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".

TEXTBLOCK 1/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611725/100438659674
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 2/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659439
 
Disney

Founded in 1929 Disney primarily engages in child and adult entertainment. Starting with the production of animated motion-picture cartoons in the late 1940s Disney began to make also nature documentaries and live-action motion pictures, as well as short cartoons and live-action programs for television. In 1955 the company opened Disneyland, which was their first amusement park. Further openings of amusement parks in the U.S. and Europe followed. In 1996 Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which owned the ABC television network.

TEXTBLOCK 3/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611795/100438659241
 
Virtual body and data body



The result of this informatisation is the creation of a virtual body which is the exterior of a man or woman's social existence. It plays the same role that the physical body, except located in virtual space (it has no real location). The virtual body holds a certain emancipatory potential. It allows us to go to places and to do things which in the physical world would be impossible. It does not have the weight of the physical body, and is less conditioned by physical laws. It therefore allows one to create an identity of one's own, with much less restrictions than would apply in the physical world.

But this new freedom has a price. In the shadow of virtualisation, the data body has emerged. The data body is a virtual body which is composed of the files connected to an individual. As the Critical Art Ensemble observe in their book Flesh Machine, the data body is the "fascist sibling" of the virtual body; it is " a much more highly developed virtual form, and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state."

The virtual character of the data body means that social regulation that applies to the real body is absent. While there are limits to the manipulation and exploitation of the real body (even if these limits are not respected everywhere), there is little regulation concerning the manipulation and exploitation of the data body, although the manipulation of the data body is much easier to perform than that of the real body. The seizure of the data body from outside the concerned individual is often undetected as it has become part of the basic structure of an informatised society. But data bodies serve as raw material for the "New Economy". Both business and governments claim access to data bodies. Power can be exercised, and democratic decision-taking procedures bypassed by seizing data bodies. This totalitarian potential of the data body makes the data body a deeply problematic phenomenon that calls for an understanding of data as social construction rather than as something representative of an objective reality. How data bodies are generated, what happens to them and who has control over them is therefore a highly relevant political question.

TEXTBLOCK 4/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611761/100438659695
 
Another Question of Security

Even with the best techniques it is impossible to invent a cryptographic system that is absolutely safe/unbreakable. To decipher a text means to go through many, sometimes nearly - but never really - endless attempts. For the computers of today it might take hundreds of years or even more to go through all possibilities of codes, but still, finally the code stays breakable. The much faster quantum computers will proof that one day.
Therefore the decision to elect a certain method of enciphering finally is a matter of trust.

For the average user of computers it is rather difficult to understand or even realize the dangers and/or the technological background of electronic transmission of data. For the majority thinking about one's own necessities for encryption first of all means to trust others, the specialists, to rely on the information they provide.
The websites explaining the problems behind (and also the articles and books concerning the topic) are written by experts of course as well, very often in their typical scientific language, merely understandable for laymen. The introductions and other superficial elements of those articles can be understood, whereas the real background appears as untouchable spheres of knowledge.

The fact that dangers are hard to see through and the need for security measures appears as something most people know from media reports, leads directly to the problem of an underdeveloped democracy in the field of cryptography. Obviously the connection between cryptography and democracy is rather invisible for many people. Those mentioned media reports often specialize in talking about the work computer hackers do (sometimes being presented as criminals, sometimes as heroes) and the danger to lose control over the money drawn away from one's bank account, if someone steals the credit card number or other important financial data. The term "security", surely connected to those issues, is a completely different one from the one that is connected to privacy.
It is especially the latter that touches the main elements of democracy.

for the question of security see:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/gio/CS99I/security.html

TEXTBLOCK 5/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438658850
 
News Corporation

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

INDEXCARD, 1/4
 
PGP

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

INDEXCARD, 2/4
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 3/4
 
Napoleon

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

INDEXCARD, 4/4