Intellectual Property and the Internet/Print version

This book looks at the history of intellectual property laws and their effects on the internet.

Intellectual property, commonly referred to as IP, refers to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law which enumerate and regulate them. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions. The term intellectual property is used to describe many very different, unrelated legal concepts.

Although many of the legal principles governing intellectual property have evolved over centuries, it was not until the 19th century that the term "intellectual property" began to be used, and not until the late 20th century that it became commonplace in the majority of the world. The British Statute of Anne 1710 and the Statute of Monopolies 1623 are now seen as the origins of copyright and patent law respectively.

History

Modern usage of the term ""intellectual property" goes back at least as far as 1867 with the founding of the North German Confederation whose constitution granted legislative power over the protection of intellectual property (Schutz des geistigen Eigentums) to the confederation. When the administrative secretariats established by the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883) and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) merged in 1893, they located in Berne, and also adopted the term intellectual property in their new combined title, the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The organisation subsequently relocated to Geneva in 1960, and was succeeded in 1967 with the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization as an agency of the United Nations. According to Lemley, it was only at this point that the term really began to be used in the United States (which had not been a party to the Berne Convention), and it did not enter popular usage until passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.

"The history of patents does not begin with inventions, but rather with royal grants by Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) for monopoly privileges... Approximately 200 years after the end of Elizabeth's reign, however, a patent represents a legal [right] obtained by an inventor providing for exclusive control over the production and sale of his mechanical or scientific invention... [demonstrating] the evolution of patents from royal prerogative to common-law doctrine."

In an 1818 collection of his writings, the French liberal theorist, Benjamin Constant, argued against the recently introduced idea of "property which has been called intellectual." The term intellectual property can be found used in an October 1845 Massachusetts Circuit Court ruling in the patent case Davoll et al. v. Brown., in which Justice Charles L. Woodbury wrote that "only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests are as much a man's own...as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears." The statement that "discoveries are...property" goes back earlier still: Section 1 of the French patent law of 1791 states, "All new discoveries are the property of the author; to assure the inventor the property and temporary enjoyment of his discovery, there shall be delivered to him a patent for five, ten or fifteen years."

The concept's origins can potentially be traced back further. Jewish law includes several considerations whose effects are similar to those of modern intellectual property laws, though the notion of intellectual creations as property does not seem to exist – notably the principle of Hasagat Ge'vul (unfair encroachment) was used to justify limited-term publisher (but not author) copyright in the 16th century.

Objectives

Until recently, the purpose of intellectual property law was to give as little protection possible in order to encourage innovation. Historically, therefore, they were granted only when they were necessary to encourage invention, limited in time and scope. Currently, particularly in the United States, the objective of intellectual property legislators and those who support its implementation is "absolute protection". "If some intellectual property is desirable because it encourages innovation, they reason, more is better. The thinking is that creators will not have sufficient incentive to invent unless they are legally entitled to capture the full social value of their inventions." This absolute protection or full value view treats intellectual property as another type of 'real' property, typically adopting its law and rhetoric.

Financial incentive

These exclusive rights allow owners of intellectual property to benefit from the property they have created, providing a financial incentive for the creation of and investment in intellectual property, and, in case of patents, pay associated research and development costs. Some commentators, such as David Levine and Michele Boldrin, dispute this justification.

Economic growth

The WIPO treaty and several related international agreements are premised on the notion that the protection of intellectual property rights are essential to maintaining economic growth. The WIPO Intellectual Property Handbook gives two reasons for intellectual property laws:

One is to give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations and the rights of the public in access to those creations. The second is to promote, as a deliberate act of Government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results and to encourage fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) states that "effective enforcement of intellectual property rights is critical to sustaining economic growth across all industries and globally".

Economists estimate that two-thirds of the value of large businesses in the U.S. can be traced to intangible assets. "IP-intensive industries" are estimated to generate 72 percent more value added (price minus material cost) per employee than "non-IP-intensive industries".

A joint research project of the WIPO and the United Nations University measuring the impact of IP systems on six Asian countries found "a positive correlation between the strengthening of the IP system and subsequent economic growth."

Economists have also shown that IP can be a disincentive to innovation when that innovation is drastic. IP makes excludable Rivalry (economics)|non-rival intellectual products that were previously non-excludable. This creates economic efficiency|economic inefficiency as long as the monopoly is held. A disincentive to direct resources toward innovation can occur when monopoly profits are less than the overall Welfare economics|welfare improvement to society. This situation can be seen as a market failure, and an issue of appropriability.

Morality

According to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author". Although the relationship between intellectual property and human rights is a complex one, there are moral arguments for intellectual property.

Various moral justifications for private property can also be used to argue in favor of the morality of intellectual property, such as:

1. Natural Rights/Justice Argument: this argument is based on Locke’s idea that a person has a natural right over the labour and/or products which is produced by his/her body. Appropriating these products is viewed as unjust. Although Locke had never explicitly stated that natural right applied to products of the mind, it is possible to apply his argument to intellectual property rights, in which it would be unjust for people to misuse another's ideas.
2. Utilitarian-Pragmatic Argument: according to this rationale, a society that protects private property is more effective and prosperous than societies that do not. Innovation and invention in 19th century America has been said to be attributed to the development of the patent system. By providing innovators with "durable and tangible return on their investment of time, labor, and other resources", intellectual property rights seek to maximize social utility. The presumption is that they promote public welfare by encouraging the "creation, production, and distribution of intellectual works".
3. "Personality” Argument: this argument is based on a quote from Hegel: “Every man has the right to turn his will upon a thing or make the thing an object of his will, that is to say, to set aside the mere thing and recreate it as his own”. European intellectual property law is shaped by this notion that ideas are an “extension of oneself and of one’s personality”.

Writer Ayn Rand has argued that the protection of intellectual property is essentially a moral issue. The belief is that the human mind itself is the source of wealth and survival and that all property at its base is intellectual property. To violate intellectual property is therefore no different morally than violating other property rights which compromises the very processes of survival and therefore constitutes an immoral act.

Criticism

The term itself

Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that, although the term "intellectual property" is in wide use, it should be rejected altogether, because it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues" and that it creates a "bias" by confusing these monopolies with ownership of limited physical things, likening them to "property rights". Stallman advocates referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warns against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term.

Lawrence Lessig, along with many other copyleft and free software activists, have criticized the implied analogy with physical property (like land or an automobile). They argue such an analogy fails because physical property is generally rivalrous while intellectual works are non-rivalrous (that is, if one makes a copy of a work, the enjoyment of the copy does not prevent enjoyment of the original).

Limitations

Some critics of intellectual property, such as those in the free culture movement, point at intellectual monopoly privilege as harming health, preventing progress, and benefiting concentrated interests to the detriment of the masses, and argue that the public interest is harmed by ever expansive monopolies in the form of copyright extensions, software patents and business method patents.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes that "conflicts may exist between the respect for and implementation of current intellectual property systems and other human rights". It argues that intellectual property tends to be governed by economic goals when it should be viewed primarily as a social product; in order to serve human well-being, intellectual property systems must respect and conform to human rights laws. According to the Committee, when systems fail to do so they risk infringing upon the human right to food and health, and to cultural participation and scientific benefits.

Some libertarianism|libertarian critics of intellectual property have argued that allowing property rights in ideas and information creates artificial scarcity and infringes on the right to own tangible property. Stephan Kinsella uses the following scenario to argue this point:

[I]magine the time when men lived in caves. One bright guy—let's call him Galt-Magnon—decides to build a log cabin on an open field, near his crops. To be sure, this is a good idea, and others notice it. They naturally imitate Galt-Magnon, and they start building their own cabins. But the first man to invent a house, according to IP advocates, would have a right to prevent others from building houses on their own land, with their own logs, or to charge them a fee if they do build houses. It is plain that the innovator in these examples becomes a partial owner of the tangible property (e.g., land and logs) of others, due not to first occupation and use of that property (for it is already owned), but due to his coming up with an idea. Clearly, this rule flies in the face of the first-user homesteading rule, arbitrarily and groundlessly overriding the very homesteading rule that is at the foundation of all property rights.

Other criticism of intellectual property law concerns the tendency of the protections of intellectual property to expand, both in duration and in scope. The trend has been toward longer copyright protection (raising fears that it may some day be eternal). In addition, the developers and controllers of items of intellectual property have sought to bring more items under the protection. Patents have been granted for living organisms, (and in the US, Plant breeders' rights|certain living organisms have been patentable for over a century) and colors have been trademarked. Because they are systems of government-granted monopolies copyrights, patents, and trademarks are called intellectual monopoly privileges, (IMP) a topic on which several academics, including Birgitte Andersen and Thomas Alured Faunce have written.

Thomas Jefferson once said in a letter to Isaac McPherson on August 13, 1813:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

In 2005 the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce launched the Adelphi Charter, aimed at creating an international policy statement to frame how governments should make balanced intellectual property law.

Another limitation of current U.S. Intellectual Property legislation is its focus on individual and joint works; thus, copyright protection can only be obtained in 'original' works of authorship. This definition excludes any works that are the result of community creativity, for example Native American songs and stories; current legislation does not recognize the uniqueness of indigenous cultural 'property' and its ever-changing nature. Simply asking native cultures to 'write down' their cultural artifacts on tangible mediums ignores their necessary orality and enforces a Western bias of the written form as more authoritative.

Ethics

The ethical problems brought up by intellectual property rights are most pertinent when it is socially valuable goods like life-saving medicines and genetically modified seeds that are given intellectual property protection. For example, pharmaceutical companies that develop new medicines, apply for intellectual property rights in order to prevent other companies from manufacturing their product without the additional cost of research and development. The application of intellectual property rights allow companies to charge higher than the marginal cost of production in order to recoup the costs of research and development. However, this immediately excludes from the market anyone who cannot afford the cost of the product, in this case a life saving drug.

“

The availability problem is a consequence of the fact that the incentivizing mechanism for innovation constituted by IPRs establishes a direct link between the incentive to innovate and the price of the innovative product. Under an IPR driven regime, profits are generated exclusively from sales. This means that the higher a price a product can command on the market, the higher is the incentive to invest resources into the R&D process of it. An IPR driven regime is therefore not a regime that is conductive to the investment of R&D of products that are socially valuable to predominately poor populations...

”

Further reading

Arai, Hisamitsu. "Intellectual Property Policies for the Twenty-First Century: The Japanese Experience in Wealth Creation", WIPO Publication Number 834 (E). 2000. wipo.int

Branstetter, Lee, Raymond Fishman and C. Fritz Foley. "Do Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Increase International Technology Transfer? Empirical Evidence from US Firm-Level Data". NBER Working Paper 11516. July 2005. weblog.ipcentral.info

Burk, Dan L.; Lemley, Mark A. (2009). The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226080611.

Connell, Shaun. "Intellectual Ownership". October 2007. rebithofffreedom.org

Farah, Paolo and Cima, Elena. "China’s Participation in the World Trade Organization: Trade in Goods, Services, Intellectual Property Rights and Transparency Issues" in Aurelio Lopez-Tarruella Martinez (ed.), El comercio con China. Oportunidades empresariales, incertidumbres jurídicas, Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia (Spain) 2010, pp. 85–121. ISBN 978-84-8456-981-7. Available at SSRN.com

Gowers, Andrew. "Gowers Review of Intellectual Property". Her Majesty's Treasury, November 2006. hm-treasury.gov.uk ISBN 0-118-40483-0.

Hahn, Robert W., Intellectual Property Rights in Frontier Industries: Software and Biotechnology, AEI Press, March 2005.

Kinsella, Stephan. "Against Intellectual Property". Journal of Libertarian Studies 15.2 (Spring 2001): 1-53. mises.org

Lai, Edwin. "The Economics of Intellectual Property Protection in the Global Economy". Princeton University. April 2001. dklevine.com

Lee, Richmond. Scope and Interplay of IP Rights Accralaw offices.

Lessig, Lawrence. "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity". New York: Penguin Press, 2004. free-culture.cc.

Lindberg, Van. Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code. O'Reilly Books, 2008. ISBN 0-596-51796-3 | ISBN 9780596517960

Maskus, Keith E. "Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Development". Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 32, 471. journals/jil/32-3/maskusarticle.pdf law.case.edu

Mazzone, Jason. "Copyfraud". Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 40. New York University Law Review 81 (2006): 1027. (Abstract.)

Miller, Arthur Raphael, and Michael H. Davis. Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright. 3rd ed. New York: West/Wadsworth, 2000. ISBN 0-314-23519-1.

Mossoff, A. 'Rethinking the Development of Patents: An Intellectual History, 1550-1800,' Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 52, p. 1255, 2001

Rozanski, Felix. "Developing Countries and Pharmaceutical Intellectual Property Rights: Myths and Reality" stockholm-network.org

Perelman, Michael. Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property and The Corporate Confiscation of Creativity. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Rand, Ayn. "Patents and Copyrights" in Ayn Rand, ed. 'Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,' New York: New American Library, 1966, pp. 126–128

Reisman, George. 'Capitalism: A Complete & Integrated Understanding of the Nature & Value of Human Economic Life,'] Ottawa, Illinois: 1996, pp. 388–389

Schechter, Roger E., and John R. Thomas. Intellectual Property: The Law of Copyrights, Patents and Trademarks. New York: West/Wadsworth, 2003, ISBN 0-314-06599-7.

Schneider, Patricia H. "International Trade, Economic Growth and Intellectual Property Rights: A Panel Data Study of Developed and Developing Countries". July 2004. mtholyoke.edu

Shapiro, Robert and Nam Pham. "Economic Effects of Intellectual Property-Intensive Manufacturing in the United States". July 2007. the-value-of.ip.org

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other, related rights. It is an intellectual property form (like the patent, the trademark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete.

Copyright initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing; the contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them. Copyrights are said to be territorial, which means that they do not extend beyond the territory of a specific state unless that state is a party to an international agreement. Today, however, this is less relevant since most countries are parties to at least one such agreement. While many aspects of national copyright laws have been standardized through international copyright agreements] copyright laws of most countries have some unique features. Typically, the duration of copyright is the whole life of the creator plus fifty to a hundred years from the creator's death, or a finite period for anonymous or corporate creations. Some jurisdictions have required formalities to establishing copyright, but most recognize copyright in any completed work, without formal registration. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil law matter, though some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.

Most jurisdictions recognize copyright limitations, allowing "fair" exceptions to the creator's exclusivity of copyright, and giving users certain rights. The development of digital media and computer network technologies have prompted reinterpretation of these exceptions, introduced new difficulties in enforcing copyright, and inspired additional challenges to copyright law's philosophic basis. Simultaneously, businesses with great economic dependence upon copyright have advocated the extension and expansion of their copy rights, and sought additional legal and technological enforcement.

Justification

Some take the approach of looking for coherent justifications of established copyright systems, while others start with general ethical theories, such as utilitarianism and try to analyse policy through that lens. Another approach denies the meaningfulness of any ethical justification for existing copyright law, viewing it simply as a result (and perhaps an undesirable result) of political processes.

Another widely debated issue is the relationship between copyrights and other forms of "intellectual property", and material property. Most scholars of copyright agree that it can be called a kind of property, because it involves the exclusion of others from something. But there is disagreement about the extent to which that fact should allow the transportation of other beliefs and intuitions about material possessions.

There are many other philosophy|philosophical questions which arise in the jurisprudence of copyright. They include such problems as determining when one work is "derived" from another, or deciding when information has been placed in a "tangible" or "material" form.

Some critics claim copyright law protects corporate interests while criminalizing legitimate use, while proponents argue the law is fair and just.

History

Copyright was invented after the advent of the printing press and with wider public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers' monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Charles II of England was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and passed the Licensing Act of 1662 by Act of Parliament, which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material that had long been in effect.

The Statute of Anne came into force in 1710

The British Statute of Anne (1709) further alluded to individual rights of the artist, beginning: "Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing... Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors... to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families:..." A right to benefit financially from the work is articulated, and court rulings and legislation have recognized a right to control the work, such as ensuring that the integrity of it is preserved. An irrevocable right to be recognized as the work's creator appears in some countries' copyright laws.

Aside from the role of governments and the church, the history of copyright law is in essential ways also connected to the rise of capitalism and the attendant extension of commodity relations to the realm of creative human activities, such as literary and artistic production. Similarly, different cultural attitudes, social organizations, economic models and legal frameworks are seen to account for why copyright emerged in Europe and not, for example, in Asia. In the Middle Ages in Europe, there was generally a lack of any concept of literary property due to the general relations of production, the specific organization of literary production and the role of culture in society. The latter refers to the tendency of oral societies, such as that of Europe in the medieval period, to view knowledge as the product, expression and property of the collective. Not until capitalism emerges in Europe with its individualist ideological underpinnings does the conception of intellectual property and by extension copyright law emerge. Intellectual production comes to be seen as a product of an individual and their property, rather than a collective or social product which belongs in the commons. The most significant point is that under the capitalist mode of production, patent and copyright laws support in fundamental and thoroughgoing ways the expansion of the range of creative human activities that can be commodified. This parallels the ways in which capitalism led to the commodification of many aspects of social life that hitherto had no monetary or economic value per se.

The Statute of Anne was the first real copyright act, and gave the publishers rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Copyright has grown from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, covering such items as Sound recording and reproduction|sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works.

File:Copyright Act of 1790 in Colombian Centinel.jpg|thumb|250px|The Copyright Act of 1790 in the Columbian Centinel The Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." That is, by guaranteeing them a period of time in which they alone could profit from their works, they would be enabled and encouraged to invest the time required to create them, and this would be good for society as a whole. A right to profit from the work has been the philosophical underpinning for much legislation extending the duration of copyright, to the life of the creator and beyond, to his heirs.

The 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works first established recognition of copyrights among sovereign nations, rather than merely bilaterally. Under the Berne Convention, copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Berne Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires. The Berne Convention also resulted in foreign authors being treated equivalently to domestic authors, in any country signed onto the Convention. The UK signed the Berne Convention in 1887 but did not implement large parts of it until 100 years later with the passage of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. The USA did not sign the Berne Convention until 1989.

The United States and most Latin American countries instead entered into the Buenos Aires Convention in 1910, which required a copyright notice (such as "all rights reserved") on the work, and permitted signatory nations to limit the duration of copyrights to shorter and renewable terms. The Universal Copyright Convention was drafted in 1952 as another less demanding alternative to the Berne Convention, and ratified by nations such as the Soviet Union and developing nations.

The regulations of the Berne Convention are incorporated into the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights or TRIPS agreement of (1995), thus giving the Berne Convention effectively near-global application. The 2002 World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty or WIPO Copyright Treaty enacted greater restrictions on the use of technology to copy works in the nations that ratified it.

Scope

Copyright may apply to a wide range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms, or "works". Specifics vary by jurisdiction, but these can include poems, theses, drama|plays, other book|literary works, film|movies, choreography|dances, music|musical compositions, sound recording|audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography|photographs, Computer software|software, radio and television Broadcasting|broadcasts, and industrial designs. Graphic designs and industrial designs may have separate or overlapping laws applied to them in some jurisdictions.

Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed. For example, the copyright to a Mickey Mouse cartoon restricts others from making copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works based on The Walt Disney Company's particular anthropomorphic mouse, but doesn't prohibit the creation of other works about anthropomorphic mice in general, so long as they're different enough to not be judged copies of Disney's. In many jurisdictions, copyright law makes exceptions to these restrictions when the work is copied for the purpose of commentary or other related uses. Meanwhile, other laws may impose additional restrictions that copyright does not — such as trademarks and patents.

Copyright laws are standardized somewhat through international conventions such as the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works|Berne Convention and Universal Copyright Convention. These multilateral treaties have been ratified by nearly all countries, and international organizations such as the European Union or World Trade Organization require their member states to comply with them.

Obtaining and enforcing copyright

File:Fermat Last Theorem "proof" registered by Ukraine officials.jpg|thumb|left|A copyright certificate for proof of the Fermat theorem, issued by the State Department of Intellectual Property of Ukraine Typically, a work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time (some jurisdictions may allow this to be extended). Different countries impose different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some 'skill, labour and judgment' that has gone into it. In Australia and the United Kingdom it has been held that a single word is insufficient to comprise a copyright work. However, single words or a short string of words can sometimes be registered as a trademark instead.

