Turning Media into a Business Card
When you want to make it easy for the person you’ve met during social networking, having a business card is critical to this process. The business cards that people used were based on their contact information and their company. However, people started to change this old style into a new way of socializing. The online social network is the most common place for people to visit you and view your personal information and not just contact information. Thus, when people apply for a job, the work place could highly likely search your name under any social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Cyworld, and Google. Google is in the list of social networking because they can locate your information as long as your name is not common. Google can locate your image, your personal comments that you wrote on the websites that you do not use, private conversations that went through a forum, most of the posts that you do not want to share.
Thus, turning media into a business card is a great deal for people who want to empress their employer. A media channel is another term that describes a TV station, radio station, or newspaper. Media channels communicate important information to people like you and me on daily basis. Your goal should be to get the attention of a media channel right so that they can help turn you into a successful person.
I am not convincing you to go on the social websites and start write about positive ideas and how you love your job, people, family, friends, and the whole world but it is not a bad idea. What I am trying to convince you is to create an online business card that exist digitally and not physically. You should still carry your physical copy of business cards but you should always have an online business card that represents you more personally. An online business card does not follow a traditional style of the business cards. It does not need to have your company name, contact information, and address. It only requires your name and your thoughts on anything that you want to think about. It could be your thoughts about how great a movie was or how bad your day was, just like the topics that you would talk about during the social networking in real world.
With my research on “children with Internet access”, I have learned a great deal on the knowledge that different age groups hold on technology. It seems like people above 40 years old do not get on the Internet and socialize as much as people under 40 years old. The Internet became part of everyone’s life and it created a network that everyone could share with a great amount of freedom. Thus, it is wise to create websites that you could post about your life. You could also use other sources such as TV station , radio station and newspapers to allow yourself into a successful path of social networking but I find the Internet being the best way to impress others.
So, Go on and create your websites-
Share your thoughts-
Enjoy the freedom of speech and socialize with people-
Just make sure you love the world and peace when you post.
Programming Code of Ethics
Where is the line drawn? Who decides?
Do programmers have responsibility for how their code is used? How about the software for the weapons? How about the software that creates abnormal behavior on machines? How about the software that steal personal information? How about the software that are critical to human lives?
All these questions really depend on individuals and their morals. However, we do know that the ethical problems will get even critical because we depend on the technology more than ever before. Thus, programmers must understand the ethical problems and understand that programmers do have a choice to ignore or accept on certain projects.
200 years ago exponential technological change didn’t matter to most people. We didn’t notice because technology wasn’t part of the way we lived our lives. Today everything we do is mediated by technology, and all of it is changing, radically, daily.
Are you ready for 20 times more change in the next 40 years than in the last 40 years? -adaptability
I do believe that the programmers who create software for weapons should understand that they are also involved in killing other human being. It does not matter how much money one could gain from developing software for weapons because one is trying to profit by killing other human beings. This is very identical to the hitman/hitwoman because they are killing someone for the money.
What if a company gave them a wrong specification that the programmers know it will not work properly? Should programmers ignore their thoughts and create bad software? This is very similar to building a bridge with the design when the workers know that there are many design flaws.
People should understand that the programming industry is very identical to the real world industry that deals with human lives. The programmer may not see the result from the software but they may know the cause of the problem was the software.
It is not simple binary codes that one could forget about repairing because just like the house repairs, software must be checked regularly and repaired according to the problems. We are in the era of technology where most people started to rely on digital systems rather than human skills. For example, there are many businesses that rely on single software to manage their employees. What if the software had a privacy leak and their employees’ information went all over the internet?
I believe that one must understand the consequences of creating software and must take a full responsibility of what they created. This is very similar to parents taking responsibility for their children.
One should never ever walk away with the guilt on their hands.
A Programmer must …
…never create or distribute malware
This is really up to the programmer, I do not believe that creating malware will harm anyone because allowing programmers to learn how to create malware will teach them how to defend against itself.
…never write code that is obfuscated or intentionally difficult to follow
There could be some cases where the company just want the source code from you and hire people with minimum wage to continue on with your work. This is not fair for the programmer and thus, he/she is protecting their incomes by creating a code that company cannot simply hire someone to continue on. However, in most cases, a programmer should write code that is easy to follow.
