Virtual cartels, introduction Among the most striking development of the 1990s has been the emergence of a global commercial media market utilizing new technologies and the global trend toward deregulation. This global commercial media market is a result of aggressive maneuvering by the dominant firms, new technologies that make global systems cost-efficient, and neoliberal economic policies encouraged by the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and the US government to break down regulatory barriers to a global commercial media and telecommunication market. A global oligopolistic market that covers the spectrum of media is now crystallizing the very high barriers to entry." (Robert McChesney, author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy") The network structure of information and communication technologies means that even deregulated markets are not "free". The functional logic of global networks only tolerates a small number of large players. Mergers, strategic alliances, partnerships and cooperations are therefore the daily routine of the ICT business. They bypass competition and create "virtual cartels".

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FREEnet (The Network for Research, Education and Engineering) FREEnet is an academic and research network, interconnecting computer networks of research institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities, colleges, and other research and academic institutions. It was established in 1991 by the N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Center of Computer Assistance to Chemical Research. It provides its more than 350 members of the academic and educational community with all types of basic Internet services and various information services. Strategies and Policies FREEnets general intention is to become a backbone infrastructure providing: Open networking services for efficient access to the network and information resources located both in Russia and all over the Internet. Reliable network connectivity for research, academic and educational communities in Russia and abroad. Worldwide access to science and information resources of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities and colleges in Russia. Assistance to the progress of Russian based fundamental research. Assistance to the development and application of modern information technologies in education.

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Satyrs, Frankenstein, Machine Men, Cyborgs The idea of hybrid beings between man and non-human entities can be traced back to mythology: mythologies, European and non-European are populated with beings which are both human and non-human, and which, because of this non-humanness, have served as reference points in the human endeavour of understanding what it means to be human. Perhaps "being human" is not even a meaningful phrase without the possibility to identify ourselves also with the negation of humanness, that is, to be human through the very possibility of identification with the non-human. While in classical mythology, such being were usually between the man and animal kingdoms, or between the human and the divine, the advent of modern technology in the past two centuries has countered any such irrational representations of humanness. The very same supremacy of rationality which deposited the hybrid beings of mythology (and of religion) on the garbage heap of the modern period and which attempted a "pure" understanding of humanness, has also been responsible for the rapid advance of technology and which in turn prepared a "technical" understanding of the human. The only non-human world which remains beyond the animal and divine worlds is the world of technology. The very attempt of a purist definition of the human ran encountered difficulty; the theories of Darwin and Freud undermined the believe that there was something essentially human in human beings, something that could be defined without references to the non-human. Early representations of half man - half machine creatures echo the fear of the violent use of machinery, as in wars. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, only a few years after the end of the Napoleonic wars. But machines are not only a source of fear exploited in fiction literature, their power and makes their non-humanness super-humanness. The French philosopher and doctor Julien de La Mettrie argues in his famous Machine Man that human beings are essentially constructed like machines and that they obey to the same principles. Machine Man provides a good example of how the ideas of the Enlightenment of human autonomy are interwoven with a technical discourse of perfection. What human minds have later dreamed up about - usually hostile - artificial beings has segmented in the literary genre of science fiction. Science fiction seems to have provided the "last" protected zone for the strong emotions and hard values which in standard fiction literature would relegate a story into the realm of kitsch. Violent battles, strong heroes, daring explorations, infinity and solitude, clashes of right and wrong and whatever else makes up the aesthetic repertoire of metaphysics has survived unscathed in science fiction. However, science fiction also seems to mark the final sequence of pure fiction: the Cyborg heroes populating this genre have transcended the boundary between fact and fiction, ridiculing most established social theories of technology based on technological instrumentalism. Donna Haraway has gone a long way in coming to terms with the cultural and social implications of this development. "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs", Haraway states in her Cyborg Manifesto. In cyber culture, the boundaries between organisms and machines, between nature and culture become as ambivalent as the borderline between he physical and the non-physical: "Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals". In the Flesh Machine the Critial Art Ensemble analyses the mapping of the body, as in genetics, as one aspect of keeping state power in place, the other two aspects being the "war machine" and the "sight machine". The mapping of the flesh machine is a logical and necessary consequence of the development of the other two "machines". Cyborgisation is in the words of CEA, the "coming of age of the flesh machine", which, although it has "intersected both the sight and war machine since ancient times ... is the slowest to develop. " Representation is a necessary preliminary to violence, since "Any successful offensive military action begins with visualization and representation. The significant principle here .... is that vision equals control."

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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 Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force contributes to the evolution of the architecture, the protocols and technologies of the Net by developing new Internet standard specifications. The directors of its functional areas form the Internet Engineering Steering Group. Internet Society: http://www.ietf.org http://www.ietf.org/

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Mark A mark (trademark or service mark) is "... a sign, or a combination of signs, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings. The sign may particularly consist of one or more distinctive words, letters, numbers, drawings or pictures, emblems, colors or combinations of colors, or may be three-dimensional..." (WIPO) To be protected a mark must be registered in a government office whereby generally the duration is limited in time, but can be periodically (usually every 10 years) renewed.

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