Copyright law recognises the right of an author based on whether the work actually is an original creation, rather than based on whether it is unique; two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other.

In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while registration isn't needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages for copyright infringement|statutory damages and attorney's fees. (In the USA, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits.)

The original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the author rather than the author himself, if the work is a "work for hire". For example, in English law the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that if a copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a "Work for Hire."

Copyrights are generally enforced by the holder in a Civil law (private law)|civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes in some jurisdictions. While copyright registry|central registries are kept in some countries which aid in proving claims of ownership, registering does not necessarily prove ownership, nor does the fact of copying (even without permission) necessarily legal proof|prove that copyright was infringed. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but are now becoming more commonplace as copyright collectives such as the RIAA are increasingly targeting the file sharing home Internet user. Thus far, however, most such cases against file sharers have been settled out of court. (See: File sharing and the law)

Copyright notices in the U.S.

File:Copyright.svg|thumb|150px|A copyright symbol used in copyright notice Prior to 1989, use of a copyright notice — consisting of the copyright symbol (©, the letter C inside a circle), the abbreviation "Copr.", or the word "Copyright", followed by the year of the first publication of the work and the name of the copyright holder — was part of United States statutory requirements. Several years may be noted if the work has gone through substantial revisions. The proper copyright notice for sound recordings of musical or other audio works is a sound recording copyright symbol (℗, the letter P inside a circle), which indicates a sound recording copyright. Similarly, the phrase "all rights reserved" was once required to assert copyright.

In 1989, the U.S. enacted the Berne Convention Implementation Act, amending the 1976 Copyright Act to conform to most of the provisions of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works|Berne Convention. As a result, the use of copyright notices has become optional to claim copyright, because the Berne Convention makes copyright automatic. However, the lack of notice of copyright using these marks may have consequences in terms of reduced damages in an infringement lawsuit — using notices of this form may reduce the likelihood of a defense of "innocent infringement" being successful.

"Poor man's copyright"

A widely circulated strategy to avoid the cost of copyright registration is referred to as the "poor man's copyright." It proposes that the creator send the work to himself in a sealed envelope by registered mail, using the postmark to establish the date. This technique has not been recognized in any published opinions of the United States courts. The United States Copyright Office makes clear that the technique is no substitute for actual registration. The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office discusses the technique but does not recommend its use.

Exclusive rights

Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:

• to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (including, typically, electronic copies)
• to import or export the work
• to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work)
• to perform or display the work publicly
• to sell or assign these rights to others
• to transmit or display by radio or video

The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise those rights, and others are prohibited from using the work without the holders permission. Copyright is sometimes called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit certain people (e.g., readers, viewers, or listeners, and primarily publishers and would be publishers) from doing something they would otherwise be able to do, rather than permitting people (e.g., authors) to do something they would otherwise be unable to do. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law. The rights of the copyright holder also permit him/her to not use or exploit their copyright, for some or all of the term.

There is, however, a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law that is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right. Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that defining copyright purely as a negative right is incompatible with the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain.

The right to adapt a work means to transform the way in which the work is expressed. Examples include developing a stage play or film script from a novel, translating a short story, and making a new arrangement of a musical work.

Founded in 2001, Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization with headquarters centered in California and over 100 affiliates located throughout the world. CC aims to facilitate the legal sharing of creative works. To this end the organization provides a number of copyright license options to the public, free of charge. These licenses allow copyright holders to define conditions under which others may use a work and to specify what types of use are acceptable. Terms of use have traditionally been negotiated on an individual basis between copyright holder and potential licensee. Therefore, a general CC license outlining which rights the copyright holder is willing to waive enable the general public to use such works more freely. Four general types of CC licenses are available. These are based upon copyright holder stipulations such as whether the he or she is willing to allow modifications to the work, whether he or she permits the creation of derivative works and whether he or she is willing to permit commercial use of the work.

Individuals may register for a CC license via the Creative Commons website. As of 2009 approximately 130 million individuals had received such licenses.

Limitations and exceptions to copyright

Idea-expression dichotomy and the merger doctrine

The idea-expression divide differentiates between ideas and expression, and states that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the ideas themselves. This principle, first clarified in the 1879 case of Baker v. Selden, has since been codified by the Copyright Act of 1976 at 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).

The first-sale doctrine and exhaustion of rights

Copyright law does not restrict the owner of a copy from reselling legitimately obtained copies of copyrighted works, provided that those copies were originally produced by or with the permission of the copyright holder. It is therefore legal, for example, to resell a copyrighted book or compact disc|CD. In the United States this is known as the first-sale doctrine, and was established by the courts to clarify the legality of reselling books in second-hand bookstores. Some countries may have parallel importation restrictions that allow the copyright holder to control the aftermarket. This may mean for example that a copy of a book that does not infringe copyright in the country where it was printed does infringe copyright in a country into which it is imported for retailing. The first-sale doctrine is known as exhaustion of rights in other countries and is a principle which also applies, though somewhat differently, to patent and trademark rights. It is important to note that the first-sale doctrine permits the transfer of the particular legitimate copy involved. It does not permit making or distributing additional copies.

In addition, copyright, in most cases, does not prohibit one from acts such as modifying, defacing, or destroying his or her own legitimately obtained copy of a copyrighted work, so long as duplication is not involved. However, in countries that implement moral rights, a copyright holder can in some cases successfully prevent the mutilation or destruction of a work that is publicly visible.

Fair use and fair dealing

Copyright does not prohibit all copying or replication. In the United States, the fair use doctrine, codified by the United States Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. Section 107, permits some copying and distribution without permission of the copyright holder or payment to same. The statute does not clearly define fair use, but instead gives four non-exclusive factors to consider in a fair use analysis. Those factors are:

1. the purpose and character of your use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. what amount and proportion of the whole work was taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth countries, a similar notion of fair dealing was established by the courts or through legislation. The concept is sometimes not well defined; however in Canada, private copying for personal use has been expressly permitted by statute since 1999. In Australia, the fair dealing exceptions under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) are a limited set of circumstances under which copyrighted material can be legally copied or adapted without the copyright holder's consent. Fair dealing uses are research and study; review and critique; news reportage and the giving of professional advice (i.e. legal advice). Under current Australian law it is still a breach of copyright to copy, reproduce or adapt copyright material for personal or private use without permission from the copyright owner. Other technical exemptions from infringement may also apply, such as the temporary reproduction of a work in machine readable form for a computer.

In the United States the Audio Home Recording Act or ARHA Codified in Section 10, 1992) prohibits action against consumers making noncommercial recordings of music, in return for royalties on both media and devices plus mandatory copy-control mechanisms on recorders.

Section 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Later acts amended US Copyright law so that for certain purposes making 10 copies or more is construed to be commercial, but there is no general rule permitting such copying. Indeed making one complete copy of a work, or in many cases using a portion of it, for commercial purposes will not be considered fair use. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits the manufacture, importation, or distribution of devices whose intended use, or only significant commercial use, is to bypass an access or copy control put in place by a copyright owner. An appellate court has held that fair use is not a defense to engaging in such distribution.

Transfer, licensing and assignment

A copyright, or aspects of it, may be assigned or transferred from one party to another. For example, a musician who records an album will often sign an agreement with a record company in which the musician agrees to transfer all copyright in the recordings in exchange for royalties and other considerations. The creator (and original copyright holder) benefits, or expects to, from production and marketing capabilities far beyond those of the author. In the digital age of music, music may be copied and distributed at minimal cost through the Internet, however the record industry attempts to provide promotion and marketing for the artist and his or her work so it can reach a much larger audience. A copyright holder need not transfer all rights completely, though many publishers will insist. Some of the rights may be transferred, or else the copyright holder may grant another party a non-exclusive license to copy and/or distribute the work in a particular region or for a specified period of time. A transfer or licence may have to meet particular formal requirements in order to be effective; see section 239 of the Australia Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Under Australian law, it is not enough to pay for a work to be created in order to also own the copyright. The copyright itself must be expressly transferred in writing.

Under the U.S. Copyright Act, a transfer of ownership in copyright must be memorialized in a writing signed by the wikt:transferor|transferor. For that purpose, ownership in copyright includes exclusive licenses of rights. Thus exclusive licenses, to be effective, must be granted in a written instrument signed by the grantor. No special form of transfer or grant is required. A simple document that identifies the work involved and the rights being granted is sufficient. Non-exclusive grants (often called non-exclusive licenses) need not be in writing under Law of the United States|U.S. law. They can be oral or even implied by the behavior of the parties. Transfers of copyright ownership, including exclusive licenses, may and should be recorded in the U.S. Copyright Office. (Information on recording transfers is available on the Office's web site.) While recording is not required to make the grant effective, it offers important benefits, much like those obtained by recording a deed in a real estate transaction.

Copyright may also be licensed. Some jurisdictions may provide that certain classes of copyrighted works be made available under a prescribed statutory license (e.g. musical works in the United States used for radio broadcast or performance). This is also called a compulsory license, because under this scheme, anyone who wishes to copy a covered work does not need the permission of the copyright holder, but instead merely files the proper notice and pays a set fee established by statute (or by an agency decision under statutory guidance) for every copy made. Failure to follow the proper procedures would place the copier at risk of an infringement suit. Because of the difficulty of following every individual work, copyright collectives or collecting societies and performance rights organizations (such as ASCA, BMI, and SESAC have been formed to collect royalties for hundreds (thousands and more) works at once. Though this market solution bypasses the statutory license, the availability of the statutory fee still helps dictate the price per work collective rights organizations charge, driving it down to what avoidance of procedural hassle would justify.

Similar legal rights

Copyright law covers the creative or artistic expression of an idea. Patent law covers inventions. Trademark law covers distinctive signs which are used in relation to products or services as indicators of origin, as does (in a similar fashion), Trade dress. Registered designs law covers the look or appearance of a manufactured or functional article. Trade secret law covers secret or sensitive knowledge or information.

Although copyright and trademark laws are theoretically distinct, more than one type of them may cover the same item or subject matter. For example, in the case of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, the image and name of Mickey Mouse would be the subject of trademark legislation, while the cartoon itself would be subject to copyright. Titles and character names from books or movies may also be trademarked while the works from which they are drawn may qualify for copyright.

Another point of distinction is that a copyright (and a patent) is generally subject to a statutorily-determined term, whereas a trademark registration may remain in force indefinitely if the trademark is periodically used and renewal fees continue to be duly paid to the relevant jurisdiction's trade marks office or Civil registry|registry. Once the term of a copyright has expired, the formerly copyrighted work enters the public domain and may be freely used or exploited by anyone. Courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright. Public domain works should not be confused with works that are publicly available. Works posted in the internet for example, are publicly available, but are not generally in the public domain. Copying such works may therefore violate the author's copyright.

Useful articles

If a pictorial, graphic or sculptural work is a useful article, it is copyrighted only if its aesthetic features are separable from its utilitarian features. A useful article is an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. They must be separable from the functional aspect to be copyrighted.

There are two primary approaches to the separability issue: physical separability and conceptual separability. Physical separability is the ability to take the aesthetic thing away from the functional thing. Conceptual separability can be found in several different ways. It may be present if the useful article is also shown to be appreciated for its aesthetic appeal or by the design approach, which is the idea that separability is only available if the designer is able to make the aesthetic choices that are unaffected by the functional considerations. A question may also be asked of whether an individual would think of the aesthetic aspects of the work being separate from the functional aspects.

There are several different tests available for conceptual separability. The first, the Primary Use test, asks how is the thing primarily used: art or function? The second, the Marketable as Art test, asks can the article be sold as art, whether functional or not. This test does not have much backing, as almost anything can be sold as art. The third test, Temporal Displacement, asks could an individual conceptualize the article as art without conceptualizing functionality at the same time. Finally, the Denicola test says that copyrightability should ultimately depend on the extent to which the work reflects the artistic expression inhibited by functional consideration. If something came to have a pleasing shape because there were functional considerations, the artistic aspect was constrained by those concerns.

Accessible Copies

It is legal in several countries including the United Kingdom and the United States to produce alternative versions (for example, in large print or braille) of a copyrighted work to provide improved access to a work for blind and visually impaired persons without permission from the copyright holder.

Duration

Expansion of U.S. copyright law (Assuming authors create their works at age 35 and live for seventy years)

Copyright subsists for a variety of lengths in different jurisdictions. The length of the term can depend on several factors, including the type of work (e.g. musical composition, novel), whether the work has been published or not, and whether the work was created by an individual or a corporation. In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. In the United States, the term for most existing works is a fixed number of years after the date of creation or publication. Under most countries' laws (for example, the United States and the United Kingdom), copyrights expire at the end of the calendar year in question.

The length and requirements for copyright duration are subject to change by legislation, and since the early 20th century there have been a number of adjustments made in various countries, which can make determining the duration of a given copyright somewhat difficult. For example, the United States used to require copyrights to be renewed after 28 years to stay in force, and formerly required a copyright notice upon first publication to gain coverage. In Italy and France, there were post-wartime extensions that could increase the term by approximately 6 years in Italy and up to about 14 in France. Many countries have extended the length of their copyright terms (sometimes retroactively). International treaties establish minimum terms for copyrights, but individual countries may enforce longer terms than those.

In the United States, all books and other works published before 1923 have expired copyrights and are in the public domain. In addition, works published before 1964 that did not have their copyrights renewed 28 years after first publication year also are in the public domain, except that books originally published outside the US by non-Americans are exempt from this requirement, if they are still under copyright in their home country (see How Can I Tell Whether a Copyright Was Renewed for more details).

But if the intended exploitation of the work includes publication (or distribution of derivative work, such as a film based on a book protected by copyright) outside the U.S., the terms of copyright around the world must be considered. If the author has been dead more than 70 years, the work is in the public domain in most, but not all, countries. Some works are covered by copyright in Spain for 80 years after the author's death.

In 1998 the length of a copyright in the United States was increased by 20 years under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This legislation was strongly promoted by corporations which had valuable copyrights which otherwise would have expired, and has been the subject of substantial criticism on this point.

As a curiosity, the famous work Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has a complex – and disputed – story of copyright expiry.

Copyright and piracy

Street hackers and mp3 pirates in Afghanistan

Piracy is considered to be the illegitimate use of materials held by copyright. For the history of the term 'piracy' see Copyright infringement. For a work to be considered pirated, its illegitimate use must have occurred in a nation that has domestic copyright laws and/or adheres to a bilateral treaty or established international convention such as the Berne Convention or WIPO Copyright Treaty. Improper use of materials outside of this legislation is deemed "unauthorized edition," not piracy.

Piracy primarily targets software, film and music. However, the illegal copying of books and other text works remains common, especially for educational reasons. Statistics regarding the effects of piracy are difficult to determine. Studies have attempted to estimate a monetary loss for industries affected by piracy by predicting what portion of pirated works would have been formally purchased if they had not been freely available. Estimates in 2007 stated 18.2 billion potential losses in consumer dollars lost as a result of piracy activities in the United States. International estimates suggest losses in the billions throughout the last decade. However other reports indicate that piracy does not have an adverse effect on the entertainment industry.

Further reading

• Dowd, Raymond J. (2018). Copyright Litigation Handbook (2019-2020 ed.). Eagan, Minnesota, USA: Thomson West. ISBN 9780314895141.
• Gantz, John; Rochester, Jack B. (2005). Pirates of the Digital Millennium. Financial Times Prentice Hall. ISBN O-13-146315-2. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Ghosemajumder, Shuman (2002). Advanced Peer-Based Technology Business Models (PDF). MIT Sloan School of Management.
• Lehman, Bruce: Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, 1995)
• Lindsey, Marc: Copyright Law on Campus. Washington State University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-87422-264-7.
• Mazzone, Jason. Copyfraud. SSRN
• Nimmer, Melville (1997). Nimmer on Copyright. Matthew Bender. ISBN 0-8205-1465-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Patterson, Lyman Ray (1968). Copyright in Historical Perspective. Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 0826513735. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |unused_data= ignored (help)
• Pievatolo, Maria Chiara. Publicness and Private Intellectual Property in Kant's Political Thought. http://bfp.sp.unipi.it/~pievatolo/lm/kantbraz.html
• Pelanda, Brian. Declarations of Cultural Independence: The Nationalistic Imperative Behind the Passage of Early American Copyright Laws, 1783-1787 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., Vol. 58, p. 431, 2011.
• Rosen, Ronald (2008). Music and Copyright. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195338367.
• Shipley, David E. Thin But Not Anorexic: Copyright Protection for Compilations and Other Fact Works UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-001; Journal of Intellectual Property Law, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2007.
• Silverthorne, Sean. Music Downloads: Pirates- or Customers?. Harvard Business School|Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2004.
• Sorce Keller, Marcello. "Originality, Authenticity and Copyright", Sonus, VII(2007), no. 2, pp. 77–85.
• Steinberg, S.H. & Trevitt, John (1996). Five Hundred Years of Printing (4th ed.). London and New Castle: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press. ISBN 1-884718-19-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Story, Alan; Darch, Colin & Halbert, Deborah, ed. (2006). The Copy/South Dossier: Issues in the Economics, Politics and Ideology of Copyright in the Global South [6]. Copy/South Research Group. ISBN 978-0-9553140-1-8. {{cite book}}: External link in |title= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)

External links

• Copyrights at Curlie
• Collection of laws for electronic access from World Intellectual Property Organization – intellectual property laws of many countries
• Copyright from UCB Libraries GovPubs
• About Copyright at the UK Intellectual Property Office
• A Bibliography on the Origins of Copyright and Droit d'Auteur
• 6.912 Introduction to Copyright Law taught by Keith Winstein, MIT OpenCourseWare January IAP 2006
• Copyright Berne Convention: Country List List of the 164 members of the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works.
• UK Copyright Law fact sheet (April 2000) a concise introduction to UK Copyright legislation
• IPR Toolkit – An Overview, Key Issues and Toolkit Elements (Sept 2009) by Professor Charles Oppenheim and Naomi Korn at the Strategic Content Alliance
• MIT OpenCourseWare 6.912 Introduction to Copyright Law Free self-study course with video lectures as offered during the January, 2006, Independent Activities Period (IAP)

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.

Piracy

The practice of labeling the infringement of exclusive rights in creative works as "piracy" predates statutory copyright law. Prior to the Statute of Anne 1709, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557 received a Royal Charte giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labeled pirates as early as 1603. After the establishment of copyright law with the 1709 Statute of Anne in Britain, the term "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorized manufacturing and selling of works in copyright. Article 12 of the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works uses the term "piracy" in relation to copyright infringement, stating "Pirated works may be seized on importation into those countries of the Union where the original work enjoys legal protection." Article 61 of the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale." Piracy traditionally refers to acts intentionally committed for financial gain, though more recently, copyright holders have described online copyright infringement, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, as "piracy."

Theft

File:Piracy is a crime - Unskippable Anti-Piracy track.png

An unskippable anti-piracy film included on some movie DVDs equates copyright infringement with theft.

Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as "theft." In copyright law, infringement does not refer to actual theft, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization. Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft, holding, for instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property and that "interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright... 'an infringer of the copyright.'" In the case of copyright infringement the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law is invaded, i.e. exclusive rights, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.

Enforcement responsibility

The enforcement of copyright is the responsibility of the copyright holder. Article 50 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries enable courts to remedy copyright infringement with injunctions and the destruction of infringing products, and award damages. Copyright holders have started to demand through the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that states act to defend copyright holders' rights and enforce copyright law through active policing of copyright infringement. It has also been demanded that states provide criminal sanctions for all types of copyright infringement and pursue copyright infringement through administrative procedures, rather than the judicial due process required by TRIPs.

Criminal liability

Article 61 of TRIPs requires that signatory countries establish criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale". Copyright holders have demanded that states provide criminal sanctions for all types of copyright infringement.

In India Under the Copyright Act, 1957 Section 63 it has been provided that "Any person who knowingly infringes or abets the infringement of the copyright in a work shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both."

Online intermediary liability

Whether or not internet intermediaries have liability for copyright infringement by users, and without the intermediaries' authorisation, has been subject to debate and court cases in a number of countries. Liability of online intermediaries has been one of the earliest legal issues surrounding the internet. Early court cases focused on the liability of internet service providers (ISPs) for hosting, transmitting or publishing content that could be actioned under civil or criminal law, such as libel, defamation, or pornography. As different content was considered in different legal systems and in the absence of common definitions for "ISPs," "bulletin boards" or "online publishers," early law on online intermediaries' liability is widely different from country to country. The first laws on online intermediaries' liability were passed from the mid 1990s onwards and the debate has shifted away from questions about whether internet intermediaries are liable for different content, such as libellous content or copyright infringing content, towards a debate on whether online intermediaries should generally be made responsible for content accessible through their services or infrastructure.

