registration is often a prerequisite not just for obtaining a free web mail account, but also for other services, such as personalised start pages. Based on the information provided by user, the start page will then include advertisements and commercial offers that correspond to the users profile, or to the user's activity on the website.

One frequent way of obtaining such personal information of a user is by offering free web mail accounts offered by a great many companies, internet providers and web portals (e.g. Microsoft, Yahoo, Netscape and many others). In most cases, users get "free" accounts in return for submitting personal information and agreeing to receive marketing mails. Free web mail accounts are a simple and effective direct marketing and data capturing strategy which is, however, rarely understood as such. However, the alliances formed between direct advertising and marketing agencies on the one hand, and web mail providers on the other hand, such as the one between DoubleClick and Yahoo, show the common logic of data capturing and direct marketing. The alliance between DoubleClick and Yahoo eventually attracted the US largest direct marketing agency, Abacus Direct, who ended up buying DoubleClick.

However, the intention of collecting users personal data and create consumer profiles based on online behaviour can also take on more creative and playful forms. One such example is sixdegrees.com. This is a networking site based on the assumption that everybody on the planet is connected to everybody else by a chain of six people at most. The site offers users to get to know a lot of new people, the friends of their friends of their friends, for example, and if they try hard enough, eventually Warren Beatty or Claudia Schiffer. But of course, in order to make the whole game more useful for marketing purposes, users are encouraged to join groups which share common interests, which are identical with marketing categories ranging from arts and entertainment to travel and holiday. Evidently, the game becomes more interesting the more new people a user brings into the network. What seems to be fun for the 18 to 24 year old college student customer segment targeted by sixdegrees is, of course, real business. While users entertain themselves they are being carefully profiled. After all, data of young people who can be expected to be relatively affluent one day are worth more than money.

The particular way in which sites such as sixdegrees.com and others are structured mean that not only to users provide initial information about them, but also that this information is constantly updated and therefore becomes even more valuable. Consequently, many free online services or web mail providers cancel a user's account if it has not been uses for some time.

There are also other online services which offer free services in return for personal information which is then used for marketing purposes, e.g. Yahoo's Geocities, where users may maintain their own free websites, Bigfoot, where people are offered a free e-mail address for life, that acts as a relais whenever a customer's residence or e-mail address changes. In this way, of course, the marketers can identify friendship and other social networks, and turn this knowledge into a marketing advantage. People finders such as WhoWhere? operate along similar lines.

A further way of collecting consumer data that has recently become popular is by offering free PCs. Users are provided with a PC for free or for very little money, and in return commit themselves to using certain services rather than others (e.g. a particular internet provider), providing information about themselves, and agree to have their online behaviour monitored by the company providing the PC, so that accurate user profiles can be compiled. For example, the Free PC Network offers advertisers user profiles containing "over 60 individual demographics". There are literally thousands of variations of how a user's data are extracted and commercialised when online. Usually this happens quietly in the background.

A good inside view of the world of direct marketing can be gained at the website of the American Direct Marketing Association and the Federation of European Direct Marketing.

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Kosov@

The "word" Kosov@ is a compromise between the Serb name KosovO and the Albanian KosovA. It is mostly used by international people who want to demonstrate a certain consciousness about the conflict including some sort of neutrality, believing that neither the one side nor the other (and maybe not even NATO) is totally right. Using the word Kosov@ is seen as a symbol of peace.

For more explanations (in German) see: http://www.zivildienst.at/kosov@.htm

http://www.zivildienst.at/kosov@.htm
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COMECON

The Council for Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) was set up in 1949 consisting of six East European countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR, followed later by the German Democratic Republic (1950), Mongolia (1962), Cuba (1972), and Vietnam (1978). Its aim was, to develop the member countries' economies on a complementary basis for the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency. In 1991, Comecon was replaced by the Organization for International Economic Cooperation.

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retouch

The retouch is the simplest way to change a picture. Small corrections can be made through this way.
A well-known example is the correction of a picture from a Bill Clinton-visit in Germany. In the background of the photograph stood some people, holding a sign with critical comments. In some newspapers the picture was printed like this, in others a retouch had erased the sign.
Another example happened in Austria in 1999:
The right wing party FPÖ had a poster for the Parliamentarian elections which said: 1999 reasons to vote for Haider. Others answered by producing a retouch saying: 1938 reasons to not vote for Haider (pointing to the year 1939, when the vast majority of the Austrians voted for the "Anschluss" to Germany).

