Blog for week 12

Lecture Summary:

Week 12's lecture is about Social and Ethical Issues and protecting yourself and your PC on the World-Wide Web. The risk of identity theft is huge but can be easily avoided by simply not putting home numbers, street adress and/or your full name. Many securtiy issues arise from using the internet and some include "probe" attacks which involves content or password theft and virus contamination, which can be by opening an e-mail attachment or downloading software such as Spyware. As for internet play (people who play games over the internet) ways of securing yourself from viruses and other bugs are by installing a firewall, having a zone alarm or some anti-vrus software (which needs to updated regularly).

Tutorial Summary:

Review 5 information sheets from the Australian copyright council website (www.copyright.org.au) and record your findings.

The first information sheet i reviewed was Copyright in Australia: information sources. On this information sheet it gives a brief overview of that may be useful to anyone who is looking for information about copyright laws. It goes on to give other sources on where you can gain more information on the subject of copyright laws.

Research or study was the next information sheet i reviewed. The information provided in this reading is to assist people in knowing what they can copy for reasearch or study without permission from the copyright owner. What you are copying has to be deemed fair before you can, under some cirucmstances only 10% of a sources or book can be "copied".

Websites: creating & publishing on the Internet is third on the list. This sheet is intended for people who are involved in creating a website or publishing material on the internet. A whole website may not be copyrighted but components on that website could be, for example a logo on a website may be subject to copyright but not by the author/publisher/owner of the website.

The fourth information sheet I had a look at was Assigning & licensing rights. This information sheet explains how copyright can be transferred from person to person and ways in which a copyright owner may give permission to someone to use his or her work on their website. Before material can be used the copyright owner must sign an aggrement saying that they have allowed permission for this person to use their work, but they must acknowledge that they have used their work somewhere on their website or book etc.

Computer software is that last information sheet I viewed. This reading relates to people who write computer software and also contains some information which is relevant to people who use computer software. Computer programs are protected just the same as a novel or piece of art with the copyright law. The copyright act defines a computer program as "literay work". The copyright does not protect ideas but rather they way those ideas are conveyed by that person.

Reading 1 Summary: ‘EFF's Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy’

This reading goes through in detail the top 12 ways to protect your online privacy. Some of the things explained in this reading are common sense I think, for example, one of the tips on the page is "beware sites that offer some sort of reward or prize in exchange for your contact information or other personal details". You would think that people would know that these types of pop-ups and such are a scam. Other tips such as turn on cookies in your web browser are more advanced ways of protecting yourself than not clicking on pop-ups and spam mail. Cookies are a way of tracking where you have been, what you clicked on, how many times you have visited a certain website and cookies can automatically insert your password or username when allowed.

Reading 2 Summary: ‘Ethics in Computing - Social Justice Issues: Electronic Monitoring’

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Reading 3 Summary: ‘Brown & Michaels - Overview of Intellectual Property’

This reading is about how to protect your work (also known as intellectual property) by ways of copyright laws. This web page is as an introduction to the basic kinds of intellectual property protection. Three types of protection are patents, are appropriate in the protection of a method or doing something a certain way. Trademarks entail covering the name or some other logo which represents the source of a product or even a service. The third one copyrights, which protects work authorship, sculptures, painting etc.