The BitTorrent protocol: In this animation, the colored bars beneath all of the 7 clients in the upper region above represent the file, with each color representing an individual piece of the file. After the initial pieces transfer from the seed (large system at the bottom), the pieces are individually transferred from client to client. The original seeder only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to receive a copy. To stop animation, click browser's Stop or hit ESC key.

Internet intermediaries used to be understood primarily in terms of ISPs, however, internet intermediaries are now also understood to be internet portals, software and games providers, those providing virtual information such as interactive forums and comment facilities with or without a moderation system, aggregators, universities, libraries and archives, search engines, chat rooms, web blogs, mailing lists, and any website which provides access to third party content through, for example, hyperlinks. Questions of liability have emerged in relation to internet communications infrastructure intermediaries other than ISPs, including internet backbone providers, cable companies and mobile communications providers.

The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) and the European E-Commerce Directive (2000) provide online intermediaries with safe harbor provisions, known as "mere conduit principle" in the Directive. Online intermediaries who host content that infringes copyright are not liable, so long as they do not know about it and take actions once the infringing content is brought to their attention. However, questions have arisen in relation to online intermediaries that are not hosts, particularly in the context of copyright infringement through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Such intermediaries may be regarded as enabling or assisting in the downloading and uploading of files by users, and may include the writer of a peer-to-peer software, the websites that allow users to download peer-to-peer software, and in the case of the BitTorrent protocol the torrent site website and the torrent tracker. These intermediaries do not host or transmit the files that infringe copyright, though they may be considered to be "pointing to" the files. Since the late 1990s copyright holders have taken legal actions against a number of peer-to-peer intermediaries, such as Napster, Grokster, eMule, SoulSeek and BitTorrent, and case law on the liability of internet service providers (ISPs) in relation to copyright infringement has emerged primarily in relation to these cases.

The decentralized structure of peer-to-peer networks does not sit easily with existing laws on online intermediaries' liability. The BitTorrent protocol established an entirely decentraliszed network architecture in order to distribute large files effectively and recent developments in peer-to-peer technology towards more complex network configurations are said to have been driven by a desire to avoid liability as intermediaries under existing laws. While ISPs and other organizations acting as online intermediaries, such as libraries, have been given protection under existing safe harbor provisions in relation to copyright infringement, peer-to-peer file sharing intermediaries have been denied access to the safe harbor provisions in relation to copyright infringement. Legal action in relation to copyright infringement against peer-to-peer intermediaries, such as Napster, are generally brought in relation to principles of secondary liability for copyright infringement, such as contributory liability and vicarious liability.

Countries where sharing files without profit is legal

Downloading copied music is legal in some countries in the context of the copyright, such as Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, and Panama, provided that the songs are not sold. In Canada it is legal to download any copyrighted file as long as it is for noncommercial use, but it is illegal to unauthorized distribute the copyrighted files like uploading them to a p2p network.

Russian law

Downloading music and films for home use is legal due to exception provided by section 1273 of Russian Federation Civil Code. A special 1% compensatory levy intended for copyright holders is collected from the price of certain goods (like computers or clean CD-RW disks). The compensation mechanism is unclear, though, and left entirely in the hands of the collecting agency established at the same time, with Nikita Mikhalkov, a prominent film director and political figure, at its helm.

Further reading

• Johns, Adrian: Piracy. The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. The University of Chicago Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-226-40118-8
• Rosen, Ronald (2008). Music and Copyright. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195338367.
• Joe Karaganis, ed. (2011). Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Social Science Research Council. ISBN 978-0-9841257-4-6.

External links

• A 2000 Salon.com article by Courtney Love addressing copyright infringement of music
• A 2001 reprint of two speeches given by Thomas Macaulay in Parliament in 1841, when the issue of copyright was being hammered out.
• A 2003 article on CD Piracy in China from the music webzine www.CLUAS.com
• A 2008 article illustrating the effect of piracy on video games
• An article for students explaining the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement
• How Corporate Law Inhibits Social Responsibility
• Movie and Record Industry Piracy Figures Incendiary, But Not Fact. – June 2006 MP3 Newswire article challenges inflated copyright infringement claims by media companies
• US Copyright Office

An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing specific acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions. In some cases, breaches of injunctions are considered serious criminal offenses that merit arrest and possible prison sentences.

The term interdict is used in Scots law.

Rationale and reasons for injunctions

This injunctive power to restore the status quo ante; that is, to make whole again someone whose rights have been violated, is essential to the concept of fairness (equity). For example, money damages would be of scant benefit to a land owner who wished simply to prevent someone from repeatedly trespassing on his land.

These are some common reasons for injunctions:

• stalking
• domestic violence
• harassment
• discrimination
• bullying (in some cases)
• physical abuse|physical or sexual abuse
• the wrongful transfer of real property, also called fraudulent conveyance
• the disclosure of sensitive information in line with the Official Secrets Act 1989 (UK only)
• trademark infringement
• copyright infringement
• patent infringement
• trade secrets|trade secret disclosure
• tortious interference of contract
• criminal contempt
• civil contempt
• unauthorized practice of law

Gag orders (many countries)

A gag order is an order by a court or government restricting information or comment from being made public.

American injunctions

Temporary restraining orders

A temporary restraining order (TRO) may be issued for short term. A TRO usually lasts while a motion for preliminary injunction is being decided, and the court decides whether to drop the order or to issue a preliminary injunction.

A TRO may be granted ex parte, without informing in advance the party to whom the TRO is directed. Usually, a party moves ex parte to prevent an adversary from having notice of one's intentions. The TRO is granted to prevent the adversary from acting to frustrate the purpose of the action, for example, by wasting or hiding assets (as often occurs in divorce) or disclosing a trade secret that had been the subject of a non-disclosure agreement.

To obtain a TRO, a plaintiff must prove four elements: (1) likelihood of success on the merits; (2) the extent to which the plaintiff is being irreparably harmed by the defendant's conduct; (3) the extent to which the defendant will suffer irreparable harm if the TRO issues; and (4) the public interest.

Other kinds of restraining orders

Many states have injunction laws that are written specifically to stop domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault or harassment and these are commonly called restraining orders, orders of protection, abuse prevention orders, or protective orders.

Injunctions in US labor law context

After the United States government successfully used an injunction to outlaw the Pullman Strike|Pullman boycott in 1894 in In re Debs, employers found that they could obtain United States federal courts|federal court injunctions to ban strikes and organizing activities of all kinds by trade union. These injunctions were often extremely broad; one injunction issued by a federal court in the 1920s effectively barred the United Mine Workers of America from talking to workers who had signed "yellow dog contracts" with their employers.

Unable to limit what they called "government by injunction" in the courts, labor and its allies persuaded the Congress of the United States in 1932 to pass the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which imposed so many procedural and substantive limits on the federal courts' power to issue injunctions that it was an effective prohibition on federal court injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes. A number of states followed suit and enacted "Little Norris-LaGuardia Acts" that imposed similar limitations on state courts' powers. The courts have since recognized a limited exception to the Norris-LaGuardia Act's strict limitations in those cases in which a party seeks injunctive relief to enforce the grievance arbitration provisions of a collective bargaining Contract|agreement.

Employment discrimination

Differing from most other cases, where equitable relief is given very rarely, in discrimination cases, injunctive relief is actually the preferred method of remedy. However, if there is evidence that there is now a hostile relationship between the employer and employee, the court may order a reasonable amount of "front pay" along with the back pay (back pay: The amount of lost wages and benefits that an employee lost ever since he was terminated, up to the point that the judgment is entered).

Australian apprehended violence orders

A court may grant an apprehended violence order (AVO) to a person who fears violence, harassment, abuse, or stalking. A court may issue an AVO if it believes, on the balance of probabilities, that a person has reasonable grounds to fear personal violence, harassing conduct, molestation, intimidation, or stalking. A defendant's non-compliance with the order may result in the imposition of a fine, imprisonment, or both.

UK superinjunctions

In England and Wales, injunctions whose existence and details may not be legally reported, in addition to facts or allegations which may not be disclosed, have been issued; they have been given the informal name of superinjunctions (or super-injunctions).

An example was the superinjunction raised in September 2009 by Carter-Ruck solicitors on behalf of oil trader Trafigura, prohibiting the reporting of an internal Trafigura report into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal. The existence of the superinjunction was revealed only when it was referred to in a parliamentary question that was subsequently circulated on the Internet (parliamentary privilege protects statements which would otherwise be held to be in contempt of court). Before it could be challenged in court, the injunction was then varied to permit reporting of the question. By long legal tradition, parliamentary proceedings may be reported without restriction. Parliamentary proceedings are only covered by qualified privilege. Another example of the use of a superinjunction was in a libel case in which a plaintiff who claimed he was defamed by family members in a dispute over a multimillion pound family trust obtained anonymity for himself and for his relatives.

Roy Greenslade credits the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, with coining the word "super-injunction" in an article about the Trafigura affair in September 2009.

The term "hyper-injunction" has also been used to describe an injunction similar to a superinjunction but also including an order that the injunction must not be discussed with members of Parliament, journalists or lawyers. One known hyper-injunction was obtained at the High Court in 2006, preventing its subject from saying that paint used in water tanks on passenger ships can break down and release potentially toxic chemicals. This example became public knowledge in Parliament under parliamentary privilege.

By May 2011, Private Eye claimed to be aware of 53 super-injunctions and anonymised privacy injunctions, though David Neuberger, Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury|Lord Neuberger's report into the usage of super-injunctions revealed that only two super-injunctions had been granted since January 2010. Many media sources were wrongly stating that all gagging orders were super-injunctions.

External links

• On the Difference Between Lawsuit, a Restraining Order, and an Injunction

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices worldwide.

An often-used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the phone book for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, the domain name www.example.com translates to the addresses 192.0.32.10 (IPv4) and 2620:0:2d0:200::10 (IPv6).

The Domain Name System makes it possible to assign domain names to groups of Internet resources and users in a meaningful way, independent of each entity's physical location. Because of this, World Wide Web (WWW) hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain consistent and constant even if the current Internet routing arrangements change or the participant uses a mobile device. Internet domain names are easier to remember than IP addresses such as 208.77.188.166 (IPv4) or 2001:db8:1f70::999:de8:7648:6e8 (IPv6). Users take advantage of this when they recite meaningful Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and e-mail addresses without having to know how the computer actually locates them.

The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain. Authoritative name servers are assigned to be responsible for their particular domains, and in turn can assign other authoritative name servers for their sub-domains. This mechanism has made the DNS distributed and fault tolerant and has helped avoid the need for a single central register to be continually consulted and updated.

In general, the Domain Name System also stores other types of information, such as the list of mail servers that accept email for a given Internet domain. By providing a worldwide, distributed keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet.

Other identifiers such as RFID tags, UPCs, international characters in email addresses and host names, and a variety of other identifiers could all potentially use DNS.

The Domain Name System also specifies the technical functionality of this database service. It defines the DNS protocol, a detailed specification of the data structures and communication exchanges used in DNS, as part of the Internet Protocol Suite.

Overview

The Internet maintains two principal namespaces, the domain name hierarchy and the Internet Protocol (IP) address spaces. The Domain Name System maintains the domain name hierarchy and provides translation services between it and the address spaces. Internet name servers and a communication protocol implement the Domain Name System. A DNS name server is a server that stores the DNS records for a domain name, such as address (A) records, name server (NS) records, and mail exchanger (MX) records (see also list of DNS record types); a DNS name server responds with answers to queries against its database.

History

The practice of using a name as a simpler, more memorable abstraction of a host's numerical address on a network dates back to the ARPANET era. Before the DNS was invented in 1982, each computer on the network retrieved a file called HOSTS.TXT from a computer at SRI (now SRI International). The HOSTS.TXT file mapped names to numerical addresses. A hosts file still exists on most modern operating systems by default and generally contains a mapping of the IP address 127.0.0.1 to "localhost". Many operating systems use name resolution logic that allows the administrator to configure selection priorities for available name resolution methods.

The rapid growth of the network made a centrally maintained, hand-crafted HOSTS.TXT file unsustainable; it became necessary to implement a more scalable system capable of automatically disseminating the requisite information.

At the request of Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System in 1983 and wrote the first implementation. The original specifications were published by the Internet Engineering Task Force in RFC 882 and RFC 883, which were superseded in November 1987 by RFC 1034 and RFC 1035. Several additional Request for Comments have proposed various extensions to the core DNS protocols.

In 1984, four Berkeley students—Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle, and Songnian Zhou—wrote the first Unix implementation, called The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) Server. In 1985, Kevin Dunlap of DEC significantly re-wrote the DNS implementation. Mike Karels, Phil Almquist, and Paul Vixie have maintained BIND since then. BIND was ported to the Windows NT platform in the early 1990s.

BIND was widely distributed, especially on Unix systems, and is the dominant DNS software in use on the Internet. With the heavy use and resulting scrutiny of its open-source code, as well as increasingly more sophisticated attack methods, many security flaws were discovered in BIND. This contributed to the development of a number of alternative name server and resolver programs. BIND version 9 was written from scratch and now has a security record comparable to other modern DNS software.

Structure

Domain name space

The domain name space consists of a tree of domain names. Each node or leaf in the tree has zero or more resource records, which hold information associated with the domain name. The tree sub-divides into zones beginning at the root zone. A DNS zone may consist of only one domain, or may consist of many domains and sub-domains, depending on the administrative authority delegated to the manager.

The hierarchical Domain Name System, organized into zones, each served by a name server

Administrative responsibility over any zone may be divided by creating additional zones. Authority is said to be delegated for a portion of the old space, usually in the form of sub-domains, to another nameserver and administrative entity. The old zone ceases to be authoritative for the new zone.

Domain name syntax

The definitive descriptions of the rules for forming domain names appear in RFC 1035, RFC 1123, and RFC 2181. A domain name consists of one or more parts, technically called labels, that are conventionally concatenated, and delimited by dots, such as example.com.

• The right-most label conveys the top-level domain; for example, the domain name www.example.com belongs to the top-level domain com.
• The hierarchy of domains descends from right to left; each label to the left specifies a subdivision, or subdomain of the domain to the right. For example: the label example specifies a subdomain of the com domain, and www is a sub domain of example.com. This tree of subdivisions may have up to 127 levels.
• Each label may contain up to 63 characters. The full domain name may not exceed a total length of 253 characters in its external dotted-label specification. In the internal binary representation of the DNS the maximum length requires 255 octets of storage. In practice, some domain registries may have shorter limits.
• DNS names may technically consist of any character representable in an octet. However, the allowed formulation of domain names in the DNS root zone, and most other sub domains, uses a preferred format and character set. The characters allowed in a label are a subset of the ASCII character set, and includes the characters a through z, A through Z, digits 0 through 9, and the hyphen. This rule is known as the LDH rule (letters, digits, hyphen). Domain names are interpreted in case-independent manner. Labels may not start or end with a hyphen.
• A hostname is a domain name that has at least one IP address associated. For example, the domain names www.example.com and example.com are also hostnames, whereas the com domain is not.

Internationalized domain names

The permitted character set of the DNS prevented the representation of names and words of many languages in their native alphabets or scripts. ICANN has approved the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system, which maps Unicode strings into the valid DNS character set using Punycode. In 2009 ICANN approved the installation of IDN country code top-level domains. In addition, many registries of the existing top level domain names (TLD)s have adopted IDNA.

Name servers

The Domain Name System is maintained by a distributed database system, which uses the client-server model. The nodes of this database are the name servers. Each domain has at least one authoritative DNS server that publishes information about that domain and the name servers of any domains subordinate to it. The top of the hierarchy is served by the root nameservers, the servers to query when looking up (resolving) a TLD.

Authoritative name server

An authoritative name server is a name server that gives answers that have been configured by an original source, for example, the domain administrator or by dynamic DNS methods, in contrast to answers that were obtained via a regular DNS query to another name server. An authoritative-only name server only returns answers to queries about domain names that have been specifically configured by the administrator.

An authoritative name server can either be a master server or a slave server. A master server is a server that stores the original (master) copies of all zone records. A slave server uses an automatic updating mechanism of the DNS protocol in communication with its master to maintain an identical copy of the master records.

Every DNS zone must be assigned a set of authoritative name servers that are installed in NS records in the parent zone.

When domain names are registered with a domain name registrar, their installation at the domain registry of a top level domain requires the assignment of a primary name server and at least one secondary name server. The requirement of multiple name servers aims to make the domain still functional even if one name server becomes inaccessible or inoperable. The designation of a primary name server is solely determined by the priority given to the domain name registrar. For this purpose, generally only the fully qualified domain name of the name server is required, unless the servers are contained in the registered domain, in which case the corresponding IP address is needed as well.

Primary name servers are often master name servers, while secondary name server may be implemented as slave servers.

An authoritative server indicates its status of supplying definitive answers, deemed authoritative, by setting a software flag (a protocol structure bit), called the Authoritative Answer (AA) bit in its responses. This flag is usually reproduced prominently in the output of DNS administration query tools (such as dig) to indicate that the responding name server is an authority for the domain name in question.

Recursive and caching name server

In principle, authoritative name servers are sufficient for the operation of the Internet. However, with only authoritative name servers operating, every DNS query must start with recursive queries at the root zone of the Domain Name System and each user system must implement resolver software capable of recursive operation.

To improve efficiency, reduce DNS traffic across the Internet, and increase performance in end-user applications, the Domain Name System supports DNS cache servers which store DNS query results for a period of time determined in the configuration (time-to-live) of the domain name record in question. Typically, such caching DNS servers, also called DNS caches, also implement the recursive algorithm necessary to resolve a given name starting with the DNS root through to the authoritative name servers of the queried domain. With this function implemented in the name server, user applications gain efficiency in design and operation.

The combination of DNS caching and recursive functions in a name server is not mandatory; the functions can be implemented independently in servers for special purposes.

Internet service providers typically provide recursive and caching name servers for their customers. In addition, many home networking routers implement DNS caches and recursors to improve efficiency in the local network.

DNS resolvers

The client-side of the DNS is called a DNS resolver. It is responsible for initiating and sequencing the queries that ultimately lead to a full resolution (translation) of the resource sought, e.g., translation of a domain name into an IP address.

A DNS query may be either a non-recursive query or a recursive query:

• A non-recursive query is one in which the DNS server provides a record for a domain for which it is authoritative itself, or it provides a partial result without querying other servers.
• A recursive query is one for which the DNS server will fully answer the query (or give an error) by querying other name servers as needed. DNS servers are not required to support recursive queries.

The resolver, or another DNS server acting recursively on behalf of the resolver, negotiates use of recursive service using bits in the query headers.

Resolving usually entails iterating through several name servers to find the needed information. However, some resolvers function more simply by communicating only with a single name server. These simple resolvers (called "stub resolvers") rely on a recursive name server to perform the work of finding information for them.

Operation

Address resolution mechanism

Domain name resolvers determine the appropriate domain name servers responsible for the domain name in question by a sequence of queries starting with the right-most (top-level) domain label.

A DNS recursor consults three nameservers to resolve the address www.wikipedia.org.

The process entails:

1. A network host is configured with an initial cache (so called hints) of the known addresses of the root nameservers. Such a hint file is updated periodically by an administrator from a reliable source.
2. A query to one of the root servers to find the server authoritative for the top-level domain.
3. A query to the obtained TLD server for the address of a DNS server authoritative for the second-level domain.
4. Repetition of the previous step to process each domain name label in sequence, until the final step which returns the IP address of the host sought.

The diagram illustrates this process for the host www.wikipedia.org.

The mechanism in this simple form would place a large operating burden on the root servers, with every search for an address starting by querying one of them. Being as critical as they are to the overall function of the system, such heavy use would create an insurmountable bottleneck for trillions of queries placed every day. In practice caching is used in DNS servers to overcome this problem, and as a result, root nameservers actually are involved with very little of the total traffic.