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Time Warner

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.

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National Science Foundation (NSF)

Established in 1950, the National Science Foundation is an independent agency of the U.S. government dedicated to the funding in basic research and education in a wide range of sciences and in mathematics and engineering. Today, the NSF supplies about one quarter of total federal support of basic scientific research at academic institutions.

http://www.nsf.gov

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,2450+1+2440,00.html

http://www.nsf.gov/
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Polybius

Polybius was one of the greatest historians of the ancient Greek. he lived from 200-118 BC. see: Polybius Checkerboard.

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Optical communication system by Aeneas Tacitus, 4th century B.C.

Aeneas Tacitus, a Greek military scientist and cryptographer, invented an optical communication system that combines water and beacon telegraphy. Torches indicated the beginnings and the ends of message transmissions while water jars were used to transmit the messages. These jars had a plugged standard-size hole drilled on the bottom side and were filled with water. As those who sent and those who received the message unplugged the jars simultaneously, the water drained out. Because the transmitted messages corresponded to water levels, the sender indicated by torch signal that the appropriate water level has been reached. It is a disadvantage that the possible messages are restricted to a given code, but as this system was mainly used for military purposes, this was offset by the advantage that it was almost impossible for outsiders to understand these messages unless they possessed the codebook.

With communication separated from transportation, the distant became near.

Tacitus' telegraph system was very fast and not excelled until the end of the 18th century.

For further information see Joanne Chang & Anna Soellner, Decoding Device, http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/decoder2.html

http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inven...
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atbash

Atbash is regarded as the simplest way of encryption. It is nothing else than a reverse-alphabet. a=z, b= y, c=x and so on. Many different nations used it in the early times of writing.

for further explanations see:
http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/atbash.htm

http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/atb...
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Terrestrial antennas

Microwave transmission systems based on terrestrial antennas are similar to satellite transmission system. Providing reliable high-speed access, they are used for cellular phone networks.

The implementation of the Wide Application Protocol (WAP) makes the wireless access to Internet services as E-Mail and even the World Wide Web via cellular phones convenient. Therefore microwave transmission systems become increasingly important.

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Amazon.com

Amazon.com is an online shop that serves approx. 17 mn customers in 150 countries. Starting out as a bookshop, Amazon today offers a wide range of other products as well.

Among privacy campaigners, the company's name has become almost synonymous with aggressive online direct marketing practices as well as user profiling and tracking. Amazon and has been involved in privacy disputes at numerous occasions.

http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.computeruser.com/newstoday/00/01/0...
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Intranet

As a local area network (LAN), an Intranet is a secured network of computers based on the IP protocol and with restricted access.

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Medieval universities and copying of books

The first of the great medieval universities was established at Bologna. At the beginning, universities predominantly offered a kind of do-it-yourself publishing service.

Books still had to be copied by hand and were so rare that a copy of a widely desired book qualified for being invited to a university. Holding a lecture equaled to reading a book aloud, like a priest read from the Bible during services. Attending a lecture equaled to copy a lecture word by word, so you had your own copy of a book, thus enabling you to hold a lecture, too.

For further details see History of the Idea of a University, http://quarles.unbc.edu/ideas/net/history/history.html

http://quarles.unbc.edu/ideas/net/history/his...
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Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)

Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) is a standard reference model for communication between two end users in a network. It is used in developing products and understanding networks.

Source: Whatis.com

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Bill Clinton

William J. Clinton (* 1946) studied law at Yale University, then taught at the University of Arkansas. He was elected Arkansas attorney general in 1976 and served as a governor until 1992. That year he became U.S.-President, the first democratic President after a row of Republicans. His sexual affairs not only cost him nearly his career but he also had to distract from his private affairs: he thought of fighting another war against Saddam Hussein in February 1999. Short afterwards he had a more interesting enemy, Slobodan Milosevic - and the NATO was most willing to fight with him.

