Asymmetric or Public-Key-Cryptosystems

Here the keys for encryption and decryption differ. There needs to exist a private key, which is only known to the individual, and a public key, which is published. Every person has her or his own private key that is never published. It is used for decrypting only. Mathematically the different keys are linked to each other, still it is nearly impossible to derive the private key from the public one.
For sending a message to someone, one has to look up the other's public key and encrypt the message with it. The keyholder will use his/her private key to decrypt it. While everybody can send a message with the public key, the private key absolutely has to stay secret - and probably will.

"The best system is to use a simple, well understood algorithm which relies on the security of a key rather than the algorithm itself. This means if anybody steals a key, you could just roll another and they have to start all over." (Andrew Carol)

very famous examples for public-key systems are:

· RSA:
The RSA is probably one of the most popular public-key cryptosystems. With the help of RSA, messages can be encrypted, but also digital signatures are provided.
The mathematics behind are supposedly quite easy to understand (see: http://world.std.com/~franl/crypto/rsa-guts.html.

· PGP:
PGP is a public key encryption program. Most of all it is used for e-mail encryption.
It is supposed to be quite safe - until now.

· PGPi is simply the international variation of PGP.

for further information about the RSA and other key-systems visit the RSA homepage:
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/questions.html
or:
http://www.pgpi.org

All of those tools, like hash functions, too, can help to enhance security and prevent crime.
They can theoretically, but sometimes they do not, as the example of the published credit card key of France in March 2000 showed.
For more information see:
http://news.voila.fr/news/fr.misc.cryptologie

Still, cryptography can help privacy.
On the other hand cryptography is only one element to assure safe transport of data. It is especially the persons using it who have to pay attention. A key that is told to others or a lost cryptographic key are the end of secrecy.

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Basics: Protected Works

Usually the subject matter of copyright is described as "literary and artistic works" - original creations in the fields of literature and arts. Such works may be expressed in words, symbols, pictures, music, three-dimensional objects, or combinations thereof. Practically all national copyright laws provide for the protection of the following types of works:

Literary works: novels, poems dramatic works and any other writings, whether published or unpublished; in most countries also computer programs and "oral works"

Musical works

Artistic works: whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional; irrespective of their content and destination

Maps and technical drawings

Photographic works: irrespective of the subject matter and the purpose for which made

Audiovisual works: irrespective of their purpose, genre, length, method employed or technical process used

Some copyright laws also provide for the protection of choreographic works, derivative works (translations, adaptions), collections (compilations) of works and mere data (data bases); collections where they, by reason of the selection and arrangement of the contents, constitute intellectual creations. Furthermore in some countries also "works of applied art" (furniture, wallpaper etc.) and computer programs (either as literary works or independently) constitute copyrightable matter.

Under certain national legislations the notion "copyright" has a wider meaning than "author's rights" and, in addition to literary and artistic works, also extends to the producers of sound recordings, the broadcasters of broadcasts and the creators of distinctive typographical arrangements of publications.


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Key-Systems

As stated, telecommunication is seen as an unreliable media for transporting secret messages. Therefore today, cryptography is needed more than ever before, especially for e-commerce.
Key cryptosystems try to provide more privacy.

symmetric-key cryptosystems:
The same key is used for both encryption and decryption. In this case the encipherer and the recipient of the message/text have to agree on a common key before the enciphering-process can start. And most of all they should trust each other. And exactly this is the main problem of this system: how to exchange the key without offering an opportunity for stealing it?
In former times messengers or pigeons were doing the exchange of those keys.

Symmetric-key systems make sense in small entities. If a lot of people are spread over a wide area and belong to the same network, distributing the keys starts getting complicated.
Today, those cryptosystems get controlled by other keys, based on highly complex mathematical algorithms.
some symmetric-key systems are:

- DES (Data Encryption Standard), the standard for credit cards
- Triple-DES, which is a variation of DES, encrypting the plaintext three times.
- IDEA (International Data Encryption Standard)
- blowfish encryption algorithm, which is said to be faster than DES and IDEA

Security and confidence are the key-words for a popular key-system: As DES and its successors have been used for so many years and by many people without having been broken, they are considered safe - safer than others, not used that frequently, no matter whether they are actually safer or not.

For further information see:
http://www.sbox.tu-graz.ac.at/home/j/jonny/projects/crypto/symmetr/content.htm

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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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Extract of AOL Time Warner’s Content Production and Distribution Holdings

The following selection does not claim to present an exhaustive listing, but rather picks some of the company's most important assets. Due to the rapid developments in the world of media giants the list is also subject to changes.

Cable TV Systems and Channels/Networks

Time Warner Cable has 12.6 million subscribers in the U.S. and also runs 5 local 24-hour news stations.