Circular dependencies and glue records

Name servers in delegations are identified by name, rather than by IP address. This means that a resolving name server must issue another DNS request to find out the IP address of the server to which it has been referred. If the name given in the delegation is a subdomain of the domain for which the delegation is being provided, there is a circular dependency. In this case the nameserver providing the delegation must also provide one or more IP addresses for the authoritative nameserver mentioned in the delegation. This information is called glue. The delegating name server provides this glue in the form of records in the additional section of the DNS response, and provides the delegation in the answer section of the response.

For example, if the authoritative name server for example.org is ns1.example.org, a computer trying to resolve www.example.org first resolves ns1.example.org. Since ns1 is contained in example.org, this requires resolving example.org first, which presents a circular dependency. To break the dependency, the nameserver for the org top level domain includes glue along with the delegation for example.org. The glue records are address records that provide IP addresses for ns1.example.org. The resolver uses one or more of these IP addresses to query one of domain's authoritative servers, which allows it to complete the DNS query.

Record caching

Because of the large volume of DNS requests generated for the public Internet, the designers wished to provide a mechanism to reduce the load on individual DNS servers. To this end, the DNS resolution process allows for caching of records for a period of time after an answer. This entails the local recording and subsequent consultation of the copy instead of initiating a new request upstream. The time for which a resolver caches a DNS response is determined by a value called the time to live (TTL) associated with every record. The TTL is set by the administrator of the DNS server handing out the authoritative response. The period of validity may vary from just seconds to days or even weeks.

As a noteworthy consequence of this distributed and caching architecture, changes to DNS records do not propagate throughout the network immediately, but require all caches to expire and refresh after the TTL. RFC 1912 conveys basic rules for determining appropriate TTL values.

Some resolvers may override TTL values, as the protocol supports caching for up to 68 years or no caching at all. Negative caching, i.e. the caching of the fact of non-existence of a record, is determined by name servers authoritative for a zone which must include the Start of Authority (SOA) record when reporting no data of the requested type exists. The value of the MINIMUM field of the SOA record and the TTL of the SOA itself is used to establish the TTL for the negative answer.

Reverse lookup

A reverse lookup is a query of the DNS for domain names when the IP address is known. Multiple domain names may be associated with an IP address. The DNS stores IP addresses in the form of domain names as specially formatted names in pointer (PTR) records within the infrastructure top-level domain arpa. For IPv4, the domain is in-addr.arpa. For IPv6, the reverse lookup domain is ip6.arpa. The IP address is represented as a name in reverse-ordered octet representation for IPv4, and reverse-ordered nibble representation for IPv6.

When performing a reverse lookup, the DNS client converts the address into these formats, and then queries the name for a PTR record following the delegation chain as for any DNS query. For example, the IPv4 address 208.80.152.2 is represented as a DNS name as 2.152.80.208.in-addr.arpa. The DNS resolver begins by querying the root servers, which point to ARIN's servers for the 208.in-addr.arpa zone. From there the Wikimedia servers are assigned for 152.80.208.in-addr.arpa, and the PTR lookup completes by querying the wikimedia nameserver for 2.152.80.208.in-addr.arpa, which results in an authoritative response.

Client lookup

DNS resolution sequence

Users generally do not communicate directly with a DNS resolver. Instead DNS resolution takes place transparently in applications programs such as web browsers, e-mail clients, and other Internet applications. When an application makes a request that requires a domain name lookup, such programs send a resolution request to the DNS resolver in the local operating system, which in turn handles the communications required.

The DNS resolver will almost invariably have a cache (see above) containing recent lookups. If the cache can provide the answer to the request, the resolver will return the value in the cache to the program that made the request. If the cache does not contain the answer, the resolver will send the request to one or more designated DNS servers. In the case of most home users, the Internet service provider to which the machine connects will usually supply this DNS server: such a user will either have configured that server's address manually or allowed DHCP to set it; however, where systems administrators have configured systems to use their own DNS servers, their DNS resolvers point to separately maintained nameservers of the organization. In any event, the name server thus queried will follow the process outlined above, until it either successfully finds a result or does not. It then returns its results to the DNS resolver; assuming it has found a result, the resolver duly caches that result for future use, and hands the result back to the software which initiated the request.

Broken resolvers

An additional level of complexity emerges when resolvers violate the rules of the DNS protocol. A number of large ISPs have configured their DNS servers to violate rules (presumably to allow them to run on less-expensive hardware than a fully compliant resolver), such as by disobeying TTLs, or by indicating that a domain name does not exist just because one of its name servers does not respond.

As a final level of complexity, some applications (such as web-browsers) also have their own DNS cache, in order to reduce the use of the DNS resolver library itself. This practice can add extra difficulty when debugging DNS issues, as it obscures the freshness of data, and/or what data comes from which cache. These caches typically use very short caching times—on the order of one minute.

Internet Explorer represents a notable exception: versions up to IE 3.x cache DNS records for 24 hours by default. Internet Explorer 4.x and later versions (up to IE 8) decrease the default time out value to half an hour, which may be changed in corresponding registry keys.

Other applications

The system outlined above provides a somewhat simplified scenario. The Domain Name System includes several other functions:

• Hostnames and IP addresses do not necessarily match on a one-to-one basis. Multiple hostnames may correspond to a single IP address: combined with virtual hosting, this allows a single machine to serve many web sites. Alternatively a single hostname may correspond to many IP addresses: this can facilitate fault tolerance and load distribution, and also allows a site to move physical location seamlessly.
• There are many uses of DNS besides translating names to IP addresses. For instance, Mail transfer agents use DNS to find out where to deliver e-mail for a particular address. The domain to mail exchanger mapping provided by MX records accommodates another layer of fault tolerance and load distribution on top of the name to IP address mapping.

• E-mail Blacklists: The DNS system is used for efficient storage and distribution of IP addresses of blacklisted e-mail hosts. The usual method is putting the IP address of the subject host into the sub-domain of a higher level domain name, and resolve that name to different records to indicate a positive or a negative. Here is a hypothetical example blacklist:
  • 102.3.4.5 is blacklisted => Creates 5.4.3.102.blacklist.example and resolves to 127.0.0.1
  • 102.3.4.6 is not => 6.4.3.102.blacklist.example is not found, or default to 127.0.0.2
  • E-mail servers can then query blacklist.example through the DNS mechanism to find out if a specific host connecting to them is in the blacklist. Today many of such blacklists, either free or subscription-based, are available mainly for use by email administrators and anti-spam software.

• Software Updates: many anti-virus and commercial software now use the DNS system to store version numbers of the latest software updates so client computers do not need to connect to the update servers every time. For these types of applications, the cache time of the DNS records are usually shorter.

• Sender Policy Framework and DomainKeys, instead of creating their own record types, were designed to take advantage of another DNS record type, the TXT record.
• To provide resilience in the event of computer failure, multiple DNS servers are usually provided for coverage of each domain, and at the top level, thirteen very powerful root servers exist, with additional "copies" of several of them distributed worldwide via Anycast.
• Dynamic DNS (sometimes called DDNS) allows clients to update their DNS entry as their IP address changes, as it does, for example, when moving between ISPs or mobile hot spots.

Protocol details

DNS primarily uses User Datagram Protocol (UDP) on port number 53 to serve requests. DNS queries consist of a single UDP request from the client followed by a single UDP reply from the server. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used when the response data size exceeds 512 bytes, or for tasks such as zone transfers. Some resolver implementations use TCP for all queries.

DNS resource records

A Resource Record (RR) is the basic data element in the domain name system. Each record has a type (A, MX, etc.), an expiration time limit, a class, and some type-specific data. Resource records of the same type define a resource record set (RRset). The order of resource records in a set, returned by a resolver to an application, is undefined, but often servers implement round-robin ordering to achieve load balancing. DNSSEC, however, works on complete resource record sets in a canonical order.

When sent over an IP network, all records use the common format specified in RFC 1035:

RR (Resource record) fields

Field	Description	Length (octets)
NAME	Name of the node to which this record pertains	(variable)
TYPE	Type of RR in numeric form (e.g. 15 for MX RRs)	2
CLASS	Class code	2
TTL	Count of seconds that the RR stays valid (The maximum is 231-1, which is about 68 years.)	4
RDLENGTH	Length of RDATA field	2
RDATA	Additional RR-specific data	(variable)

NAME is the fully qualified domain name of the node in the tree. On the wire, the name may be shortened using label compression where ends of domain names mentioned earlier in the packet can be substituted for the end of the current domain name.

TYPE is the record type. It indicates the format of the data and it gives a hint of its intended use. For example, the A record is used to translate from a domain name to an IPv4 address, the NS record lists which name servers can answer lookups on a DNS zone, and the MX record specifies the mail server used to handle mail for a domain specified in an e-mail address (see also List of DNS record types).

RDATA is data of type-specific relevance, such as the IP address for address records, or the priority and hostname for MX records. Well known record types may use label compression in the RDATA field, but "unknown" record types must not (RFC 3597).

The CLASS of a record is set to IN (for Internet) for common DNS records involving Internet hostnames, servers, or IP addresses. In addition, the classes Chaos (CH) and Hesiod (HS) exist. Each class is an independent name space with potentially different delegations of DNS zones.

In addition to resource records defined in a zone file, the domain name system also defines several request types that are used only in communication with other DNS nodes (on the wire), such as when performing zone transfers (AXFR/IXFR) or for EDNS (OPT).

Wildcard DNS records

The domain name system supports wildcard domain names which are names that start with the asterisk label, '*', e.g., *.example. DNS records belonging to wildcard domain names specify rules for generating resource records within a single DNS zone by substituting whole labels with matching components of the query name, including any specified descendants. For example, in the DNS zone x.example, the following configuration specifies that all subdomains (including subdomains of subdomains) of x.example use the mail exchanger a.x.example. The records for a.x.example are needed to specify the mail exchanger. As this has the result of excluding this domain name and its subdomains from the wildcard matches, all subdomains of a.x.example must be defined in a separate wildcard statement.

The role of wildcard records was refined in RFC 4592, because the original definition in RFC 1034 was incomplete and resulted in misinterpretations by implementers.

Protocol extensions

The original DNS protocol had limited provisions for extension with new features. In 1999, Paul Vixie published in RFC 2671 an extension mechanism, called Extension mechanisms for DNS (EDNS) that introduced optional protocol elements without increasing overhead when not in use. This was accomplished through the OPT pseudo-resource record that only exists in wire transmissions of the protocol, but not in any zone files. Initial extensions were also suggested (EDNS0), such as increasing the DNS message size in UDP datagrams.

Dynamic zone updates

Dynamic DNS updates use the UPDATE DNS opcode to add or remove resource records dynamically from a zone data base maintained on an authoritative DNS server. The feature is described in RFC 2136. This facility is useful to register network clients into the DNS when they boot or become otherwise available on the network. Since a booting client may be assigned a different IP address each time from a DHCP server, it is not possible to provide static DNS assignments for such clients.

Security issues

Originally, security concerns were not major design considerations for DNS software or any software for deployment on the early Internet, as the network was not open for participation by the general public. However, the expansion of the Internet into the commercial sector in the 1990s changed the requirements for security measures to protect data integrity and user authentication.

Several vulnerability issues were discovered and exploited by malicious users. One such issue is DNS cache poisoning, in which data is distributed to caching resolvers under the pretense of being an authoritative origin server, thereby polluting the data store with potentially false information and long expiration times (time-to-live). Subsequently, legitimate application requests may be redirected to network hosts operated with malicious intent.

DNS responses are traditionally not cryptographically signed, leading to many attack possibilities; the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) modify DNS to add support for cryptographically signed responses. Several extensions have been devised to secure zone transfers as well.

Some domain names may be used to achieve spoofing effects. For example, paypal.com and paypa1.com are different names, yet users may be unable to distinguish them in a graphical user interface depending on the user's chosen typeface. In many fonts the letter l and the numeral 1 look very similar or even identical. This problem is acute in systems that support internationalized domain names, since many character codes in ISO 10646, may appear identical on typical computer screens. This vulnerability is occasionally exploited in phishing.

Techniques such as forward-confirmed reverse DNS can also be used to help validate DNS results.

Domain name registration

The right to use a domain name is delegated by domain name registrars which are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization charged with overseeing the name and number systems of the Internet. In addition to ICANN, each top-level domain (TLD) is maintained and serviced technically by an administrative organization, operating a registry. A registry is responsible for maintaining the database of names registered within the TLD it administers. The registry receives registration information from each domain name registrar authorized to assign names in the corresponding TLD and publishes the information using a special service, the whois protocol.

ICANN publishes the complete list of TLD registries and domain name registrars. Registrant information associated with domain names is maintained in an online database accessible with the WHOIS service. For most of the more than 240 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), the domain registries maintain the WHOIS (Registrant, name servers, expiration dates, etc.) information. For instance, DENIC, Germany NIC, holds the DE domain data. Since about 2001, most gTLD registries have adopted this so-called thick registry approach, i.e. keeping the WHOIS data in central registries instead of registrar databases.

For COM and NET domain names, a thin registry model is used: the domain registry (e.g. VeriSign) holds basic WHOIS (registrar and name servers, etc.) data. One can find the detailed WHOIS (registrant, name servers, expiry dates, etc.) at the registrars.

Some domain name registries, often called network information centers (NIC), also function as registrars to end-users. The major generic top-level domain registries, such as for the COM, NET, ORG, INFO domains, use a registry-registrar model consisting of many domain name registrars In this method of management, the registry only manages the domain name database and the relationship with the registrars. The registrants (users of a domain name) are customers of the registrar, in some cases through additional layers of resellers.

Internet standards

The Domain Name System is defined by Request for Comments (RFC) documents published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (Internet standards). The following is a list of RFCs that define the DNS protocol.

• RFC 920, Domain Requirements – Specified original top-level domains
• RFC 1032, Domain Administrators Guide
• RFC 1033, Domain Administrators Operations Guide
• RFC 1034, Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities
• RFC 1035, Domain Names - Implementation and Specification
• RFC 1101, DNS Encodings of Network Names and Other Types
• RFC 1123, Requirements for Internet Hosts—Application and Support
• RFC 1178, Choosing a Name for Your Computer (FYI 5)
• RFC 1183, New DNS RR Definitions
• RFC 1591, Domain Name System Structure and Delegation (Informational)
• RFC 1912, Common DNS Operational and Configuration Errors
• RFC 1995, Incremental Zone Transfer in DNS
• RFC 1996, A Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone Changes (DNS NOTIFY)
• RFC 2100, The Naming of Hosts (Informational)
• RFC 2136, Dynamic Updates in the domain name system (DNS UPDATE)
• RFC 2181, Clarifications to the DNS Specification
• RFC 2182, Selection and Operation of Secondary DNS Servers
• RFC 2308, Negative Caching of DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE)
• RFC 2317, Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA delegation (BCP 20)
• RFC 2671, Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)
• RFC 2672, Non-Terminal DNS Name Redirection
• RFC 2845, Secret Key Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG)
• RFC 3225, Indicating Resolver Support of DNSSEC
• RFC 3226, DNSSEC and IPv6 A6 aware server/resolver message size requirements
• RFC 3597, Handling of Unknown DNS Resource Record (RR) Types
• RFC 3696, Application Techniques for Checking and Transformation of Names (Informational)
• RFC 4343, Domain Name System (DNS) Case Insensitivity Clarification
• RFC 4592, The Role of Wildcards in the Domain Name System
• RFC 4635, HMAC SHA TSIG Algorithm Identifiers
• RFC 4892, Requirements for a Mechanism Identifying a Name Server Instance (Informational)
• RFC 5001, DNS Name Server Identifier (NSID) Option
• RFC 5452, Measures for Making DNS More Resilient against Forged Answers
• RFC 5625, DNS Proxy Implementation Guidelines (BCP 152)
• RFC 5890, Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA):Definitions and Document Framework
• RFC 5891, Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol
• RFC 5892, The Unicode Code Points and Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)
• RFC 5893, Right-to-Left Scripts for Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA)
• RFC 5894, Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA):Background, Explanation, and Rationale (Informational)
• RFC 5895, Mapping Characters for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) 2008 (Informational)
• RFC 6195, Domain Name System (DNS) IANA Considerations (BCP 42)

Security

• RFC 4033, DNS Security Introduction and Requirements
• RFC 4034, Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions
• RFC 4035, Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security Extensions
• RFC 4509, Use of SHA-256 in DNSSEC Delegation Signer (DS) Resource Records
• RFC 4470, Minimally Covering NSEC Records and DNSSEC On-line Signing
• RFC 5011, Automated Updates of DNS Security (DNSSEC) Trust Anchors
• RFC 5155, DNS Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of Existence
• RFC 5702, Use of SHA-2 Algorithms with RSA in DNSKEY and RRSIG Resource Records for DNSSEC
• RFC 5910, Domain Name System (DNS) Security Extensions Mapping for the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)
• RFC 5933, Use of GOST Signature Algorithms in DNSKEY and RRSIG Resource Records for DNSSEC

External links

• Vixie, Paul (2007-05-04). "DNS Complexity – Although it contains just a few simple rules, DNS has grown into an enormously complex system". ACM Queue.
• Zytrax.com, Open Source Guide – DNS for Rocket Scientists, an on-line technical.
• Create a zone file on zonefile.org
• Domain Name System on Microsoft TechNet

An Internet service provider or ISP is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and other people in a process called colocation. Transit ISPs provide large amounts of bandwidth for connecting hosting ISPs to access ISPs.

Internet connectivity options from end-user to Tier 3/2 ISPs

History

The Internet started off as a closed network between government research laboratories and relevant parts of universities. As it became more popular, universities and colleges started giving more of their members access to it. As a result of its popularity, commercial Internet service providers sprang up to offer access to the Internet to anyone willing to pay for the service, mainly to those who missed their university accounts. In 1990, Brookline, Massachusetts-based The World became the first commercial ISP.

Access provider

ISPs employ a range of technologies to enable consumers to connect to their network.

For users and small businesses, traditional options include: Dial-up internet access|dial-up, DSL (typically Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, ADSL), broadband wireless, cable modem, fiber to the premises (FTTH), and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) (typically basic rate interface). For customers with more demanding requirements, such as medium-to-large businesses, or other ISPs, DSL (often Single-Pair High-speed Digital Subscriber Line or ADSL), Ethernet, Metropolythian Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, Frame Relay, ISDN (Basic rate interface|B.R.I. or Primary rate interface|P.R.I.), Asynchronous Transfer Mode|ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and upload satellite Internet access. Synchronous optical networking (SONET) are more likely to be used.

Typical home user connectivity

• Broadband wireless access
• Cable Internet
• Dial-up
  • ISDN
  • Modem
• Digital subscriber line (DSL)
• FTTH
• Wi-Fi

Business-type connection:

• Digital subscriber line (DSL)
• Metro Ethernet network technology
• Leased line
• SHDSL

Locality

When using a dial-up or ISDN connection method, the ISP cannot determine the caller's physical location to more detail than using the number transmitted using an appropriate form of Caller ID; it is entirely possible to e.g. connect to an ISP located in Mexico from the USA. Other means of connection such as DOCSIS cable or DSL require a fixed registered connection node, usually associated at the ISP with a physical address.

Mailbox provider

A company or organization that provides email mailbox hosting services for end users and/or organizations. Many Mailbox Providers are also Access Providers.

Hosting ISPs

Hosting ISPs routinely provide email, FTP, and web-hosting services. Other services include virtual machines, clouds, or entire physical servers where customers can run their own custom software.

Transit ISPs

Just as their customers pay them for Internet access, ISPs themselves pay upstream ISPs for Internet access. An upstream ISP usually has a larger network than the contracting ISP and/or is able to provide the contracting ISP with access to parts of the Internet the contracting ISP by itself has no access to.

In the simplest case, a single connection is established to an upstream ISP and is used to transmit data to or from areas of the Internet beyond the home network; this mode of interconnection is often cascaded multiple times until reaching a Tier 1 carrier. In reality, the situation is often more complex. ISPs with more than one point of presence (PoP) may have separate connections to an upstream ISP at multiple PoPs, or they may be customers of multiple upstream ISPs and may have connections to each one of them at one or more point of presence.

Peering

ISPs may engage in peering, where multiple ISPs interconnect at peering points or Internet exchange points (IXs), allowing routing of data between each network, without charging one another for the data transmitted—data that would otherwise have passed through a third upstream ISP, incurring charges from the upstream ISP.