…never write documentation that is intentionally confusing or inaccurate
I agree with the above statement because if documentation is confusing or inaccurate it could cause a disaster in the area that deals with human lives.
…never reuse copyrighted code unless the proper license is purchased or permission is obtained.
I agree with the above statements
…never write code that is deliberately inefficient with the intent of later claiming credit for making efficiency improvements.
I do not agree with the above statement because most of the times, a programmer must follow specification of the software and it should not contain more/less than what’s on the requirements.
…never intentionally introduce bugs with the intent of later claiming credit for fixing the bugs, or to stimulate the uptake of later versions.
I agree with the above statements
…never write code that intentionally breaks another programmer’s code for the purpose of elevating one’s status.
I believe that there is nothing wrong with debugging another programmer’s code and allow him/her to know the bug, and gain respect as well.
…never reveal the secret corporate knowledge of an employer.
I agree with the above statements
…stay current on the advancement of the field of Computer Science.
I agree with the above statements
“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
(Paul Ehrlich)
Software errors cost U.S. economy $60 billion dollars annually. As a student, software bug can be something that I can ignore if it only appears randomly. As long as the software is 90% efficient, I will be fine with the software. It is because the software generally contains thousands of codes and especially in C, it is very hard to find where the problem occurs.(Segmentation Fault).
Let us look at few incidents where software bugs caused great disasters.
Mariner Bugs Out – 1962
Cost: $18.5 million
Event: Mariner rocket diverted from its intended flight path and the mission control had to destroy the rocket.
Bug: A programmer transcribed a handwritten formula to a computer code without a single superscript bar. (more…)
Hartford Coliseum Collapse – 1978
Cost: $90 million
Event: A steel-latticed roof collapsed under the weight of wet snow
Bug: A CAD software that the designer incorrectly assumed the roof will not have any other additional materials to press down. (more…)
Siberian Pipeline Sabotage – 1982
Cost: Unknown
Event: The Trans-Siberian gas pipeline’s control software had a glitch and allowed gas to build up with an enormous pressure, resulting in the largest non-nuclear explosion. (more…)
Another World War – 1983
Cost: Colossal amount of lives
Event: The Soviet early missile detection software indicated that the U.S. had launched five missiles.
Bug: A software could not tell the difference between the missile light and the sunlight reflection off cloud-tops. (more…)
Therac-25 – 1985
Cost: Three people dead
Event: Therac-25 radiation therapy machine delivered massive dose of radiation to patients.
Bug: Race Hazard, where it the code allows Therac-25 to fire high dose of electron beam randomly. (more…)
Who’s fault is it?
Incidents like above with a smaller scale occurs daily in the world. Thus, one must consider who’s fault it is. As a novice programmer, I believe that it is no one’s fault but lack of responsibility from all. If one could create large number of test cases and all cases have positive results, there is absolutely no way in the world to predict the software failure. If above incidents did undergo excessive amount of debugging/testing in their production time and all had a positive result, there is no one to blame except the person that created a programming language.
In my opinion, everyone make mistakes and some are serious and some are not. The serious mistakes put people in jail for years for them to rehabilitate. Therefore, the programmers who made serious mistakes should be put in jail for years ‘?’ . I do not believe that the programmer should be in a jail to rethink what the problem was in his/her code. This is not a mental issue, nor a serial killer material. The purpose of the programming usually is for good reasons and it is wrong to put people in jail for trying to save lives.
eBay: Good or Bad
eBay
eBay Inc. is an AmericanInternet(sic) company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. Founded in 1995, eBay is one of the notable success stories of the dot-com bubble; it is now a multi-billion dollar business with operations localized in over thirty countries. from Wikipedia
Good
eBay lists millions of items such as collectibles, decor, appliances, computers, furnishings, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items. People can easily buy these items without having to go to the store. Furthermore, one can compare individual items in the same category to make a better purchase decision. It is also a place to find many rare items in the world such as rare colored diamonds, classic cars, antique items, etc. In addition, items in eBay listings usually are at the lowest price that they can be. For example, one could pay $20 to $30 CDN for HDMI cables in regular stores but if they wanted to buy from the eBay, they will only pay $5 to $10 dollars for the item. This is possible because the sellers on eBay tend to sell large quantity of items with low prices. Wal-Mart also does similar way of selling products. However, the reason eBay can sell items even cheaper price than Wal-Mart is because the sellers do not need to pay for the rents, hydro bills, etc. Thus, it is very obvious that one will be able to buy products from the eBay with the price no other companies can compete.