Cable TV channels/networks (some part-owned): HBO, HBO Plus, HBO Signature, HBO Family, HBO Comedy, HBO Zone, Cinemax, MoreMAX, ActionMAX, ThrillerMAX, HBO en Espa-ol, Comedy Central, Court TV, HBO Ole, HBO Asia, HBO Central Europe, CNN, CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNNfN, CNN/Sports Illustrated, CNN en Espa-ol, CNN Airport Network, CNN Radio, CNN Radio Noticias, CNN Interactive TBS Superstation, Turner Network Television, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, TNT Europe, Cartoon Network Europe, TNT Latin America, Cartoon Network Latin America, TNT & Cartoon Network/Asia Pacific, CNN+, n-tv

Movies, TV, Video Production, and Movie Theaters

Warner Bros. film studio

Warner Bros. Television production studios

Warner Bros. Home Video

Turner worldwide Home Video

Turner Pictures

Castle Rock Entertainment movie production company

New Line Cinema movie production company

Warner Bros. film library

Turner Film Library

Hanna Barbera Cartoons

Owns many movie houses, with over 1,000 screens, around the world

Book Publishing

Time Life Inc.

Book-of-the-Month Club

Warner Books

Little, Brown and Company

Oxmoor House

Leisure Arts

Sunset Books

Magazines

Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Life, Money, Parenting, In Style, Entertainment Weekly, Cooking Light, Baby Talk, First Moments, Coastal Living, Health, Progressive Farmer, Southern Accents, Southern Living, Sports Illustrated, For Kids, Sunset, Teen People, Time for Kids, Weight Watchers, Mutual Funds, Your Company, Asiaweek, President, Wallpaper. Hippocrates

Recorded Music

Warner Music Group

The Atlantic Group

Elektra Entertainment Group

Rhino Entertainment

Sire Records Group

Warner Bros. Records

Warner Music International

WEA Inc.

WEA Corp.

WEA Manufacturing

Ivy Hill Corp.

Warner Special Products

Alternative Distribution Alliance

Giant Merchandising

Deals with record labels include:

Maverick records

Tommy Boy Sub Pop

Qwest

143 Records

Internet and New Media

About 130 Websites including: CNN.com, AllPolitics.com, CNNSI.com, Time Digital, People, Southern Living, Sports Illustrated

Turner New Media

Online Services including: Compuserve, Netscape, Netcenter

Pro Sports Teams and Promotions

Atlanta Braves major league baseball team

Atlanta Hawks NBA basketball team

World Championship Wrestling

Goodwill Games

Other

Six Flags entertainment/excursion parks

Warner Bros. Movie World theme park

Over 150 Warner Bros. stores, plus Turner Retail Group

25 % stake in Atari

14 % stake in Hasbro

Business Connections with Other Media Companies

Joint ventures, equity interests or major arrangements with Viacom, Sony, Bertelsmann, News Corp., Kirch, EMI, Tribune Co., and others.

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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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Gutenberg's printing press, 1455

Gutenberg's printing press, an innovative aggregation of inventions known for centuries before Gutenberg: the olive oil press, oil-based ink, block-print technology, and movable types, allowed the mass production of the movable type used to reproduce a page of text and increased the production rate enormously. During the Middle Ages monks took at least a year over making a handwriting copy of a book. Gutenberg printed about 300 sheets per day. Because parchment was too costly for mass production - often for the production of one copy of a medieval book a whole flock of sheep was used - it was substituted by cheap paper made from recycled clothing left over from the massive number of dead caused by the Great Plague.

Within forty-five years, in 1500, already ten million copies were available for a few hundred thousand literate. Because individuals could examine a range of opinions now, the printed Bible, especially after having been translated into German by Martin Luther, and increasing literacy added to the subversion of clerical authorities. The interest in books increased with the rise of vernacular, non-Latin literary texts, beginning with Dante's Divine Comedy, the first literary text written in Italian.

Among others, the improvement of the distribution and the production of books and increased literacy made the development of print mass media possible.

Michael Giesecke (Sinnenwandel Sprachwandel Kulturwandel. Studien zur Vorgeschichte der Informationsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992) has shown that due to a division of labor among authors, printers and typesetters Gutenberg's invention increasingly led to a standardization of - written and unwritten - language in form of orthography, grammar and signs. To communicate one's ideas became linked to the use of a kind of code, and reading became a kind of rite of passage, in every human's life an important step towards independency.

With the increasing linkage of knowledge to wide reading and learnedness, the history of knowledge becomes the history of readings, of readings dependent on chance and on circumstance.

For further details see:

Martin Warnke, Text und Technik, http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/

Bruce Jones, Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World, http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/booktext.html

http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/
http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/bo...
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Bertelsmann

The firm began in Germany in 1835, when Carl Bertelsmann founded a religious print shop and publishing establishment in the Westphalian town of Gütersloh. The house remained family-owned and grew steadily for the next century, gradually adding literature, popular fiction, and theology to its title list. Bertelsmann was shut down by the Nazis in 1943, and its physical plant was virtually destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945. The quick growth of the Bertelsmann empire after World War II was fueled by the establishment of global networks of book clubs (from 1950) and music circles (1958). By 1998 Bertelsmann AG comprised more than 300 companies concentrated on various aspects of media. During fiscal year 1997-98, Bertelsmann earned more than US$15 billion in revenue and employed 58.000 people, of whom 24.000 worked in Germany.

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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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Roman smoke telegraph network, 150 A.D.

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling.

For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

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Enochian alphabet

Also "Angelic" language. Archaic language alphabet composed of 21 letters, discovered by John Dee and his partner Edward Kelley. It has its own grammar and syntax, but only a small sample of it has ever been translated to English.

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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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