ISPs requiring no upstream and having only customers (end customers and/or peer ISPs) are called "Tier 1 carriers".

Network hardware, software and specifications, as well as the expertise of network management personnel are important in ensuring that data follows the most efficient route, and upstream connections work reliably. A tradeoff between cost and efficiency is possible.

Derivatives

The following are not a different type of the above ISPs, rather they are derivatives of the 3 core ISP types. A VISP is reselling either access or hosting services. Free ISPs are similar, but they just have a different revenue model.

Virtual ISP

A Virtual ISP (VISP) is an operation which purchases services from another ISP (sometimes called a "wholesale ISP" in this context) which allow the VISP's customers to access the Internet using services and infrastructure owned and operated by the wholesale ISP.

Free ISP

Free ISPs are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which provide service free of charge. Many free ISPs display advertisements while the user is connected; like commercial television, in a sense they are selling the users' attention to the advertiser. Other free ISPs, often called freenets, are run on a nonprofit basis, usually with volunteer staff.

References

Cloud computing logical diagram

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a metered service over a network (typically the Internet).

Cloud computing is a marketing term for technologies that provide computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. A parallel to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid, wherein end-users consume power without needing to understand the component devices or infrastructure required to provide the service.

Also, it is a delivery model for IT services based on Internet protocols, and it typically involves provisioning of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This may take the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if the programs were installed locally on their own computers.

Cloud computing providers deliver applications via the internet, which are accessed from web browsers and desktop and mobile apps, while the business software and data are stored on servers at a remote location. In some cases, legacy applications (line of business applications that until now have been prevalent in thin client Windows computing) are delivered via a screen-sharing technology, while the computing resources are consolidated at a remote data centre location; in other cases, entire business applications have been coded using web-based technologies such as AJAX.

At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of infrastructure convergence (or Converged Infrastructure) and shared services. This type of data centre environment allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with easier manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust IT resources (such as servers, storage, and networking) to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through shared data centres, which appear to consumers as a single point of access for their computing needs. Commercial offerings may be required to meet service-level agreements (SLAs), but specific terms are less often negotiated by smaller companies.

The tremendous impact of cloud computing on business has prompted the United States federal government to look to the cloud as a means to reorganize its IT infrastructure and to decrease its IT budgets. With the advent of the top government officially mandating cloud adoption, many government agencies already have at least one or more cloud systems online.

Comparison

Cloud computing shares characteristics with:

• Autonomic computing — Computer systems capable of self-management.
• Client–server model — Client–server computing refers broadly to any distributed application that distinguishes between service providers (servers) and service requesters (clients).
• Grid computing — "A form of distributed and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks."
• Mainframe computer — Powerful computers used mainly by large organisations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, police and secret intelligence services, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.
• Utility computing — The "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity."
• Peer-to-peer — Distributed architecture without the need for central coordination, with participants being at the same time both suppliers and consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model).

Characteristics

Cloud computing exhibits the following key characteristics:

• Empowerment of end-users of computing resources by putting the provisioning of those resources in their own control, as opposed to the control of a centralized IT service (for example)
• Agility improves with users' ability to re-provision technological infrastructure resources.
• Application programming interface (API) accessibility to software that enables machines to interact with cloud software in the same way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. Cloud computing systems typically use REST-based APIs.
• Cost is claimed to be reduced and in a public cloud delivery model capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. This is purported to lower barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house).
• Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they are using (e.g., PC, mobile phone). As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.
• Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for:
  • Centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)
  • Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)
  • Utilisation and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilised.
• Reliability is improved if multiple redundant sites are used, which makes well-designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.
• Scalability and Elasticity via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis near real-time, without users having to engineer for peak loads.
• Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface.
• Security could improve due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than other traditional systems, in part because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford. However, the complexity of security is greatly increased when data is distributed over a wider area or greater number of devices and in multi-tenant systems that are being shared by unrelated users. In addition, user access to security audit logs may be difficult or impossible. Private cloud installations are in part motivated by users' desire to retain control over the infrastructure and avoid losing control of information security.
• Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, because they do not need to be installed on each user's computer.

History

The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents.

Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualisation, service-oriented architecture, autonomic, and utility computing. Details are abstracted from end-users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1960s, when John McCarthy opined that "computation may someday be organised as a public utility." Almost all the modern-day characteristics of cloud computing (elastic provision, provided as a utility, online, illusion of infinite supply), the comparison to the electricity industry and the use of public, private, government, and community forms, were thoroughly explored in Douglas Parkhill's 1966 book, The Challenge of the Computer Utility. Other scholars have shown that cloud computing's roots go all the way back to the 1950s when scientist Herb Grosch (the author of Grosch's law) postulated that the entire world would operate on dumb terminals powered by about 15 large data centers.

The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications companies, who until the 1990s offered primarily dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service but at a much lower cost. By switching traffic to balance utilisation as they saw fit, they were able to utilise their overall network bandwidth more effectively. The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point between that which was the responsibility of the provider and that which was the responsibility of the user. Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network infrastructure.

After the dot-com bubble, Amazon played a key role in the development of cloud computing by modernising their data centers, which, like most computer networks, were using as little as 10% of their capacity at any one time, just to leave room for occasional spikes. Having found that the new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements whereby small, fast-moving "two-pizza teams" could add new features faster and more easily, Amazon initiated a new product development effort to provide cloud computing to external customers, and launched Amazon Web Service (AWS) on a utility computing basis in 2006.

In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open-source, AWS API-compatible platform for deploying private clouds. In early 2008, OpenNebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission-funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds. In the same year, efforts were focused on providing QoS guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to cloud-based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European Commission-funded project, resulting to a real-time cloud environment. By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them" and observed that "[o]rganisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" so that the "projected shift to cloud computing ... will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other areas."

Layers

Once an internet protocol connection is established among several computers, it is possible to share services within any one of the following layers.

Client

A cloud client consists of computer hardware and/or computer software that relies on cloud computing for application delivery and that is in essence useless without it. Examples include some computers (example: Chromebooks), phones (example: Google Nexus series) and other devices, operating systems (example: Google Chrome OS), and browsers.

Application

Cloud application services or "Software as a Service (SaaS)" deliver software as a service over the Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computers and simplifying maintenance and support.

A cloud application is software provided as a service. It consists of the following: a package of interrelated tasks, the definition of these tasks, and the configuration files, which contain dynamic information about tasks at run-time. Cloud tasks provide compute, storage, communication and management capabilities. Tasks can be cloned into multiple virtual machines, and are accessible through application programmable interfaces (API). Cloud applications are a kind of utility computing that can scale out and in to match the workload demand. Cloud applications have a pricing model that is based on different compute and storage usage, and tenancy metrics .

What makes a cloud application different from other applications is its elasticity. Cloud applications have the ability to scale out and in. This can be achieved by cloning tasks in to multiple virtual machines at run-time to meet the changing work demand. Configuration Data is where dynamic aspects of cloud application are determined at run-time. There is no need to stop the running application or redeploy it in order to modify or change the information in this file .

SOA is an umbrella that describes any kind of service. A cloud application is a service. A cloud application meta-model is a SOA model that conforms to the SOA meta-model. This makes cloud applications SOA applications. However, SOA applications are not necessary cloud applications. A cloud application is a SOA application that runs under a specific environment, which is the cloud computing environment (platform). This environment is characterized by horizontal scalability, rapid provisioning, ease of access, and flexible prices. While SOA is a business model that addresses the business process management, cloud architecture addresses many technical details that are environment specific, which makes it more a technical model .

Platform

Cloud platform services, also known as platform as a service (PaaS), deliver a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service, often consuming cloud infrastructure and sustaining cloud applications. It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. Cloud computing is becoming a major change in our industry, and one of the most important parts of this change is the shift of cloud platforms. Platforms let developers write certain applications that can run in the cloud, or even use services provided by the cloud. There are different names being used for platforms which can include the on-demand platform, or Cloud 9. Regardless of the nomenclature, they all have great potential in developing, and when development teams create applications for the cloud, each must build its own cloud platform.

Infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure services, also known as "infrastructure as a service" (IaaS), deliver computer infrastructure – typically a platform virtualization environment – as a service, along with raw (block) storage and networking. Rather than purchasing servers, software, data-center space or network equipment, clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service. Suppliers typically bill such services on a utility computing basis; the amount of resources consumed (and therefore the cost) will typically reflect the level of activity.

Server

The servers layer consists of computer hardware and/or computer software products that are specifically designed for the delivery of cloud services, including multi-core processors, cloud-specific operating systems and combined offerings.

Deployment models

Cloud computing types

Public cloud

A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model.. Cloud computing is no clandestine thing nowadays, companies make its best use in running their business in a virtual world and saving considerably on the infrastructure that would have cost them drearer otherwise.

This type of cloud computing model where service providers make their computing resources available online for the general public. It allows the users to access various important resources on cloud, such as: software, applications or; stored data. On of the prime benefits of using public cloud is that the users are emancipated from performing certain important tasks on their computing machines that they cannot get away with otherwise, these include: installation of resources, their configuration; and storage

The services concerning public cloud computing can be leveraged: Either free of cost; or On pay-per-usage model.

Community cloud

Community cloud shares infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The costs are spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a private cloud), so only some of the benefits of cloud computing are realized.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. It can also be defined as multiple cloud systems that are connected in a way that allows programs and data to be moved easily from one deployment system to another. What is that first thing that come to our minds when we talk about Hybrid Cloud architecture? Is it some kind of cloud form, which is better than public or private ones or is it a combination of both? Did you just choose the second option? If yes, you have managed to get a gist of it. A hybrid cloud is a combination of both public and private clouds. In a simple form, Hybrid cloud functions if a public cloud vendor associates with a private cloud platform or vice-a-verse.

Private cloud

Private cloud is infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally.

They have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from less hands-on management, essentially "[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".

Architecture

Cloud computing sample architecture

Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing, typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over a loose coupling mechanism such as a messaging queue.

The Intercloud

The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of the Internet "network of networks" on which it is based.

Cloud engineering

Cloud engineering is the application of engineering disciplines to cloud computing. It brings a systematic approach to the high level concerns of commercialisation, standardisation, and governance in conceiving, developing, operating and maintaining cloud computing systems. It is a multidisciplinary method encompassing contributions from diverse areas such as systems, software, |web, performance, information, security, platform, risk, and quality engineering.

Issues

Privacy

The cloud model has been criticised by privacy advocates for the greater ease in which the companies hosting the cloud services control, thus, can monitor at will, lawfully or unlawfully, the communication and data stored between the user and the host company. Instances such as the secret NSA program, working with AT&T, and Verizon, which recorded over 10 million phone calls between American citizens, causes uncertainty among privacy advocates, and the greater powers it gives to telecommunication companies to monitor user activity. While there have been efforts (such as US-EU Safe Harbor) to "harmonise" the legal environment, providers such as Amazon still cater to major markets (typically the United States and the European Union) by deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select "availability zones." Cloud computing poses privacy concerns basically, because the service provider at any point in time, may access the data that is on the cloud. They could accidentally or deliberately alter or even delete some info.

Compliance

In order to obtain compliance with regulations including FISMA, HIPAA, and SOX in the United States, the Data Protection Directive in the EU and the credit card industry's PCI DSS, users may have to adopt community or hybrid deployment modes that are typically more expensive and may offer restricted benefits. This is how Google is able to "manage and meet additional government policy requirements beyond FISMA" and Rackspace Cloud or QubeSpace are able to claim PCI compliance.

Many providers also obtain SAS 70 Type II certification, but this has been criticised on the grounds that the hand-picked set of goals and standards determined by the auditor and the auditee are often not disclosed and can vary widely. Providers typically make this information available on request, under non-disclosure agreement.

Customers in the EU contracting with cloud providers established outside the EU/EEA have to adhere to the EU regulations on export of personal data.

Legal

As can be expected with any revolutionary change in the landscape of global computing, certain legal issues arise; everything from trademark infringement, security concerns to the sharing of propriety data resources.

Open source

Open-source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing implementations, one prominent example being the Hadoop framework. In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 intended to close a perceived legal loophole associated with free software designed to be run over a network.

Open standards

Most cloud providers expose APIs that are typically well-documented (often under a Creative Commons license) but also unique to their implementation and thus not interoperable. Some vendors have adopted others' APIs and there are a number of open standards under development, with a view to delivering interoperability and portability.

Security

As cloud computing is achieving increased popularity, concerns are being voiced about the security issues introduced through adoption of this new model. The effectiveness and efficiency of traditional protection mechanisms are being reconsidered as the characteristics of this innovative deployment model differ widely from those of traditional architectures.

The relative security of cloud computing services is a contentious issue that may be delaying its adoption. Issues barring the adoption of cloud computing are due in large part to the private and public sectors' unease surrounding the external management of security-based services. It is the very nature of cloud computing-based services, private or public, that promote external management of provided services. This delivers great incentive to cloud computing service providers to prioritize building and maintaining strong management of secure services. Security issues have been categorised into sensitive data access, data segregation, privacy, bug exploitation, recovery, accountability, malicious insiders, management console security, account control, and multi-tenancy issues. Solutions to various cloud security issues vary, from cryptography, particularly public key infrastructure (PKI), to use of multiple cloud providers, standardisation of APIs, and improving virtual machine support and legal support.

Sustainability

Although cloud computing is often assumed to be a form of "green computing", there is as of yet no published study to substantiate this assumption. Siting the servers affects the environmental effects of cloud computing. In areas where climate favors natural cooling and renewable electricity is readily available, the environmental effects will be more moderate. (The same holds true for "traditional" data centers.) Thus countries with favorable conditions, such as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, are trying to attract cloud computing data centers. Energy efficiency in cloud computing can result from energy-aware scheduling and server consolidation. However, in the case of distributed clouds over data centers with different source of energies including renewable source of energies, a small compromise on energy consumption reduction could result in high carbon footprint reduction.

Abuse

As with privately purchased hardware, crackers posing as legitimate customers can purchase the services of cloud computing for nefarious purposes. This includes password cracking and launching attacks using the purchased services. In 2009, a banking trojan illegally used the popular Amazon service as a command and control channel that issued software updates and malicious instructions to PCs that were infected by the malware.

Research

Many universities, vendors and government organisations are investing in research around the topic of cloud computing:

• In October 2007 the Academic Cloud Computing Initiative (ACCI) was announced as a multi-university project designed to enhance students' technical knowledge to address the challenges of cloud computing.

• In April 2009 the St Andrews Cloud Computing Co-laboratory was launched, focusing on research in the important new area of cloud computing. Unique in the UK, StACC aims to become an international centre of excellence for research and teaching in cloud computing and will provide advice and information to businesses interested in using cloud-based services

• In December 2010, the TrustCloud research project was started by HP Labs Singapore to address transparency and accountability of cloud computing via detective, data-centric approaches encapsulated in a five-layer TrustCloud Framework. The team identified the need for monitoring data life cycles and transfers in the cloud , leading to the tackling of key cloud computing security issues such as cloud data leakages, cloud accountability and cross-national data transfers in transnational clouds.

• In July 2011 the High Performance Computing Cloud (HPCCLoud) project was kicked-off aiming at finding out the possibilities of enhancing performance on cloud environments while running the scientific applications - development of HPCCLoud Performance Analysis Toolkit which was funded by CIM-Returning Experts Programme - under the coordination of Prof. Dr. Shajulin Benedict.

• In June 2011 the Telecommunications Industry Association developed a Cloud Computing White Paper, to analyze the integration challenges and opportunities between cloud services and traditional U.S. telecommunications standards.

External links

• The NIST Definition of a Cloud from the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the U.S.Department of Commerce
• The Future of Cloud Computing
• Larry Edison, CEO of Oracle, unimpressed by the marketing "fad" of "cloud computing"
• Cloud Computing Through The Years
• Cloud Computing Daily News
• Cloud Hosting

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Hard drives store information in binary form and so are considered a type of physical digital media

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission (e.g. hard disk drives or computer networking) of information or to the "end product", such as digital video, augmented reality or digital art.

Florida's digital media industry association, Digital Media Alliance Florida, defines digital media as "the creative convergence of digital arts, science, technology and business for human expression, communication, social interaction and education".

There is a rich history of non-binary digital media and computers.

Examples

The following list of digital media is based on a rather technical view of the term media. Other views might lead to different lists.

• Cellular phones
• Compact discs
• Computers
• Digital video
• Electronic books
• Electronic commerce
• Game consoles
• Interactive media
• Internet
• Televisions
• Video games

Data conversion

Main article: Analog-to-digital converter

The transformation of an analog signal to digital information via an analog-to-digital converter is called sampling. Most digital media are based on translating analog data into digital data and vice-versa (see digital recording, digital video, television versus digital television).

Data processing

Main article: Digital signal processing

Once digitized, media may be processed in a variety of ways using standard computer hardware and software or, where performance is critical, in high-performance digital hardware such as an ASIC. Processing can include editing, filtering and content creation.

Post-Network Era

This is the fast pace era through the use of technology. Home recording of television increasingly advanced this medium. Digital programming can be downloaded instantly. This technology enables broadcasters to use the digital technologies available today to create numerous of channels. Service providers offer on-demand that gives people the opportunity to have the power of when and where they watch or hear their media. Digital technology has converged television and computers into one single medium.

Art

Main article: Digital art

File:Wiki.Picture by Drawing Machine 2.jpg

Picture produced by Drawing Machine 2

Digital art is any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. Often, the medium itself is considered the artwork. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Nevertheless, this type of art is beginning to appear in art museum exhibits.

Comic book artists in the past would generally sketch a drawing in pencil before going over the drawing again with India ink, using pens and brushes. Magazine illustrators often worked with India ink, acrylics, or oils. Currently, an increasing number of artists are now creating digital artwork due to the rising use and popularity of social media in recent years.

Digital artists do, simply, what centuries of artists have always done by exploring and adopting a culture's new technology toward the making of a personal imagery. In doing so the culture is also reflected in the artwork as is the artist's personal vision. As our culture becomes increasingly digitized, digital artists are leading the way in exploring and defining this new culture. Digital Artists use a medium that is nearly immaterial, that being binary information which describes the color and brightness of each individual pixel on a computer screen. Taken as a whole an image consisting of pure light is the feedback devise that tells an artist what is being made and simultaneously stored on the computer's hard drive. Digital Artists employ many types of user interfaces that correspond to the wide variety of brushes, lenses or other tools that traditional artist use to shape their materials. Rather than manipulating digital code directly as math, these electronic brushes and tools allow an artist to translate hand motions, cutting and pasting, and what were formerly chemical dark room techniques into the mathematical changes that effect the arrangement of screen pixels and create a picture.

Digital Art is created and stored in a non-material form on the computer's memory systems and must be made physical, usually in the form of prints on paper or some other form of printmaking substrate. In addition, digital art may be exchanged and appreciated directly on a computer screen in gallery situations or simultaneously in every place on the globe with access to the web. Being immaterial has its advantages and with the advent of high quality digital printing techniques a very traditional long lasting print of this artwork can also be produced and marketed.

Companies

Several design houses are active in this space, prominent names being:

• Publicis
• Situation Interactive
• McCann Erickson
• Tribal DDB
• Symmetry Digital

Companies offering training in Digital Media:

• JISC Digital Media
• Digital Media Academy
• Giant Campus
• John Lennon Educational Tour Bus
• Sterling Ledet & Associates

See also

• Content delivery
• Media psychology
• Electronic publishing
• List of artistic media
• New Media
• Cybertext
• Digital Billboards
• Category:Information technology education

Further reading

• Timothy Binkley (1988/89). "The Computer is Not A Medium", Philosophic Exchange. Reprinted in EDB & kunstfag, Rapport Nr. 48, NAVFs EDB-Senter for Humanistisk Forskning. Translated as "L'ordinateur n'est pas un médium", Esthétique des arts médiatiques, Sainte-Foy, Québec: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1995.
• 'Media Studies: Text, Production and Context' book by Paul Long and Tim Wall from Birmingham City University
• Long, Paul; Wall, Tim (2009). Media Studies: Text, Production and Context. Pearson Education.
• Coy, Wolfgang (2005): Analog/Digital. In: Warnke, Martin et al. (2005): Hyperkult II - Zur Ortsbestimmung analoguer und digitaler Medien (in German), Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, ISBN 3-89942-274-0
• Nelson, Ted (1990): Literary Machines, Sausalito: Mindful Press.
• Pflüger, Jörg (2005): Wo die Quantität in Qualität umschlägt. In: Warnke, Martin et al. (2005): Hyperkult II - Zur Ortsbestimmung analoguer und digitaler Medien (in German), Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, ISBN 3-89942-274-0

External links

• "The Digital Media Winners of 2007" - Annual MP3 Newswire award
• "Topics in Digital Media Spring 2010"-New York University
• "Topics In Digital Media Fall 2009" - New York University

In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. A software system for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system, and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink (or simply to link). A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext.