For more information see: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/bc42.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presiden...
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The Spot

http://www.thespot.com/

http://www.thespot.com/
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Extranet

An Extranet is an Intranet with limited and controlled access by authenticated outside users, a business-to-business Intranet, e.g.

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1896

1896

The Daily Mail was published in Great Britain. It was the first newspaper for the masses. With the emerging of newspapers the manner how politics was perceived by the public changed completely. It became more difficult to keep secrets, while at the same time there was suddenly a new and nearly perfect tool for manipulation.

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Cisco, Inc.

Being the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, Cisco Systems is one of the most prominent companies of the Internet industry.

http://www.cisco.com

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Java Applets

Java applets are small programs that can be sent along with a Web page to a user. Java applets can perform interactive animations, immediate calculations, or other simple tasks without having to send a user request back to the server. They are written in Java, a platform-independent computer language, which was invented by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Source: Whatis.com

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File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

FTP enables the transfer of files (text, image, video, sound) to and from other remote computers connected to the Internet.

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NSFNet

Developed under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NSFnet served as the successor of the ARPAnet as the main network linking universities and research facilities until 1995, when it was replaced it with a commercial backbone network. Being research networks, ARPAnet and NSFnet served as testing grounds for future networks.

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Network Information Center (NIC)

Network information centers are organizations responsible for registering and maintaining the domain names on the World Wide Web. Until competition in domain name registration was introduced, they were the only ones responsible. Most countries have their own network information center.

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Aeneas Tacticus

Supposedly his real name was Aeneas of Stymphalus. He was a Greek military scientist and cryptographer. He invented an optical system for communication similar to a telegraph: the water-clocks.

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VISA

Visa International's over 21,000 member financial institutions have made VISA one of the world's leading full-service payment network. Visa's products and services include Visa Classic card, Visa Gold card, Visa debit cards, Visa commercial cards and the Visa Global ATM Network. VISA operates in 300 countries and territories and also provides a large consumer payments processing system.

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WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN), which was designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). It was established by a convention signed in Stockholm in 1967 and came into force in 1970. The aims of WIPO are threefold. Through international cooperation, WIPO promotes the protection of intellectual property. Secondly, the organization supervises administrative cooperation between the Paris, Berne, and other intellectual unions regarding agreements on trademarks, patents, and the protection of artistic and literary work and thirdly through its registration activities the WIPO provides direct services to applicants for, or owners of, industrial property rights.

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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

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First Monday

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

http://firstmonday.dk

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Industrial design

Industrial design refers to the ornamental aspect of a useful article which may constitute of two or three-dimensional elements. To be qualified for intellectual property protection the design must be novel or original. Protection can be obtained through registration in a government office and usually is given for 10 to 15 years.

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Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is concerned with the simulation of human thinking and emotions in information technology. AI develops "intelligent systems" capable, for example, of learning and logical deduction. AI systems are used for creatively handling large amounts of data (as in data mining), as well as in natural speech processing and image recognition. AI is also used as to support decision taking in highly complex environments.
Yahoo AI sites: http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Computer_Science/Artificial_Intelligence/
MIT AI lab: http://www.ai.mit.edu/


http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Computer_Science...
http://www.ai.mit.edu/
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National Laboratory for Applied Network Research

NLANR, initially a collaboration among supercomputer sites supported by the National Science Foundation, was created in 1995 to provide technical and engineering support and overall coordination of the high-speed connections at these five supercomputer centers.

Today NLANR offers support and services to institutions that are qualified to use high performance network service providers - such as Internet 2 and Next Generation Internet.

http://www.nlanr.net

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First Amendment Handbook

The First Amendment to the US Constitution, though short, lists a number of rights. Only a handful of words refer to freedoms of speech and the press, but those words are of incalculable significance. To understand the current subtleties and controversies surrounding this right, check out this First Amendment site. This detailed handbook of legal information, mostly intended for journalists, should be of interest to anyone who reads or writes. For example, the chapter Invasion of Privacy shows the limits of First Amendment rights, and the balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the public - or, more crudely, the balance of Tabloid vs. Celebrity. Each section is carefully emended with relevant legal decisions.

http://www.rcfp.org/handbook/viewpage.cgi

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Enigma

Device used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. The Enigma code was broken by a British intelligence system known as Ultra.

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