eBay also allows customers to fix their broken products more easily than before. For example, let’s say Tom’s laptop touch pad is broken and he needs get it repaired. Tom could visit store to store asking if they can fix the problem and how much the cost would be. This process might take hours or even weeks! Now, let’s say Tom decided to look up in the eBay for his touch pad. He will be able to find a touch pad starting from $10 to $100 CDN. The price may change depending on the model of his laptop but the whole point is that he can now order a part conveniently and allow himself to fix the laptop unless he does not have any knowledge with computer hardware. Just like above examples, people can now go onto eBay and search any parts that they need instead of buying a whole new product. One must understand that it was very hard for customers to get the repair parts on their own due to the repair shops not allowing them or giving them a hard time to find the parts. With eBay, customers now have ability to find certain parts for a very reasonable price and fix it by themselves because most sellers even give out an installation manual.
One may be concern about their personal information being used on the web. From my experience, most of the time eBay will try to refund your money back as much as they can if you used their transaction service. Furthermore, eBay’s transaction service like PayPal can allow you to buy items without giving away your credit card number or bank information. The seller will only see your email address and the confirmation of the payment. This could give a hard time for sellers to identify a fraud payment which I will talk about later in this article.
Let us get down to the real benefit of using eBay. eBay created an opportunity for people who want to work at their home without having to go out to sell their products. The sellers could now stay at home watching their children or doing other activities while selling their products. People now even sell books that teach people how to become a successful seller on eBay.
eBay provided convenient ways of selling/buying products and it allowed people to acquire a better life condition.
Bad
Previous News: Your 4th Amendment Rights are toilet paper at eBay! Quote from Lexington Herald
“If an investigator calls, we tell them don’t bother with a subpoena. We give them names, addresses, telephone numbers, credit-card numbers, whatever we can,” said Robert Chesnut, a former federal prosecutor who now works for eBay.
Let us take a look at common problems that occur in eBay. eBay is an online store that allows people to sell/buy products without having to go through a store. This means, that they do not have a security camera for thieves, and they cannot identify a stolen credit card if it has not been reported. The partiallly anonymous ways of selling/buying products gives Internet thieves the opportunity to target. eBay try to help people avoid online scams but many people do not pay close attention to what they are actually buying and who they are buying the product from.
In addition to the anonymous user problem, eBay could also give a lot of stress to both sellers and buyers. Sellers could post their product on the eBay and when buyer receives the item, he/she could easily report to the eBay telling them that they did not receive a proper item as described. When somebody signs up for the eBay account, they have a right to take out money from your bank account if you also signed up with PayPal. In my personal experience, I have bought a product and never received the item. eBay was not a great help at all in that incident and I could not believe that I fell for the scam. However, I have also had two other incidents similar to this one where I received a broken product and eBay really helped me getting a refund. In my opinion, eBay’s refund decision does not justify the actual event that took place; rather it’s more of a randomized process. However, this is just my opinion from the experience and has nothing to do with the eBay’s real decision making process. I am currently still a member of eBay and have many great feed backs from sellers.
Also, just like a seller problem, a buyer could actually receive a product that does not meet the description and eBay does not believe the buyer’s problem thinking that buyer is trying to scam. Buyers could also receive nothing and pay the seller for the product. Either way, eBay needs to consider delicately which side is speaking the truth or not.
In conclusion, the bad side of the eBay exists just because it is an online store industry where people do not need to see one another in real life. This means that when eBay allow people for a better life, it also allow scammers for a better work place. For your info, I am currently still a member of eBay and I do trust them with my personal information. I have been using eBay for several years since 2001 and only had one problem. Knock on wood!
Hacking: Past, Present and Future
Who are hackers?
a hacker is a person who breaks into computers and computer networks, either for profit or motivated by the challenge.
We must understand who hacker is first before understanding what hacking is. In today’s society, the term hacking seems to have a negative meaning. However, back in 1960s where a group of MIT students taking a lab on AI first coined this world called themselves hackers. They called themselves hackers because they were able to take programs and have them perform actions not intended for that program. This does not mean that they were abusing the program to gain profits, cause a violence, theft, etc. One could compare this to a jailbreaking an iPhone. Notice how it is not called hacking an iPhone?