A hyperlink has an anchor, which is the location within a document from which the hyperlink can be followed; the document containing a hyperlink is known as its source document. For example, in an online reference work such as Wikipedia, many words and terms in the text are hyperlinked to definitions of those terms. Hyperlinks are often used to implement reference mechanisms, such as tables of contents, footnotes, bibliographies, indexes, letters and glossaries.

In some hypertext, hyperlinks can be bidirectional: they can be followed in two directions, so both ends act as anchors and as targets. More complex arrangements exist, such as many-to-many links.

The effect of following a hyperlink may vary with the hypertext system and may sometimes depend on the link itself; for instance, on the World Wide Web, most hyperlinks cause the target document to replace the document being displayed, but some are marked to cause the target document to open in a new window. Another possibility is transclusion, for which the link target is a document fragment that replaces the link anchor within the source document. Not only persons browsing the document follow hyperlinks; they may also be followed automatically by programs. A program that traverses the hypertext, following each hyperlink and gathering all the retrieved documents is known as a Web spider or crawling.

Types of links

Inline link

An inline link displays remote content without the need for embedding the content. The remote content may be accessed with or without the user selecting the link. For example, the image above is a document that can be viewed separately, but it is included into this page with an inline link.

An inline link may display a modified version of the content; for instance, instead of an image, a thumbnail, low resolution preview, cropped section, or magnified section may be shown. The full content will then usually be available on demand, as is the case with print publishing software – e.g. with an external link. This allows for smaller file sizes and quicker response to changes when the full linked content is not needed, as is the case when rearranging a page layout.

Anchor

An anchor hyperlink is a link bound to a portion of a document—generally text, though not necessarily. For instance, it may also be a hot area in an image (image map in HTML), a designated, often irregular part of an image. One way to define it is by a list of coordinates that indicate its boundaries. For example, a political map of Africa may have each country hyperlinked to further information about that country. A separate invisible hot area interface allows for swapping skins or labels within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of links in the various skin elements.

Hyperlinks in various technologies

Hyperlinks in HTML

Tim Berners-Lee saw the possibility of using hyperlinks to link any information to any other information over the Internet. Hyperlinks were therefore integral to the creation of the World Wide Web. Web pages are written in the hypertext mark-up language HTML.

Links are specified in HTML using the <a> (anchor) elements. To see the HTML used to create a page, most browsers offer a "view page source" option. Included in the HTML code will be an expression in the form symbol "<a" and the reference "href="URL">" marking the start of an anchor, followed by the highlighted text and the "</a>" symbol, which indicates the end of the source anchor. The <a> element can also be used to indicate the target of a link.

Webgraph is a graph, formed from web pages as vertices and hyperlinks, as directed edges.

XLink: hyperlinks in XML

Main article: XLink

The W3C Recommendation called XLink describes hyperlinks that offer a far greater degree of functionality than those offered in HTML. These extended links can be multidirectional, linking from, within, and between XML documents. It also describes simple links, which are unidirectional and therefore offer no more functionality than hyperlinks in HTML.

Hyperlinks in other document technologies

Hyperlinks are used in the Gopher protocol, text editors, PDF documents, help systems such as Windows Help, word processing documents, spreadsheets, Apple's HyperCard and many other places.

Hyperlinks in virtual worlds

Main article: Hyperlinks in virtual worlds

Hyperlinks are being implemented in various 3D virtual world networks, including those which utilize the OpenSimulator and Open Cobalt platforms.

Hyperlinks in wikis

While wikis may use HML-type hyperlinks, lightweight markup languages of wikis (wiki markup) provide simplified syntax, called wikilinks for linking pages within wiki environments.

The syntax and appearance of wikilinks may vary. Ward Cunningham's original wiki software, the WikiWikiWeb, used CamelCase for this purpose. CamelCase was also used in the early version of Wikipedia and is still used in some wikis, such as JSPWiki, TiddlyWiki, Trac and PMWiki. A common markup is using double square brackets around the term to be wikilinked, for example, the following input: [[wiki software]] — will be converted by wiki software to look like this: wiki software.

Hyperlinks used in wikis are commonly classified as follows:

• Internal wikilinks or intrawiki links lead to pages within the same wiki website.
• Interwiki links are simplified markup hyperlinks lead to pages of other wikis.
• External links lead to other webpages.

If an internal wikilink leads to a page that does not exist, it usually has a distinct visual appearance. For example, in Wikipedia they are commonly displayed in red color, like this, and therefore they are called red links in Wikipedia. Another way is to display a highlighted clickable question mark by the wikilinked term, like this?.

How hyperlinks work in HTML

A link from one domain to another is said to be outbound from its source anchor and inbound to its target.

The most common destination anchor is a URL used in the World Wide Web. This can refer to a document, e.g. a webpage, or other resource, or to a position in a webpage. The latter is achieved by means of an HTML element with a "name" or "id" attribute at that position of the HTML document. The URL of the position is the URL of the webpage with a fragment identifier — "#attribute name" — appended.

When linking to PDF documents from an HTML page the "attribute name" can be replaced with syntax that references a page number or another element of the PDF, for example, page=[pageNo] – "#page=386".

Link behavior in web browsers

A web browser usually displays a hyperlink in some distinguishing way, e.g. in a different color, font or style. The behavior and style of links can be specified using the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language. In a graphical user interface, the appearance of a pointer may change into a hand motif to indicate a link. In most graphical web browsers, links are displayed in underlined blue text when not cached, but underlined purple text when cached. When the user activates the link (e.g. by clicking on it with the mouse) the browser will display the target of the link. If the target is not an HTML file, depending on the file type and on the browser and its plugins, another program may be activated to open the file. The HTML code contains some or all of the five main characteristics of a link: *link destination ("href" pointing to a URL) *link label *link title *link target *link class or link id It uses the HTML element "a" with the attribute "href" (HREF is an abbreviation for "Hypertext REFerence") and optionally also the attributes "title", "target", and "class" or "id": :<a href="URL" title="link title" target="link target" class="link class">link label</a> Example: To embed a link into a Page, blogpost, or comment, it may take this form: :<a href="http://example.com/">Example</a> After publishing, the complex link string is reduced to the following for visualization in typical Web browsers: Example This contributes to a clean, easy to read text or document. When the pointer hovers over a link, depending on the browser and/or graphical user interface, some informative text about the link can be shown, popping up, not in a regular window, but in a special hover box, which disappears when the pointer is moved away (sometimes it disappears anyway after a few seconds, and reappears when the pointer is moved away and back). Mozilla Firefox, IE, Opera, and many other web browsers all show the URL. In addition, the URL is commonly shown in the status bar. Normally, a link will open in the current frame or window, but sites that use frames and multiple windows for navigation can add a special "target" attribute to specify where the link will be loaded. If no window exists with that name, a new window will be created with the ID, which can be used to refer to the window later in the browsing session. Some developers may choose to capitalize links, to reflect server side interaction such as forms, or abbreviations. Capitalizing is OKAY. Creation of new windows is probably the most common use of the "target" attribute. In order to prevent accidental reuse of a window, the special window names "_blank" and "_new" are usually available, and will always cause a new window to be created. It is especially common to see this type of link when one large website links to an external page. The intention in that case is to ensure that the person browsing is aware that there is no endorsement of the site being linked to by the site that was linked from. However, the attribute is sometimes overused and can sometimes cause many windows to be created even while browsing a single site. Another special page name is "_top", which causes any frames in the current window to be cleared away so that browsing can continue in the full window.

History of the hyperlink

The term "hyperlink" was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu. Nelson had been inspired by "As We May Think", a popular essay by Vannevar Bush. In the essay, Bush described a microfilm-based machine (the Memex) in which one could link any two pages of information into a "trail" of related information, and then scroll back and forth among pages in a trail as if they were on a single microfilm reel.

In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980, Nelson transposed Bush's concept of automated cross-referencing into the computer context, made it applicable to specific text strings rather than whole pages, generalized it from a local desk-sized machine to a theoretical worldwide computer network, and advocated the creation of such a network. Meanwhile, working independently, a team led by Douglas Engelbart (with Jeff Rulifson as chief programmer) was the first to implement the hyperlink concept for scrolling within a single document (1966), and soon after for connecting between paragraphs within separate documents (1968), with NLS.

A database program HyperCard was released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh that allowed hyperlinking between various types of pages within a document.

Legal issues

While hyperlinking among webpages is an intrinsic feature of the web, some websites object to being linked to from other websites; some have claimed that linking to them is not allowed without permission.

Contentious in particular are deep links, which do not point to a site's home page or other entry point designated by the site owner, but to content elsewhere, allowing the user to bypass the site's own designated flow, and inline links, which incorporate the content in question into the pages of the linking site, making it seem part of the linking site's own content unless an explicit attribution is added.

In certain jurisdictions it is or has been held that hyperlinks are not merely references or citations, but are devices for copying web pages. In the Netherlands, Karin Spaink was initially convicted in this way of copyright infringement by linking, although this ruling was overturned in 2003. The courts that advocate this view see the mere publication of a hyperlink that connects to illegal material to be an illegal act in itself, regardless of whether referencing illegal material is illegal. In 2004, Josephine Ho was acquitted of 'hyperlinks that corrupt traditional values' in Taiwan.

In 2000 British Telecom sued Prodigy, claiming that Prodigy infringed its patent (U.S. Patent 4,873,662) on web hyperlinks. After litigation, a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom's patent did not cover web hyperlinks.

In United States jurisprudence, there is a distinction between the mere act of linking to someone else's website, and linking to content that is illegal or infringing. Several courts have found that merely linking to someone else's website is not copyright or trademark infringement, regardless of how much someone else might object. Linking to illegal or infringing content can be sufficiently problematic to give rise to legal liability. For a summary of the current status of US copyright law as to hyperlinking, see this discussion.

Further reading

• Weinreich, Harald (2001). "The look of the link – concepts for the user interface of extended hyperlinks": 19. doi:10.1145/504216.504225. Retrieved 2010-09-04. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

VPN Connectivity overview

A virtual private network (VPN) is a network that uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or traveling users access to a central organizational network.

VPNs typically require remote users of the network to be authenticated, and often secure data with encryption technologies to prevent disclosure of private information to unauthorized parties.

VPNs may serve any network functionality that is found on any network, such as sharing of data and access to network resources, printers, databases, websites, etc. A VPN user typically experiences the central network in a manner that is identical to being connected directly to the central network. VPN technology via the public Internet has replaced the need to requisition and maintain expensive dedicated leased-line telecommunication circuits once typical in wide-area network installations.

History

Virtual Private Network technology reduces costs because it does not need physical leased lines to connect remote users to an Intranet.

VPN systems can be classified by:

• The protocols used to tunnel the traffic
• The tunnel's termination point, i.e., customer edge or network provider edge
• Whether they offer site-to-site or remote access connectivity
• The levels of security provided
• The OSI layer they present to the connecting network, such as Layer 2 circuits or Layer 3 network connectivity

Some classification schemes are discussed in the following sections.

Security mechanisms

Secure VPNs use cryptographic tunneling protocols to provide confidentiality by blocking intercepts and packet sniffing, allowing sender authentication to block identity spoofing, and provide message integrity by preventing message alteration.

Secure VPN protocols include the following:

• IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and was initially developed for IPv6, which requires it. This standards-based security protocol is also widely used with IPv4. Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol frequently runs over IPsec. Its design meets most security goals: authentication, integrity, and confidentiality. IPsec functions by summarizing an IP packet in conjunction with a surrounding packet, and encrypting the outcome.
• Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) can tunnel an entire network's traffic, as it does in the OpenVPN project, or secure an individual connection. A number of vendors provide remote access VPN capabilities through SSL. An SSL VPN can connect from locations where IPsec runs into trouble with Network Address Translation and firewall rules.
• Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), is used in Cisco's next-generation VPN product, Cisco AnyConnect VPN, to solve the issues SSL/TLS has with tunneling over UDP.
• Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (MPPE) works with their Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol and in several compatible implementations on other platforms.
• Microsoft introduced Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1. SSTP tunnels Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) or Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol traffic through an SSL 3.0 channel.
• MPVPN (Multi Path Virtual Private Network). Ragula Systems Development Company owns the registered trademark "MPVPN".
• Secure Shell (SSH) VPN -- OpenSSH offers VPN tunneling to secure remote connections to a network or inter-network links. This should not be confused with port forwarding. OpenSSH server provides a limited number of concurrent tunnels and the VPN feature itself does not support personal authentication.

Authentication

Tunnel endpoints must authenticate before secure VPN tunnels can be established.

User-created remote access VPNs may use passwords, biometrics, two-factor authentication or other cryptographic methods.

Network-to-network tunnels often use passwords or digital certificates, as they permanently store the key to allow the tunnel to establish automatically and without intervention from the user.

Routing

Tunneling protocols can be used in a point-to-point topology that would theoretically not be considered a VPN, because a VPN by definition is expected to support arbitrary and changing sets of network nodes. But since most router implementations support a software-defined tunnel interface, customer-provisioned VPNs often are simply defined tunnels running conventional routing protocols.

PPVPN Building blocks

Depending on whether the PPVPN (Provider Provisioned VPN) runs in layer 2 or layer 3, the building blocks described below may be L2 only, L3 only, or combine them both. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) functionality blurs the L2-L3 identity.

RFC 4026 generalized the following terms to cover L2 and L3 VPNs, but they were introduced in RFC 2547.

Customer edge device. (CE)

A device at the customer premises, that provides access to the PPVPN. Sometimes it's just a demarcation point between provider and customer responsibility. Other providers allow customers to configure it.

Provider edge device (PE)

A PE is a device, or set of devices, at the edge of the provider network, that presents the provider's view of the customer site. PEs are aware of the VPNs that connect through them, and maintain VPN state.

Provider device (P)

A P device operates inside the provider's core network, and does not directly interface to any customer endpoint. It might, for example, provide routing for many provider-operated tunnels that belong to different customers' PPVPNs. While the P device is a key part of implementing PPVPNs, it is not itself VPN-aware and does not maintain VPN state. Its principal role is allowing the service provider to scale its PPVPN offerings, as, for example, by acting as an aggregation point for multiple PEs. P-to-P connections, in such a role, often are high-capacity optical links between major locations of provider.

User-visible PPVPN services This section deals with the types of VPN considered in the IETF; some historical names were replaced by these terms.

OSI Layer 1 services

Virtual private wire and private line services (VPWS and VPLS)

In both of these services, the service provider does not offer a full routed or bridged network, but provides components to build customer-administered networks. VPWS are point-to-point while VPLS can be point-to-multipoint. They can be Layer 1 emulated circuits with no data link .

The customer determines the overall customer VPN service, which also can involve routing, bridging, or host network elements.

An unfortunate acronym confusion can occur between Virtual Private Line Service and Virtual Private LAN Service; the context should make it clear whether "VPLS" means the layer 1 virtual private line or the layer 2 virtual private LAN.

OSI Layer 2 services

Virtual LAN

A Layer 2 technique that allows for the coexistence of multiple LAN broadcast domains, interconnected via trunks using the IEEE 802.1Q trunking protocol. Other trunking protocols have been used but have become obsolete, including Inter-Switch Link (ISL), IEEE 802.10 (originally a security protocol but a subset was introduced for trunking), and ATM LAN Emulation (LANE).

Virtual private LAN service (VPLS)

Developed by IEEE, VLANs allow multiple tagged LANs to share common trunking. VLANs frequently comprise only customer-owned facilities. Whereas VPLS as described in the above section (OSI Layer 1 services) supports emulation of both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint topologies, the method discussed here extends Layer 2 technologies such as 802.1d and 802.1q LAN trunking to run over transports such as Metro Ethernet.

As used in this context, a VPLS is a Layer 2 PPVPN, rather than a private line, emulating the full functionality of a traditional local area network (LAN). From a user standpoint, a VPLS makes it possible to interconnect several LAN segments over a packet-switched, or optical, provider core; a core transparent to the user, making the remote LAN segments behave as one single LAN.

In a VPLS, the provider network emulates a learning bridge, which optionally may include VLAN service.

Pseudo wire (PW)

PW is similar to VPWS, but it can provide different L2 protocols at both ends. Typically, its interface is a WAN protocol such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode or Frame Relay. In contrast, when aiming to provide the appearance of a LAN contiguous between two or more locations, the Virtual Private LAN service or IPLS would be appropriate.

IP-only LAN-like service (IPLS)

A subset of VPLS, the CE devices must have L3 capabilities; the IPLS presents packets rather than frames. It may support IPv4 or IPv6.

OSI Layer 3 PPVPN architectures

This section discusses the main architectures for PPVPNs, one where the PE disambiguates duplicate addresses in a single routing instance, and the other, virtual router, in which the PE contains a virtual router instance per VPN. The former approach, and its variants, have gained the most attention.

One of the challenges of PPVPNs involves different customers using the same address space, especially the IPv4 private address space. The provider must be able to disambiguate overlapping addresses in the multiple customers' PPVPNs.

BGP/MPLS PPVPN

In the method defined by RFC 2547, BGP extensions advertise routes in the IPv4 VPN address family, which are of the form of 12-byte strings, beginning with an 8-byte Route Distinguisher (RD) and ending with a 4-byte IPv4 address. RDs disambiguate otherwise duplicate addresses in the same PE.

PEs understand the topology of each VPN, which are interconnected with MPLS tunnels, either directly or via P routers. In MPLS terminology, the P routers are Label Switch Routers without awareness of VPNs.

Virtual router PPVPN

The Virtual Router architecture, as opposed to BGP/MPLS techniques, requires no modification to existing routing protocols such as BGP. By the provisioning of logically independent routing domains, the customer operating a VPN is completely responsible for the address space. In the various MPLS tunnels, the different PPVPNs are disambiguated by their label, but do not need routing distinguishers.

Virtual router architectures do not need to disambiguate addresses, because rather than a PE router having awareness of all the PPVPNs, the PE contains multiple virtual router instances, which belong to one and only one VPN.

Plaintext tunnels

Some virtual networks may not use encryption to protect the data contents. While VPNs often provide security, an unencrypted overlay network does not neatly fit within the secure or trusted categorization. For example a tunnel set up between two hosts that used Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) would in fact be a virtual private network, but neither secure nor trusted.

Besides the GRE example above, native plaintext tunneling protocols include Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) when it is set up without IPsec and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (MPPE).

Trusted delivery networks

Trusted VPNs do not use cryptographic tunneling, and instead rely on the security of a single provider's network to protect the traffic.

• Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is often used to overlay VPNs, often with quality-of-service control over a trusted delivery network.

• Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) which is a standards-based replacement, and a compromise taking the good features from each, for two proprietary VPN protocols: Cisco's Layer 2 Forwarding (L2F) (obsolete as of 2009) and Microsoft's Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).

From the security standpoint, VPNs either trust the underlying delivery network, or must enforce security with mechanisms in the VPN itself. Unless the trusted delivery network runs among physically secure sites only, both trusted and secure models need an authentication mechanism for users to gain access to the VPN.

VPNs in mobile environments

Mobile VPNs are used in a setting where an endpoint of the VPN is not fixed to a single IP address, but instead roams across various networks such as data networks from cellular carriers or between multiple Wi-Fi access points. Mobile VPNs have been widely used in public safety, where they give law enforcement officers access to mission-critical applications, such as computer-assisted dispatch and criminal databases, while they travel between different subnets of a mobile network. They are also used in field service management and by healthcare organizations, among other industries.

Increasingly, mobile VPNs are being adopted by mobile professionals and white-collar workers who need reliable connections. They are used for roaming seamlessly across networks and in and out of wireless-coverage areas without losing application sessions or dropping the secure VPN session. A conventional VPN cannot survive such events because the network tunnel is disrupted, causing applications to disconnect, time out, or fail, or even cause the computing device itself to crash.

