Week Twelve - Social & Ethical Issues 25/05/07

Lecture
The internet has open protocols; anyone can publish, there is no control of unethical and bias information, and it has a lot of intelligent and unintelligent people. The problems on the internet are intellectual property, copyright, plagiarism, security, privacy and freedom of speech. Intellectual properties are ideas, inventions, movies and music. Plagiarism is copying others’ information without acknowledging the source. Security problems include probe attacks, virus contaminations, SPAM and spyware. Probe attack leads to content and password theft. Virus contamination is caused by opening email files, downloading files and peer to peer programs like MSN messenger.

Workshop
Film, video, multimedia and TV, and websites, internet, software and databases are relevant in my undergraduate course. Multimedia and software will be my main studies and I will have to follow the copyright laws carefully so I would not be plagiarising. In the US Dept of Justice Intellectual Property website it shows that US vs. Sankas was called operation buccaneer. For this cyber crime Warez leader was sentenced to 46 months of jail time. The leader of an internet software piracy establishment pleads guilty to the statements made to him.
The website about.com and pcmag.com links are not working properly so it is impossible to enter the specific page required. The only link that is working is http://www.howstuffswork.com/virus1.htm. To protect any computer from viruses is virus protection softwares, avoid unknown programs, purchase commercial software, use USB instead of floppy disks, have macro virus protection and never open email attachments that has executable programs.

Readings
The website History of Computer Viruses and the Open Architecture of the Internet by Shirlee-ann Knight is about early computer viruses, what are viruses, the first viruses (Brain, Lehigh, Jerusalem and Stoned), the first worms (Xerox Worms and Morris Worms), the internet and the spread of viruses and worms, ARPANET, internet protocols, recent and current viruses and threats, the types of viruses (file, macro, visual basic script and Trojan horses) and current viruses (Back Orifice, Chernobyl, BubbleBoy, Kakworm, Concept, Laroux, Melissa and Nimda).
The website Intellectual Property by Brown and Michaels is about utility, plant and design patents, trademarks, copyright, trade secret, computer softwares, domains and names.
The website EFF’s Top twelve ways to Protect your Online Privacy is about personal information, cookie management softwares, email addresses, personal details, advertisements, monitoring, SPAM, security, privacy and encryptions.
The website Email Attachments and Viruses is about risks of viruses.
The website Electronic Monitoring is about types of monitoring, privacy, legal issues, cases and policies.
The website Pro Music is about copyright, legal and illegal rights, personal use, uploading, file sharing and laws.

Summary
I went into the copyright website and read information related to my undergraduate course. Looked at the US Dept of Justice Intellectual Property website and read the articles on US vs. Sankas then I summarised it. Looked at websites that contain information on protecting computers from viruses. I wrote up a plan to protect computers from viruses and other unwanted softwares. And I summarised the readings for this week social and ethical issues.