What is hacking?
A term hacking can be described in countless industries but I would like to specialize the term into a network privacy area. When someone is hacking, he/she is connecting to an unauthorized network in order to access the files that they should not be able to access. There has been a on going war between hackers and security departments of the large companies; websites, banks, government, NASA, national defense, and so on. With the words such as banks, government, and national defense, one could already imagine what they can do with the information that they hacked out.
Ways of hacking
There are way too many ways of hacking a computer through a network. Thus, I will only talk about the common ways of hacking through a network in today’s society. Firstly, let us share some ideas about how normal credit card robbery would occur in early 90s. One could simply steal one’s wallet and use the credit card or one could use a scanner device acting as a normal payment device in shops. Either way, the robber will achieve his/her goal and use one’s credit card with ease. This concept applies to the computer network system as well. For example, one could simple steal your laptop and dig out the history of your computer database and find your password, user ID, SSN, business database, etc. Another concept is someone creating a website that look exactly like a online bank websites. This concept is also known as phishing and phishing still exists in today’s world wide web.
Above methods are easily preventable and can be ignored if you are someone who does not fall into scam arts. The main question is then, how do people break into someone’s computer without their indirect help or some sort of scam. I do not want to teach readers how to hack a computer and I do not want to go to the jail. However, I do want to educate the readers how hackers connect to your network computer without knowing your password or user ID. Thus, one can prevent hackers connecting to their computers.
NetBIOS penetration
- You must be connected to the network
- Go to Run. (Windows Button + R)
- Type “cmd”
- Type “nbtstat -A 0.0.0.0″ (Here I have used 0.0.0.0 for a reason and to find IP address of someone, please read my previous blog).
- Here, you will see a NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table
- Left column contains list of network computer names, the two digit hex code represent type of the system.(Table Information can be found at the bottom of this post)
- If you see a hex code <20>, than it is possible for a hacker to connect to your computer.
- After verification, type “net view \.0.0.0″
- You will see a table of shared resources (located on the 0.0.0.0′s computer folder)
- Type “net use G: \.0.0.0\C
- This will create a G drive on My Computers and will allow you to connect to their computer.
- However, newly updated windows will prevent the access at step 10.
- You can try to nbtstat the 0.0.0.0 and see if they have <03> hex code
- If they do, you can use IPC$(Inter-Process Communication) to connect to their computer with out providing credentials(user ID, password).
- Type “
net use \.0.0.0\ipc$ "" /user:""" - This will get you through the windows defense system and allow you to access their computer once again.
Hackers vs Security System
Every software will have its own flaws and weak points. With these weak points, one could abuse the system and create something unique or steal original database for profits. Whichever the reason might be, hackers can always find a way to access any digital system. Security System will never be able to compete against hackers but they must need hackers around in order to strengthen their defense system. Some companies pay or reward hackers who can break into their system and hire them to work for the company. This is very common in hacking industry and still exists.
Past, Present and Future
When internet first came out, hackers were just a computer geek who loves to program and invent a new machine with a different code. However, people started to abuse the way computers work and used many different types of hacking methods to gain profit. I could talk a long story about the past to the present of hacking, but it is much important to understand what will happen in the future. During the past and present times, people did not rely on network communication or internet services. However, ever since the internet became one of the common house hold items, people started to depend on the internet service. In the future, I would not be surprised if voting for a president or a government is done by internet vote system. The point is that when people start to rely on the internet service where anonymous can easily extract one’s information and use it, this will cause a new war, a war that has never been wrote in the history book before. A war that could destroy the whole country in hours, even in minutes. One must consider what future will be like if we can not prevent hackers accessing any data that they desire. Finding a problem is the easiest step of all, finding the solution is the hardest step.
Timeline of computer security hacker history
1930s
- Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Harold Keen, and Marian Rejewski worked together to develop the Bombe. TheEnigma machine‘s use of a reliantly small key space makes it vulnerable to brute force and thus a violation ofCWE-326
1960s
- William D. Mathews from MIT found a vulnerability in a Multics CTSS running on a IBM 7094. This flaw discloses the contents of the password file. The issue occurred when multiple instances of the system text editor were invoked, causing the editor to create temporary files with a constant name. This would unexplicably cause the contents of the system CTSS password file to display to any user logging into the system.