Instead of logically tying the endpoint of the network tunnel to the physical IP address, each tunnel is bound to a permanently associated IP address at the device. The mobile VPN software handles the necessary network authentication and maintains the network sessions in a manner transparent to the application and the user. The Host Identity Protocol (HIP), under study by the Internet Engineering Task Force, is designed to support mobility of hosts by separating the role of IP addresses for host identification from their locator functionality in an IP network. With HIP a mobile host maintains its logical connections established via the host identity identifier while associating with different IP addresses when roaming between access networks.

Further reading

• Kelly, Sean (August 2001). "Necessity is the mother of VPN invention". Communication News: 26–28. ISSN 0010-3632.
• "VPN Buyers Guide". Communication News: 34–38. August 2001. ISSN 0010-3632.

External links

• JANET UK "Different Flavours of VPN: Technology and Applications"
• Virtual Private Network Consortium - a trade association for VPN vendors
• CShip VPN-Wiki/List
• Virtual Private Networks on Microsoft TechNet
• Creating VPNs with IPsec and SSL/TLS Linux Journal article by Rami Rosen
• How to setup VPN in iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS Step by step users guide
• curvetun a lightweight curve25519-based multiuser IP tunnel / VPN
• Using VPN to bypass internet censorship in How to Bypass Internet Censorship, a FLOSS Manual, 10 March 2011, 240 pp

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) (also called complete packet inspection and Information eXtraction - IX -) is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part (and possibly also the header) of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or for the purpose of collecting statistical information. There are multiple headers for IP packets, network equipment only needs to use the first of these (the IP header) for normal operation, but use of the second header (TCP, UDP etc.) is normally considered to be shallow packet inspection (usually called Stateful Packet Inspection) despite this definition.

Deep Packet Inspection (and filtering) enables advanced network management, user service, and security functions as well as internet data mining, eavesdropping, and censorship. Although DPI technology has been used for Internet management for many years, some advocates of net neutrality fear that the technology can be used anticompetitively or to reduce the openness of the Internet.

DPI is currently being used by the enterprise, service providers and governments in a wide range of applications.

Background

DPI combines the functionality of an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) with a traditional stateful firewall. This combination makes it possible to detect certain attacks that neither the IDS/IPS nor the stateful firewall can catch on their own. Stateful firewalls, while able to see the beginning and end of a packet flow, cannot on their own catch events that would be out of bounds for a particular application. While IDSs are able to detect intrusions, they have very little capability in blocking such an attack. DPIs are used to prevent attacks from viruses and worms at wire speeds. More specifically, DPI can be effective against buffer overflow attacks, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, sophisticated intrusions, and a small percentage of worms that fit within a single packet.

DPI-enabled devices have the ability to look at Layer 2 and beyond Layer 3 of the OSI model, in cases DPI can be evoked to look through Layer 2-7 of the OSI model. This includes headers and data protocol structures as well as the actual payload of the message. DPI functionality is evoked when a device looks or takes other action based on information beyond Layer 3 of the OSI model. DPI can identify and classify traffic based on a signature database that includes information extracted from the data part of a packet, allowing finer control than classification based only on header information. End points can utilize encryption and obfuscation techniques to evade DPI actions in many cases.

A classified packet can be redirected, marked/tagged (see quality of service), blocked, rate limited, and of course reported to a reporting agent in the network. In this way, HTTP errors of different classifications may be identified and forwarded for analysis. Many DPI devices can identify packet flows (rather than packet-by-packet analysis), allowing control actions based on accumulated flow information.

DPI at the enterprise

Initially security at the enterprise was just a perimeter discipline, with a dominant philosophy of keeping unauthorized users out, and shielding authorized users from the outside world. The most frequently used tool for accomplishing this has been a stateful firewall. It can permit fine-grained control of access from the outside world to pre-defined destinations on the internal network, as well as permitting access back to other hosts only if a request to the outside world has been made previously.

However, vulnerabilities exist at network layers that are not visible to a stateful firewall. Also, an increase in the use of laptops in the enterprise makes it more difficult to prevent threats such as viruses, worms and spyware from penetrating the corporate network, as many users will connect the laptop to less-secure networks such as home broadband connections or wireless networks in public locations. Firewalls also do not distinguish between permitted and forbidden uses of legitimately-accessed applications. DPI enables IT administrators and security officials to set policies and enforce them at all layers, including the application and user layer to help combat those threats.

Deep Packet Inspection is able to detect a few kinds of buffer overflow attacks.

DPI can be used by the enterprise for Data Leak Prevention (DLP). When an e-mail user tries to send a protected file he may be given information on how to get the proper clearance to send the file.Template:Examples

DPI at network/Internet service providers

In addition to using DPI to secure their internal networks, Internet service providers also apply this technology on the public networks provided to customers. Common uses of DPI by ISPs are lawful intercept, policy definition and enforcement, targeted advertising, quality of service, offering tiered services, and copyright enforcement.

Lawful interception

Service providers are required by almost all governments worldwide to enable lawful intercept capabilities. Decades ago in a legacy telephone environment, this was met by creating a traffic access point (TAP) using an intercepting proxy server that connects to the government's surveillance equipment. This is not possible in contemporary digital networks. The acquisition component of this functionality can be provided in many ways, including DPI, DPI enabled products that are "LI or CALEA-compliant" can be used - when directed by a court order - to access a user's datastream.

Policy definition and enforcement

Service providers obligated by the service level agreement with their customers to provide a certain level of service, and at the same time enforce an acceptable use policy, may make use of DPI to implement certain policies that cover copyright infringements, illegal materials, and unfair use of bandwidth. In some countries the ISPs are required to perform filtering depending on the country's laws. DPI allows service providers to "readily know the packets of information you are receiving online—from e-mail, to websites, to sharing of music, video and software downloads". Policies can be defined that allow or disallow connection to or from an IP address, certain protocols, or even heuristics that identify a certain application or behavior.

Targeted advertising

Because ISPs route all of their customers' traffic, they are able to monitor web-browsing habits in a very detailed way allowing them to gain information about their customers' interests, which can be used by companies specializing in targeted advertising. At least 100,000 US customers are tracked this way, and as many of 10% of US customers have been tracked in this way. Technology providers include NebuAd, Front Porch and Phorm. US ISPs monitoring their customers include Knology, and Wide Open West. In addition, the UK ISP British Telecom has admitted testing technology from Phorm without their customers' knowledge or consent.

Quality of service

Applications such as peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic present increasing problems for broadband service providers. P2P traffic is typically used by applications that do file sharing. This can be documents, music and videos. Due to the frequently large size of media files being transferred, P2P drives increasing traffic loads, requiring additional network capacity. Service providers say a minority of users generate large quantities of P2P traffic and degrade performance for the majority of broadband subscribers using applications such as email or Web browsing which use less bandwidth. Poor network performance increases customer dissatisfaction and leads to a decline in service revenues.

DPI allows the operators to oversell their available bandwidth while ensuring equitable bandwidth distribution to all users by preventing network congestion. Additionally, a higher priority can be allocated to a VoIP or video conferencing call which requires low latency versus web browsing which does not. This is the approach that service providers use to dynamically allocate bandwidth according to traffic that is passing through their networks.

Other Vendors claim that DPI is ineffective against P2P and that other methods of Bandwidth Management are more effective.Template:ClarificationTemplate:Examples

Tiered services

Mobile and broadband service providers use DPI as a means to implement tiered service plans, to differentiate "walled garden" services from "value added", “all-you-can-eat" and "one-size-fits-all” data services. By being able to charge for a "walled garden", per application, per service, or "all-you-can-eat" rather than a "one-size-fits-all" package, the operator can tailor his offering to the individual subscriber and increase their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). A policy is created per user or user group, and the DPI system in turn enforces that policy, allowing the user access to different services and applications.

Copyright enforcement

ISPs are sometimes requested by copyright owners or required by courts or official policy to help enforce copyrights. In 2006, one of Denmark's largest ISPs, Tele2, was given a court injunction and told it must block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, a launching point for BitTorrent. Instead of prosecuting file sharers one at a time, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the big four record labels EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music have begun suing ISPs like Eircom for not doing enough about protecting their copyrights. The IFPI wants ISPs to filter traffic to remove illicitly uploaded and downloaded copyrighted material from their network, despite European directive 2000/31/EC clearly stating that ISPs may not be put under a general obligation to monitor the information they transmit and directive 2002/58/EC granting European citizens a right to privacy of communications. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) which enforces movie copyrights, on the other hand has taken the position with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that network neutrality could hurt anti-piracy technology such as Deep Packet Inspection and other forms of filtering.

Statistics

DPI allows ISPs to gather statistical information about usage patterns by user group. For instance, it might be of interest whether users with a 2 Mbit connection use the network in a dissimilar manner to users with a 5 Mbit connection. Access to trend data also help network planning. Template:ClarificationTemplate:Elluciate<!- also wouldn't shallow packet inspection be sufficient?>

Deep Packet Inspection by governments

In addition to using DPI for the security of their own networks, governments in North America, Europe and Asia use DPI for various purposes such as surveillance and censorship; many of these programs are classified.

United States

FCC adopts Internet CALEA requirements. The FCC, pursuant to its mandate from the US Congress, and in line with the policies of most countries worldwide, has required that all telecommunication providers, including Internet services, be capable of supporting the execution of a court order to provide real-time communication forensics of specified users. In 2006, the FCC adopted new Title 47, Subpart Z, rules requiring Internet Access Providers meet these requirements. DPI was one of the platforms essential to meeting this requirement and has been deployed for this purpose throughout the U.S.

Main article: NSA warrantless surveillance controversy

The National Security Agency (NSA), with cooperation from AT&T, has used Deep Packet Inspection technology to make internet traffic surveillance, sorting and forwarding more intelligent. The DPI is used to find which packets are carrying e-mail or a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone call. Traffic associated with AT&T’s Common Backbone was "split" between two fibers, dividing the signal so that 50 percent of the signal strength went to each output fiber. One of the output fibers was diverted to a secure room; the other carried communications on to AT&T’s switching equipment. The secure room contained Narus traffic analyzers and logic servers; Narus states that such devices are capable of real-time data collection (recording data for consideration) and capture at 10 gigabits per second. Certain traffic was selected and sent over a dedicated line to a "central location" for analysis. According to Marcus’s affidavit, the diverted traffic "represented all, or substantially all, of AT&T’s peering traffic in the San Francisco Bay area," and thus, "the designers of the ... configuration made no attempt, in terms of location or position of the fiber split, to exclude data sources comprised primarily of domestic data." Narus's Semantic Traffic Analyzer software which runs on IBM or Dell Linux servers, using DPI technology, sorts through IP traffic at 10Gbit/s to pick out specific messages based on a targeted e-mail address, IP address or, in the case of VoIP, phone number. President George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have asserted that they believe the president has the authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad without obtaining a FISA warrant.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has developed a sensor platform that uses Deep Packet Inspection.

China

Main article: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

The Chinese government uses Deep Packet Inspection to monitor and censor network traffic and content that it claims harmful to Chinese citizens or state interests. This material includes pornography, information on religion, and political dissent. Chinese network ISPs use DPI to see if there's any sensitive keyword going through their network. If so, the connection will be cut. People within China often find themselves blocked while accessing Web sites containing content related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of 1989, political parties that oppose that of the ruling Communist party, or a variety of anti-Communist movements as those materials were signed as DPI sensitive keywords already. China also blocks VoIP traffic in and out of their country. Voice traffic in Skype is unaffected, although text messages are subject to DPI, and messages containing sensitive material, such as curse-words, are simply not delivered, with no notification provided to either participant in the conversation. China also blocks visual media sites like YouTube.com, and various photography and blogging sites.

Iran

Main article: Internet censorship in Iran

The Iranian government purchased a system, reportedly for deep packet inspection, in 2008 from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal in June, 2009, quoting NSN spokesperson Ben Roome. According to unnamed experts cited in the article, the system "enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes."

The system was purchased by the Telecommunication Infrastructure Co., part of the Iranian government's telecom monopoly. According to the Journal, NSN "provided equipment to Iran last year under the internationally recognized concept of 'lawful intercept,' said Mr. Roome. That relates to intercepting data for the purposes of combating terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking and other criminal activities carried out online, a capability that most if not all telecom companies have, he said.... The monitoring center that Nokia Siemens Networks sold to Iran was described in a company brochure as allowing 'the monitoring and interception of all types of voice and data communication on all networks.' The joint venture exited the business that included the monitoring equipment, what it called 'intelligence solutions,' at the end of March, by selling it to Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, a Munich-based investment firm, Mr. Roome said. He said the company determined it was no longer part of its core business."

The NSN system followed on purchases by Iran from Secure Computing Corp. earlier in the decade.

Questions have been raised about the reporting reliability of the Journal report by David Isenberg, an independent Washington, D.C.-based analyst and Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar, specifically saying that Mr. Roome is denying the quotes attributed to him and that he, Isenberg, had similar complaints with one of the same Journal reporters himself in an earlier story. NSN has issued the following denial: NSN "has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran." A concurrent article in The New York Times said the NSN sale had been covered in a "spate of news reports in April [2009], including The Washington Times," and reviewed censorship of the Internet and other media in the country, but did not mention DPI.

DPI and net neutrality

People and organizations concerned about privacy or network neutrality find inspection of the content layers of the Internet protocol to be offensive, saying for example, "the 'Net was built on open access and non-discrimination of packets!" Critics of network neutrality rules, meanwhile, call them "a solution in search of a problem" and say that net neutrality rules would reduce incentives to upgrade networks and launch next-generation network services.

Software

Opendpi is the open source version for non obfuscated protocols, PACE includes obfuscated/encrypted protocols like Skype or encrypted BitTorrent.

L7-Filter is a classifier for Linux's Netfilter that identifies packets based on application layer data. It can classify packets such as Kazaa, HTTP, Jabber, Citrix, Bittorrent, FTP, Gnucleus, eDonkey2000 etc. It classifies streaming, mailing, P2P, VOIP, protocols and gaming applications.

Hippie(Hi-Performance Protocol Identification Engine) is an open source project which was developed as kernel module. It was developed by Josh Ballard. It supports both DPI as well as firewall functionality.

SPID (Statistical Protocol IDentification) project is based on statistical analysis of network flows to identify application traffic. SPID algorithm can detect the application layer protocol (layer 7) by analysing flow (packet sizes etc.) and payload statistics (byte values etc.) from pcap files. It is just a proof of concept application and currently supports around 15 application/protocols like eDonkey Obfuscation traffic, Skype UDP and TCP, BitTorrent, IMAP, IRC, MSN etc.

Tstat (TCP STatistic and Analysis Tool) provides insight into traffic patterns and gives details statistics for numerous applications and protocols.

The open source community offers a wide array of options for performing deep packet inspection functions; a comprehensive list is maintained by the dPacket.org community

See also

• Common carrier
• Deep content inspection
• Deep packet capture
• Firewall
• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
• Golden Shield
• Intrusion prevention/detection systems
• Network neutrality
• NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
• Stateful firewall
• ECHELON

External links

• Test Methodology - registration required
• Subverting Deep Packet Inspection the Right Way
• What is "Deep Inspection"?
• A collection of essays from industry experts
• What Is Deep Packet Inspection and Why the Controversy
• White Paper "Deep Packet Inspection – Technology, Applications & Net Neutrality"
• Egypt's cyber-crackdown aided by US Company - DPI technology used by Egyptian government in recent internet crackdown
• http://www.savetheinternet.com/
• Deep Packet Inspection puts its stamp on an evolving Internet
• Validate DPI policy using real applications

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numeric label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, smartphone, hotspot) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. The address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there."

The designers of the Internet Protocol defined an IP address as an integer expressed in binary notation with a length of 32 bits and this system, known as IPv4, is still in use today. However, due to the enormous growth of the Internet and the predicted exhaustion of available IPv4 addresses, a new addressing system called IPv6, using addresses that are binary integers 128 bits long, has been deployed worldwide alongside IPv4 since the mid-2000s.

Though IP addresses are technically binary numbers, they are usually stored and displayed in more human-readable notations like decimal, such as 172.16.254.1 (for IPv4), and 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 (for IPv6).

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) manages the IP address space allocations globally and maintains five regional Internet registries (RIRs) to allocate IP address blocks to Internet service providers and other entities.

IP versions

Two versions of the Internet Protocol (IP) are in use: IP Version 4 and IP Version 6. Each version defines an IP address differently. Because of its prevalence, the generic term IP address typically still refers to the addresses defined by IPv4. The gap in version sequence between IPv4 and IPv6 resulted from the assignment of number 5 to the experimental Internet Stream Protocol in 1979, though it was never referred to as IPv5.

IPv4 addresses

Conversion of an IPv4 address from "dot-decimal" notation to its binary value

In IPv4 an address consists of 32 bits which limits the address space to 4,294,967,296 (2³²) possible unique addresses. IPv4 reserves some addresses for special purposes such as private networks (~18 million addresses) or multicast addresses (~270 million addresses).

IPv4 addresses are canonically represented in "dot-decimal" notation which consists of four decimal numbers, each ranging from 0 to 255, separated by full stops or periods, e.g., 172.16.254.1. Each part represents a group of 8 bits (octet) of the address. In some cases of technical writing, IPv4 addresses may be presented in various hexadecimal, octal, or binary representations.

IPv4 subnetting

In the early stages of development of the Internet Protocol, network administrators interpreted an IP address in two parts: network number portion and host number portion. The highest order octet (most significant eight bits) in an address was designated as the network number and the remaining bits were called the rest field or host identifier and were used for host numbering within a network.

This early method soon proved inadequate as additional networks developed that were independent of the existing networks already designated by a network number. In 1981, the Internet addressing specification was revised with the introduction of classful network architecture.

Classful network design allowed for a larger number of individual network assignments and fine-grained subnetwork design. The first three bits of the most significant octet of an IP address were defined as the class of the address. Three classes (A, B, and C) were defined for universal unicast addressing. Depending on the class derived, the network identification was based on octet boundary segments of the entire address. Each class used successively additional octets in the network identifier, thus reducing the possible number of hosts in the higher order classes (B and C). The following table gives an overview of this, now obsolete, system.

Classful network architecture

Class	Leading bits in address (binary)	Range of first octet (decimal)	Network ID format	Host ID format	No. of networks	No. of addresses per network
A	0	0 - 127	a	b.c.d	27 = 128	224 = 16,777,216
B	10	128–191	a.b	c.d	214 = 16,384	216 = 65,536
C	110	192–223	a.b.c	d	221 = 2,097,152	28 = 256

Classful network design served its purpose in the startup stage of the Internet, but it lacked scalability in the face of the rapid expansion of the network in the 1990s. The class system of the address space was replaced with Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) in 1993, which employs variable-length subnet masking (VLSM) to allow allocation and routing based on arbitrary-length prefixes.

Today, remnants of classful network concepts function only in a limited scope as the default configuration parameters of some network software and hardware components (e.g. netmask), and in the technical jargon used in network administrators' discussions.

IPv4 private addresses

Early network design, when global end-to-end connectivity was envisioned for communications with all Internet hosts, intended that IP addresses be uniquely assigned to a particular computer or device. However, it was found that this was not always necessary as private networks developed and public address space needed to be conserved.

Computers not connected to the Internet, such as factory machines that communicate only with each other via TCP/IP, need not have globally unique IP addresses. Three ranges of IPv4 addresses for private networks were reserved in RFC 1918. These addresses are not routed on the Internet and thus their use need not be coordinated with an IP address registry.

Today, when needed, such private networks typically connect to the Internet through network address translation (NAT).

IANA-reserved private IPv4 network ranges

	Start	End	No. of addresses
24-bit block (/8 prefix, 1 × A)	10.0.0.0	10.255.255.255	16,777,216
20-bit block (/12 prefix, 16 × B)	172.16.0.0	172.31.255.255	1,048,576
16-bit block (/16 prefix, 256 × C)	192.168.0.0	192.168.255.255	65,536

Any user may use any of the reserved blocks. Typically, a network administrator will divide a block into subnets; for example, many home routers automatically use a default address range of 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.255 (192.168.1.0/24 in CIDR notation).

