Digital Media and Society UMUC - Week 4 UMUC

1. Digital Media &
Society
Professor Tony Julien
Week 4 Overview

2. Week 4 we will be focussing on:
• Introduction to the Legal System
• Digital Copyright Basics
• Communication Privacy
• Digital Ethics
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

3. Introduction to the Legal System
• Digital media Law encompasses all statutes,
administrative rules and court decisions that
impact digital technology
• Technology changes so the laws have to change
• Laws are made up of:
• Constitutions
• Statutes
• Executive Orders
• Administrative Agencies and Federal Departments
• Common Law and Law of Equity
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

4. The Structure of the Court System
• The Federal Court System
• Supreme Court
• Court of Appeals
• District Court
• The State Court System
• Most Litigation of Digital Media
• State courts are the Ultimate Decision
Makers
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

5. Types of Law
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien
• Civil Law• Criminal Law

6. Types of Law
• Criminal Law
• Addresses violations against the state
(individuals are included)
• Grand Juries and Preliminary Hearings—
Anyone committing a Federal Crime
• Arraignment—Accuser is formally charged
• The Jury— 12 for federal courts and as
few as 6 for state courts
• Appeal—Can appeal is law is misapplied
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

7. Types of Law
• Civil Law
• Seeks to resolve non-criminal disputes
• Conflicts over contracts, ownership of
property, inheritance or domestic relations
• Civil Procedure—No prosecutor
• Summary Judgment—Case can be judged
without a trial
• Remedies—Judge may order fines for
compensatory and/or punitive damages
• Doctrine of Respondeat Superior—
People can sue employee and employer
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

8. Digital Copyright Basics
• In 1980, Congress amended the Copyright Act
to give express copyright protection to
software.
• Copyright law grants the copyright holder
exclusive rights
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

9. What is Covered Under
Copyright Law?
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien
• Literary works: novel, stories, articles,
advertisement text, manuals, and so
forth
• Computer programs
• Musical works and sound recordings
• Choreography
• Visual arts
• Motion picture & audiovisual works
• Architectural works

10. What is Covered Under Copyright
Law?
• Includes Digital Media
• To get a copyright for a digital product:
• A printout, storage on a hard drive, network
storage, diskette, or ROM chip.
• Duration:
• Individual— Life of the author plus 70 years
• Corporation (work for hire): 95 years from first
publication or 120 years from creation,
whichever is shorter.
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

11. Public Domain
• Anyone can copy, distribute, and make
derivatives of works without permission
• Copyright law protects works even without
registration.
• Works published after March 1, 1989 are
protected by copyright law— Good idea to
copyright in any case
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

12. Derivative Works
• You must obtain permission from the original
owner in order to produce a derivative work;
e.g. creating a movie from a published book
Infringement
• Violation of copyright law is criminal.
• Direct Infringement.
• Contributory Infringement
• Vicarious Infringement
• Inducing Infringement
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

13. Work For Hire
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien
• If employee develops a
work, it belongs to the
employer — employer is
author.
• If independent contractor
develops a work under
contract with a customer,
the independent contractor
will own the copyright.
Unless contract states
otherwise.

14. Communication Privacy
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien
• Important to keep anonymity
when in an online environment.
In other words, not being
identifiable.
• They all have varying levels of:
• Protection goals
• Security levels
• Attacker models
• Trust models

15. Proxies
• Website proxy — connects your computer over
the Internet to a proxy server, which connects
to the viewable website. Keeps your computer/
IP address anonymous on the Internet.
• Proxy Chain— using more than one proxy to
strengthen privacy
Crowds
• Activities of each single user can be hidden
within the activities of many other users.
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

16. Broadcast
• Works like a TV/ Radio: All participants get
information and they chose what to connect to
via a station or channel
RING Network
• The stations are circularly cabled and if a
station sends a message, this message is sent
in succession at least once to every station in
the RING. The recipient becomes anonymous
and unobservable as well.
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

17. Buses
• Works like a bus, where data is passed along a
network and is difficult to track
DC-Network
• This technique realizes that every station sends
its message or a meaningless one at a fixed
point in time and the superposition of these
messages will be received by all stations.
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

18. Mixes
• Uses public key cryptography and designed for
e-mail systems to provide sender, recipient and
relationship anonymity without the need of a
central trusted service.
• A chain of proxies following one after another
Private information retrieval (PIR)
• Allows users to retrieve an item from another
party (e.g., querying a database or a news
server) without revealing which item he is
interested in.
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

19. TED Talk
• Damon Horowitz on TED Talk, talks about what
we SHOULD do with people’s data/ and the
power we possess.
• Should we collect data to make people’s lives
“better?”
• How do we develop a Moral Framework?
• Are there “Truths in Justice?”
• How do we make ethical decisions with our
technology?
• Enjoy!
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien

20. Credits (Creative Commons)
• Image of Contract.
• Image of Handcuffs
• Image of Art
• Image of Books
• Men working
• Woman with mask
CMST 301 Digital Media & Society • Professor Julien