1970s
- John T. Draper (later nicknamed Captain Crunch), his friend Joe Engressia, and blue boxphone phreaking hit the news with an Esquire Magazine feature story.
1980s – Present
- Countless Incidents, can not write them all here
- Multiple banks being hacked, NASA being hacked, military defense, FBI, CIA, Russian database, etc
Reference to the NetBIOS penetration
Usage: nbtstat [-a RemoteName] [-A IP_address] [-c] [-n] [-R] [-r] [-S] [-s] [interval]
Switches -a Lists the remote computer's name table given its host name. -A Lists the remote computer's name table given its IP address. -c Lists the remote name cache including the IP addresses. -n Lists local NetBIOS names. -r Lists names resolved by broadcast and via WINS. -R Purges and reloads the remote cache name table. -S Lists sessions table with the destination IP addresses. -s Lists sessions table conversions.
The column headings generated by NBTSTAT have the following meanings:
Input
Number of bytes received.
Output
Number of bytes sent.
In/Out
Whether the connection is from the computer (outbound)
or from another system to the local computer (inbound).
Life
The remaining time that a name table cache entry will "live"
before your computer purges it.
Local Name
The local NetBIOS name given to the connection.
Remote Host
The name or IP address of the remote host.
Type
A name can have one of two types: unique or group.
The last byte of the 16 character NetBIOS name often
means something because the same name can be present
multiple times on the same computer. This shows the last
byte of the name converted into hex.
State
Your NetBIOS connections will be shown in one of the
following "states":
State Meaning
Accepting An incoming connection is in process.
Associated The endpoint for a connection has been created
and your computer has associated it with an IP
address.
Connected This is a good state! It means you're connected
to the remote resource.
Connecting Your session is trying to resolve the name-to-IP
address mapping of the destination resource.
Disconnected Your computer requested a disconnect, and it is
waiting for the remote computer to do so.
Disconnecting Your connection is ending.
Idle The remote computer has been opened in the current
session, but is currently not accepting connections.
Inbound An inbound session is trying to connect.
Listening The remote computer is available.
Outbound Your session is creating the TCP connection.
Reconnecting If your connection failed on the first attempt,
it will display this state as it tries to reconnect.
Here is a sample NBTSTAT response of my NT Box:
C:\>nbtstat -A 0.0.0.0 NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table Name Type Status --------------------------------------------- MR_B10NDE <00> UNIQUE Registered WINSEKURE LABS <00> GROUP Registered MR_B10NDE <03> UNIQUE Registered MR_B10NDE <20> UNIQUE Registered WINSEKURE LABS <1E> GROUP Registered MAC Address = 44-45-53-54-00-00 Using the table below, what can you learn about the machine? Name Number Type Usage ========================================================================= 00 U Workstation Service 01 U Messenger Service <\\_MSBROWSE_> 01 G Master Browser 03 U Messenger Service 06 U RAS Server Service 1F U NetDDE Service 20 U File Server Service 21 U RAS Client Service 22 U Exchange Interchange 23 U Exchange Store 24 U Exchange Directory 30 U Modem Sharing Server Service 31 U Modem Sharing Client Service 43 U SMS Client Remote Control 44 U SMS Admin Remote Control Tool 45 U SMS Client Remote Chat 46 U SMS Client Remote Transfer 4C U DEC Pathworks TCPIP Service 52 U DEC Pathworks TCPIP Service 87 U Exchange MTA 6A U Exchange IMC BE U Network Monitor Agent BF U Network Monitor Apps 03 U Messenger Service 00 G Domain Name 1B U Domain Master Browser 1C G Domain Controllers 1D U Master Browser 1E G Browser Service Elections 1C G Internet Information Server 00 U Internet Information Server [2B] U Lotus Notes Server IRISMULTICAST [2F] G Lotus Notes IRISNAMESERVER [33] G Lotus Notes Forte_$ND800ZA [20] U DCA Irmalan Gateway
Bill C-32, Consumers vs Producers
What is Bill C-32?
It is a Bill that strictly tells what Canadians can and can not do with digital copies of songs, movies, and TV episodes. In computer science term, it is illegal to crack the digital encryption on material protected from duplication regardless of what the reason is. Also, this Bill is the government’s third attempt at updating copyright laws. In 2005, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-60, and in 2008, Bill C-61was introduced by Conservative government. Both Bills did not get passed because the Bills were criticized for favoring the interests of copyright holders over consumers.
Brief history of copyright laws
To be honest, Canada has one of the best copyright laws for the consumers.
However, under its “fair dealing” provisions, the Copyright Act does allow individuals or organizations to use original works without such use being considered an infringement. (Canadian Copyright Act, media-awareness)
Above statement shows that “fair dealing” is a vague term in the industry where it requires detailed information of what is allowed and what is not allowed. The Canadian government does not modify copyright acts according to the new technology. After the year 1997, new technologies arrived such as peer to peer, video casting websites and internet based games. One could believe that with the new technology, a copyright law must be modified according to the change in behavior of market industry because just like a new technology, a new method of piracy and decryption will appear without interfering with the old copyright law.
C-32: Consumers point of view
The government will enforce a digital lock into any software, musics, movies, games, etc. Is it effective? One already knows that there will always be a tool to break the lock and supply pirated versions online. Increasing the consequence of sharing the file might reduce the piracy, but the point is that it will still be available to the public. Thus, who is going to suffer from this extra step of unlocking digital lock? The honest consumers who just want to watch, listen, read or play what ever they wanted to. The consumers will suffer from a frustration of an extra step that was pointless to create in order to prevent nothing. One of the ways might be a method of reading data where a copy holder must have a dongle physically or digitally to open the file. Furthermore, it is obvious that the C-32 is far more restrictive than the U.S. DMCA, which also hated by individuals(Comparison Site, Michael Geist). The government really wants to take away the freedom of users by enforcing a lock to digital products. “To put it bluntly, the legislation presented today will make it even more difficult for university and college teachers and students to have access to and use copyrighted materials for teaching and learning,” said David Robinson, associate executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, in a statement.(Peter Nowak, CBC News)
C-32: Producers point of view
The producers such as entertainment companies cheered C-32 because they will be able to control what people can do and can not do with their product. “Without strong protection for our intellectual property, we’re basically operating in a digital Wild West”, said executive director Danielle Parr. “Promoting piracy under the guise of ‘user rights’ does nothing to defend the livelihood of thousands of Canadians who rely on turning great ideas into world class entertainment”. Furthermore, The Canadian Film and Television Production Association said the new bill will help protect the 160,000 jobs in the areas of film, television and online content creation. “While we will need to study the bill in detail, we believe that today’s announcement is an important first step in bringing Canada in line with our competitors around the world, allowing our creative industries to flourish,” said president and chief executive Norm Bolen. In my opinion, the new Bill is going to make many large companies satisfied because it will allow them to control people with their products. On the other hand, this might increase the number of job opportunity which many countries currently need. But, since we are talking about a job opportunity in a digital era, I do not know if a company will require more workers to sell products online.
C-32: Logical Consequence
From above statements, I believe that
Bill C-32 is being criticized by many people because it is creating a disturbance on the consumer rights by restricting the access of digital information.
Bill C-32 is being respected by many companies because it is creating a opportunity to control the consumers.
If one side is gaining and the other side is loosing, this does not equal out to be a balanced system.
Thus, what can we do? do we have any choice? can we do something about this? do we have to accept the fact and live with it?
You can write your Member of Parliament (My MP, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6); or telephone (613-996-0506) or fax (613-992-7974) the Standing Committee’s Clerk, Monique Hamilton; or e-mail the Chair of the Committee, Clifford Lincoln, M.P. (Lincoc@parl.gc.ca). Please ask Clifford Lincoln to make your views known to all members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
I would suggest that in your messages you ask the Committee to do two things: to recommend an amendment to Bill C-32 that will make it explicit that producing a single copy of an unpublished copyright work for research or study purposes is not a violation of copyright; and to recommend a reduction of the period during which unpublished works in archival repositories will enjoy copyright protection.
C-32: Frequently Asked Questions (digital-copyrights.ca)
Q: The government has indicated that C-32 offers a “balance between the interests of consumers and the rights of the creative community”. Would you agree?
A: by Russell McOrmond
I think the government is using an incorrect scale for determining whether the bill is balanced, given the suggested separation between the interests of creators and audiences is largely an illusion. All creators are audiences of more content than they are creators of, and nearly all creators build on the works of past creativity in their new creations. An increasing number of people who would have only been audiences in the past are now creating their own works, and the activities of amateur creators are as regulated by copyright as those of professional creators.
In some areas such as photography, amateur photographers and machine automated photography represents the vast majority of photographs, with professional photography representing a tiny fraction.
As a creators’ rights advocate actively involved in copyright policy since 2001, most of my discussions and nearly all disagreements have been with fellow creators or non-creator copyright holders. (See: Differentiating allies and opponents in the Copyright debate and Is there a copy left vs copy right?)
A more useful scale for determining whether a copyright bill were balanced is whether it protected the rights of all creators, past and current, amateur or professional, and not only historically successful copyright holding companies. With this scale I believe it is obvious that Bill C-32 is excessively tilted in favour of historically successful copyright holding intermediaries.
- A: by Russell McOrmondHere are three interesting dates:
- 1996: WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) (See: WIPO treaties on Copyright and Related Rights)
- 1997: Most recently passed major overhaul of Canadian copyright (coincidentally also Bill C-32, see Chronology of Canadian Copyright Law)
- 1998: Most recently passed major overhaul of United States Copyright (AKA: US DMCA, see Amendments to Title 17 since 1976)
In other words, it is silly to suggest that US law is modern and Canadian law is antiquated, or that the WIPO treaties from 1996 automatically serve as a way to modernise Canadian law.
I agree that Copyright law, both domestically and internationally, is in need of modernisation. I believe this is why WIPO has been having meetings on Limitations and Exceptions, the aspect of copyright that is most out of date. Some other countries and NGOs have been suggesting that Canada has been obstructionist towards this modernisation.
Later treaties often modernise older treaties, and I fully expect to see a future WIPO treaty that removes “technical measures” from the two 1996 WIPO treaties, as well as adding clarity to Rights Management Information and Making Available rights. I also expect clarification on things such as “formalities” given we don’t still ride horses to get around, and now live in the computer age. Registration and renewal is now trivial, and would facilitate additional licensing by making it easier to locate copyright holders.
Q: Many claim that Canadian Copyright is outdated. Is that true?
IP Address, what the hell is it?
Some of you already know what an IP address is, but most of the general public do not know what it really is and what kind of important information it stores.
“An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label that is assigned to any device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.” from wikipedia
Above information is correct but they have missed out the most important fact, which is “privacy leak with the ip address“. It is not just an identification and a location, there are other “goodies” that could leak with your ip address.
Let me start off by giving you a story that could easily happen at the moment of reading this post. Every single computer on “earth” contains its own unique address and must be connected to the internet. Here comes the “magic”, lets say my article gave you really good information and you would really like to send me an email telling me how great my article was. When I receive your email, I could check the ip address of the computer that you used to write me an email and with that ip address, I could do many things. I could find out where you live, I could see which internet service provider you use and I could try to find a port and get into your computer to know more about you. I am not saying “don’t write emails because someone will hack your computer”, its more of being cautious who you send your email too. (Finding IP address in Yahoo! Mail by dgurl)
In addition, one could also use an ip address to protect his/her computer from others and find out information of them. Let me gladly show you an example that you could follow right now.
- Go to ‘run’ command or press CTRL+R
- Type “cmd” without “ and hit enter.
- Now a black screen should appear that looks like MS-DOS(those of you who were lucky enough to enjoy the old operating systems.)
- type “netstat” without “ and hit enter.
- 127.0.0.1 or 192.168.x.x or which ever that is on the left side is your local ip address. (Your home address).
- Right side of that is the address of whoever that is connected to your computer.
-
Guide for "IP Address, what is it really?"
- Now, here comes the fun part! Go to “whois” and type the ip address that you want to track
- The rest is up to you to decide what to do with it
How was the experiment? You also have to understand someone else could do this to you and find out most of the information about you. Now, the questions is “How is this possible?”. If the ISP(Internet Service Provider) told you that if you sign up for an internet service, they will give out some of your privacy to the whole “world“, would you have said “sure why not?”. With all this new found knowledge you have gained today, I’m hoping that no one will try to abuse this information but rather take it as a learning experience to better help protect yourself and your information.
F.A.Q regarding to this post
Can we do anything about ISP giving out our information?
Sadly, No
Can we prevent a user from finding our ip address?
Partially yes, but mostly No
When will this become illegal?
Hopefully soon, but there isn’t any plan to change the IP address system.