IPv4 address exhaustion

The supply of unallocated IPv4 addresses available at IANA and the RIRs for assignment to end users and Internet service providers has been completely exhausted since February 3, 2011, when the last 5 A-class blocks were allocated to the 5 RIRs. Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) was the first RIR to exhaust its regional pool on April 15, 2011, except for a small amount of address space reserved for the transition to IPv6.

IPv6 addresses

Conversion of an IPv6 address from hexadecimal representation to its binary value

The rapid exhaustion of IPv4 address space, despite conservation techniques, prompted the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to explore new technologies to expand the Internet's addressing capability. The permanent solution was deemed to be a redesign of the Internet Protocol itself. This next generation of the Internet Protocol, intended to complement and eventually replace IPv4, was ultimately named Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) in 1995. The address size was increased from 32 to 128 bits or 16 octets. This, even with a generous assignment of network blocks, is deemed sufficient for the foreseeable future. Mathematically, the new address space provides the potential for a maximum of ~3.403×10³⁸ unique addresses (2¹²⁸).

The new design is not intended to provide a sufficient quantity of addresses on its own, but rather to allow efficient aggregation of subnet routing prefixes to occur at routing nodes. As a result, routing table sizes are smaller, and the smallest possible individual allocation is a subnet for 2⁶⁴ hosts, which is the square of the size of the entire IPv4 Internet. At these levels, actual address utilization rates will be small on any IPv6 network segment. The new design also provides the opportunity to separate the addressing infrastructure of a network segment — that is the local administration of the segment's available space — from the addressing prefix used to route external traffic for a network. IPv6 has facilities that automatically change the routing prefix of entire networks, should the global connectivity or the routing policy change, without requiring internal redesign or renumbering.

The large number of IPv6 addresses allows large blocks to be assigned for specific purposes and, where appropriate, to be aggregated for efficient routing. With a large address space, there is not the need to have complex address conservation methods as used in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR).

Many modern desktop and enterprise server operating systems include native support for the IPv6 protocol, but it is not yet widely deployed in other devices, such as home networking routers, voice over IP (VoIP) equipment, and other network peripherals.

IPv6 private addresses

Just as IPv4 reserves addresses for private or internal networks, blocks of addresses are set aside in IPv6 for private addresses. In IPv6, these are referred to as unique local addresses (ULAs). RFC 4193 sets aside the routing prefix fc00::/7 for this block which is divided into two /8 blocks with different implied policies The addresses include a 40-bit pseudorandom number that minimizes the risk of address collisions if sites merge or packets are misrouted.

Addresses starting with fe80:, called link-local addresses, are assigned to interfaces for communication within the subnet only. The addresses are automatically generated by the operating system for each network interface. This provides instant and automatic network connectivity for any IPv6 host and means that if several hosts connect to a common hub or switch, they have a communication path via their link-local IPv6 address. This feature is used in the lower layers of IPv6 network administration (e.g. Neighbor Discovery Protocol).

None of the private address prefixes may be routed on the public Internet.

IP subnetworks

IP networks may be divided into subnetworks in both IPv4 and IPv6. For this purpose, an IP address is logically recognized as consisting of two parts: the network prefix and the host identifier (renamed the interface identifier in IPv6). The subnet mask or the CIDR prefix determines how the IP address is divided into network and host parts.

The term subnet mask is only used within IPv4. Both IP versions, however, use the Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) concept and notation. In this, the IP address is followed by a slash and the number (in decimal) of bits used for the network part, also called the routing prefix. For example, an IPv4 address and its subnet mask may be 192.0.2.1 and 255.255.255.0, respectively; the CIDR notation for the same IP address and subnet is 192.0.2.1/24, because the first 24 bits of the IP address (192.000.002, precisely) indicate the network and subnet.

IP address assignment

Internet Protocol addresses are assigned to a host either anew at the time of booting, or permanently by fixed configuration of its hardware or software. Persistent configuration is also known as using a static IP address. In contrast, in situations when the computer's IP address is assigned newly each time, this is known as using a dynamic IP address.

Methods

Static IP addresses are manually assigned to a computer by an administrator. The exact procedure varies according to platform. This contrasts with dynamic IP addresses, which are assigned either by the computer interface or host software itself, as in Zeroconf, or assigned by a server using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Even though IP addresses assigned using DHCP may stay the same for long periods of time, they can generally change. In some cases, a network administrator may implement dynamically assigned static IP addresses. In this case, a DHCP server is used, but it is specifically configured to always assign the same IP address to a particular computer. This allows static IP addresses to be configured centrally, without having to specifically configure each computer on the network in a manual procedure.

In the absence or failure of static or stateful (DHCP) address configurations, an operating system may assign an IP address to a network interface using state-less auto-configuration methods, such as Zeroconf.

Uses of dynamic addressing

Dynamic IP addresses are most frequently assigned on LANs and broadband networks by DHCP servers. They are used because it avoids the administrative burden of assigning specific static addresses to each device on a network. It also allows many devices to share limited address space on a network if only some of them will be online at a particular time. In most current desktop operating systems, dynamic IP configuration is enabled by default so that a user does not need to manually enter any settings to connect to a network with a DHCP server. DHCP is not the only technology used to assign dynamic IP addresses. Dial-up and some broadband networks use dynamic address features of the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP).

Sticky dynamic IP address

A sticky dynamic IP address is an informal term used by cable and DSL Internet access subscribers to describe a dynamically assigned IP address which seldom changes. The addresses are usually assigned with DHCP. Since the modems are usually powered on for extended periods of time, the address leases are usually set to long periods and simply renewed. If a modem is turned off and powered up again before the next expiration of the address lease, it will most likely receive the same IP address.

Address auto-configuration

RFC 3330 defines an address block, 169.254.0.0/16, for the special use in link-local addressing for IPv4 networks. In IPv6 every interface, whether using static or dynamic address assignments, also receives a local-link address automatically, in the block fe80::/10.

These addresses are only valid on the link, such as a local network segment or point-to-point connection, that a host is connected to. These addresses are not routable and like private addresses cannot be the source or destination of packets traversing the Internet.

When the link-local IPv4 address block was reserved, no standards existed for mechanisms of address autoconfiguration. Filling the void, Microsoft created an implementation that is called Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA). Due to Microsoft's market power, APIPA has been deployed on millions of machines and has become a de facto standard in the industry. Many years later, the IETF defined a formal standard for this functionality, RFC 3927, entitled Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses.

Uses of static addressing

Some infrastructure situations have to use static addressing, such as when finding the Domain Name System (DNS) host that will translate domain names to IP addresses. Static addresses are also convenient, but not absolutely necessary, to locate servers inside an enterprise. An address obtained from a DNS server comes with a time to live or caching time, after which it should be looked up to confirm that it has not changed. Even static IP addresses do change, often as a result of network administration (RFC 2072).

Public addresses

A public IP address in common parlance is synonymous with a, globally routable unicast IP address. Both IPv4 and IPv6 define address ranges that are reserved for private networks and link-local addressing. The term public IP address often used exclude these types of addresses.

Modifications to IP addressing

IP blocking and firewalls

Firewalls protect networks from unauthorized access and are common at every level of today's Internet, controlling access to networks based on the IP address of the computer requesting access. Whether using a blacklist or a whitelist, the IP address that is blocked is the perceived IP address of the client, meaning that if the client is using a proxy server or network address translation, blocking one IP address may block many individual computers.

IP address translation

Multiple client devices can appear to share IP addresses: either because they are located on a shared-hosting web server or because an IPv4 network address translator (NAT) or proxy server acts as an intermediary agent on behalf of its customers, in which case the real originating IP addresses might be hidden from the server receiving a request. A common practice is to have a NAT hide a large number of IP addresses in a private network. Only the "outside" interface(s) of the NAT need to have Internet-routable addresses.

Most commonly, the NAT device maps TCP or UDP port numbers on the outside to individual private addresses on the inside. Just as a telephone number may have site-specific extensions, the port numbers are site-specific extensions to an IP address.

In small home networks, NAT functions usually take place in a residential gateway device, typically one marketed as a "router". In this scenario, the computers connected to the router would have 'private' IP addresses and the router would have a 'public' address to communicate with the Internet. This type of router allows several computers to share one public IP address.

External links

• IP at Curlie
• "Understanding IP Addressing: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 21, 2010.

Logo of Mozilla Firefox, one of the most widely used web browsers

Web browser usage on Wikimedia servers

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

Although browsers are primarily intended to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems. The major web browsers are Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.

History

Main article: History of the web browser

File:WorldWideWeb FSF GNU.png

WorldWideWeb for NeXT, released in 1991, was the first web browser.

The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee. It was called WorldWideWeb (no spaces) and was later renamed Nexus.

In 1993, browser software was further innovated by Marc Andreesen with the release of Mosaic (later Netscape), "the world's first popular browser", which made the World Wide Web system easy to use and more accessible to the average person. Andreesen's browser sparked the internet boom of the 1990s. These are the two major milestones in the history of the Web.

The introduction of the NCSA Mosaic web browser in 1993 – one of the first graphical web browsers – led to an explosion in web use. Marc Andreessen, the leader of the Mosaic team at NCSA, soon started his own company, named Netscape, and released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994, which quickly became the world's most popular browser, accounting for 90% of all web use at its peak (see usage share of web browsers).

Microsoft responded with its Internet Explorer in 1995 (also heavily influenced by Mosaic), initiating the industry's first browser war. Bundled with Windows, Internet Explorer gained dominance in the web browser market; Internet Explorer usage share peaked at over 95% by 2002.

Opera debuted in 1996; although it has never achieved widespread use, having less than 1% browser usage share as of February 2009 according to Net Applications, having grown to 2.14 in April 2011 its Opera-mini version has an additive share, in April 2011 amounting to 1.11 % of overall browser use, but focused on the fast-growing mobile phone web browser market, being preinstalled on over 40 million phones. It is also available on several other embedded systems, including Nintendo's Wii video game console.

In 1998, Netscape launched what was to become the Mozilla Foundation in an attempt to produce a competitive browser using the open source software model. That browser would eventually evolve into Firefox, which developed a respectable following while still in the beta stage of development; shortly after the release of Firefox 1.0 in late 2004, Firefox (all versions) accounted for 7.4% of browser use. As of August 2011, Firefox has a 27.7% usage share.

Apple's Safari had its first beta release in January 2003; as of April 2011, it has a dominant share of Apple-based web browsing, accounting for just over 7.15% of the entire browser market.

The most recent major entrant to the browser market is Google's Chrome, first released in September 2008. Chrome's take-up has increased significantly year on year, by doubling its usage share from 7.7 percent to 15.5 percent by August 2011. This increase seems largely to be at the expense of Internet Explorer, whose share has tended to decrease from month to month. In December 2011 Google Chrome overtook Internet Explorer 8 as the most widely used web browser. However, when all versions of Internet Explorer are put together, IE is still most popular.

Function

The primary purpose of a web browser is to bring information resources to the user. This process begins when the user inputs a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), for example http://en.wikipedia.org/, into the browser. The prefix of the URL, the Uniform Resource Identifier or URI, determines how the URL will be interpreted. The most commonly used kind of URI starts with http: and identifies a resource to be retrieved over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Many browsers also support a variety of other prefixes, such as https: for HTTPS, ftp: for the File Transfer Protocol, and file: for local files. Prefixes that the web browser cannot directly handle are often handed off to another application entirely. For example, mailto: URIs are usually passed to the user's default e-mail application, and news: URIs are passed to the user's default newsgroup reader.

In the case of http, https, file, and others, once the resource has been retrieved the web browser will display it. HTML is passed to the browser's layout engine to be transformed from markup to an interactive document. Aside from HTML, web browsers can generally display any kind of content that can be part of a web page. Most browsers can display images, audio, video, and XML files, and often have plug-ins to support Flash applications and Java applets. Upon encountering a file of an unsupported type or a file that is set up to be downloaded rather than displayed, the browser prompts the user to save the file to disk.

Information resources may contain hyperlinks to other information resources. Each link contains the URI of a resource to go to. When a link is clicked, the browser navigates to the resource indicated by the link's target URI, and the process of bringing content to the user begins again.

Features

Available web browsers range in features from minimal, text-based user interfaces with bare-bones support for HTML to rich user interfaces supporting a wide variety of file formats and protocols. Browsers which include additional components to support e-mail, Usenet news, and Internet Relay Chat (IRC), are sometimes referred to as "Internet suites" rather than merely "web browsers".

All major web browsers allow the user to open multiple information resources at the same time, either in different browser windows or in different tabs of the same window. Major browsers also include pop-up blockers to prevent unwanted windows from "popping up" without the user's consent.

Most web browsers can display a list of web pages that the user has bookmarked so that the user can quickly return to them. Bookmarks are also called "Favorites" in Internet Explorer. In addition, all major web browsers have some form of built-in web feed aggregator. In Firefox, web feeds are formatted as "live bookmarks" and behave like a folder of bookmarks corresponding to recent entries in the feed. In Opera, a more traditional feed reader is included which stores and displays the contents of the feed.

Furthermore, most browsers can be extended via plug-ins, downloadable components that provide additional features.

User interface

Most major web browsers have these user interface elements in common:

• Back and forward buttons to go back to the previous resource and forward respectively.
• A refresh or reload button to reload the current resource.
• A stop button to cancel loading the resource. In some browsers, the stop button is merged with the reload button.
• A home button to return to the user's home page.
• An address bar to input the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the desired resource and display it.
• A search bar to input terms into a search engine. In some browsers, the search bar is merged with the address bar.
• A status bar to display progress in loading the resource and also the URI of links when the cursor hovers over them, and page zooming capability.

Major browsers also possess incremental find features to search within a web page.

Privacy and security

Most browsers support HTTP Secure and offer quick and easy ways to delete the web cache, cookies, and browsing history. For a comparison of the current security vulnerabilities of browsers, see comparison of web browsers.

Standards support

Early web browsers supported only a very simple version of HTML. The rapid development of proprietary web browsers led to the development of non-standard dialects of HTML, leading to problems with interoperability. Modern web browsers support a combination of standards-based and de facto HTML and XHTML, which should be rendered in the same way by all browsers.

Extensibility

A browser extension is a computer program that extends the functionality of a web browser. Every major web browser supports the development of browser extensions.

External links

• Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One
• Existing browsers
• WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider. With streaming, the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g., radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (e.g., books, video cassettes, audio CDs). The verb 'to stream' is also derived from this term, meaning to deliver media in this manner. Internet television is a commonly streamed medium. Streaming media can be something else other than video and audio. Live closed captioning and stock tickers are considered streaming text, as is Real-Time Text.

Live streaming, delivering live over the Internet, involves a camera for the media, an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content.

History

Attempts to display media on computers date back to the earliest days of computing in the mid-20th century. However, little progress was made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware.

From the late 1980s through the 1990s, consumer-grade personal computers became powerful enough to display various media. The primary technical issues related to streaming were:

• having enough CPU power and bus bandwidth to support the required data rates
• creating low-latency interrupt paths in the operating system (OS) to prevent buffer underrun.

However, computer networks were still limited, and media was usually delivered over non-streaming channels, such as by downloading a digital file from a remote server and then saving it to a local drive on the end user's computer or storing it as a digital file and playing it back from CD-ROMs.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Internet users saw:

• greater network bandwidth, especially in the last mile
• increased access to networks, especially the Internet
• use of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML
• commercialization of the Internet.

Severe Tire Damage was the first band to perform live on the Internet. On June 24, 1993, the band was playing a gig at Xerox PARC while elsewhere in the building, scientists were discussing new technology (the Mbone) for broadcasting on the Internet using multicasting. As proof of their technology, the band was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere.

RealNetworks were also pioneers in the streaming media markets and broadcast one of the earlier audio events over the Internet - a baseball game between the Yankees and Seattle Mariners - in 1995. They went on to launch the first streaming video technology in 1997 with RealPlayer.

When Word Magazine launched in 1995, they featured the first ever streaming soundtracks on the internet. Using local downtown musicians the first music stream was 'Big Wheel' by Karthik Swaminathan and the second being 'When We Were Poor' by Karthik Swaminathan with Marc Ribot and Christine Bard.

Shorty after in the beginning of 1996, Microsoft developed a media player know as ActiveMovie that allowed streaming media and included a proprietary streaming format, which was the successor to the streaming feature later in Windows Media Player 6.4 in 1999.

In June of 1999, Apple also introduced a streaming media format in its Quicktime 4 application. It was later also widely adopted on websites along with RealPlayer and Windows Media streaming formats. The competing formats on websites required each user to download the respective applications for streaming and resulted in many users having to have all three applications on their computer for general compatibility.

Around 2002, the interest in a single, unified, streaming format and the widespread adoption of Adobe Flash on computers prompted the development of a video streaming format through Flash, which is the format used in Flash-based players on many popular video hosting sites today such as YouTube.

Increasing consumer demand for live streaming has prompted YouTube to implement their new Live Streaming service to users.

These advances in computer networking combined with powerful home computers and modern operating systems made streaming media practical and affordable for ordinary consumers. Stand-alone Internet radio devices emerged to offer listeners a no-computer option for listening to audio streams.

In general, multimedia content has a large volume, so media storage and transmission costs are still significant. To offset this somewhat, media are generally compressed for both storage and streaming.

Increasing consumer demand for streaming of high definition (HD) content to different devices in the home has led the industry to develop a number of technologies, such as Wireless HD or ITU-T G.hn, which are optimized for streaming HD content without forcing the user to install new networking cables.

Today, a media stream can be streamed either live or on demand. Live streams are generally provided by a means called true streaming. True streaming sends the information straight to the computer or device without saving the file to a hard disk. On Demand streaming is provided by a means called progressive streaming or progressive download. Progressive streaming saves the file to a hard disk and then is played from that location. On Demand streams are often saved to hard disks and servers for extended amounts of time; while the live streams are only available at one time only (e.g. during the Football game).

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones that are dependent on battery life, the development of digital media streaming is now focused on formats that do not depend on Adobe Flash —known for its relatively high computer resource usage and thus compromising a mobile device's battery life.

Streaming bandwidth and storage

A broadband speed of 2.5 Mbit/s or more is recommended for streaming movies, for example to an Apple TV, Google TV or a Sony TV Blu-ray Disc Player, 10 Mbit/s for High Definition content.

Unicast connections require multiple connections from the same streaming server even when it streams the same content

Streaming media storage size is calculated from the streaming bandwidth and length of the media using the following formula (for a single user and file):

storage size (in mebibytes) = length (in seconds) × bit rate (in bit/s) / (8 × 1024 × 1024)

Real world example:

One hour of video encoded at 300 kbit/s (this is a typical broadband video as of 2005 and it is usually encoded in a 320 × 240 pixels window size) will be:

(3,600 s × 300,000 bit/s) / (8×1024×1024) requires around 128 MiB of storage.

If the file is stored on a server for on-demand streaming and this stream is viewed by 1,000 people at the same time using a Unicast protocol, the requirement is:

300 kbit/s × 1,000 = 300,000 kbit/s = 300 Mbit/s of bandwidth

This is equivalent to around 135 GB per hour. Using a multicast protocol the server sends out only a single stream that is common to all users. Hence, such a stream would only use 300 kbit/s of serving bandwidth. See below for more information on these protocols.

The calculation for Live streaming is similar.

Assumptions: speed at the encoder, is 500 kbit/s.

If the show lasts for 3 hours with 3,000 viewers, then the calculation is:

Number of MiB transferred = encoder speed (in bit/s) × number of seconds × number of viewers / (8*1024*1024)

Number of MiB transferred = 500,000 (bit/s) × 3 × 3,600 ( = 3 hours) × 3,000 (nbr of viewers) / (8*1024*1024) = 1,931,190 MiB

Codec, bitstream, transport, control

The audio stream is compressed using an audio codec such as MP3, Vorbis or AAC.

The video stream is compressed using a video codec such as H.264 or VP8.

Encoded audio and video streams are assembled in a container bitstream such as FLV, WebM, ASF or ISMA.

The bitstream is delivered from a streaming server to a streaming client using a transport protocol, such as MMS or RTP.

The streaming client may interact with the streaming server using a control protocol, such as MMS or RTSP.

Protocol issues

Designing a network protocol to support streaming media raises many issues, such as:

• Datagram protocols, such as the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), send the media stream as a series of small packets. This is simple and efficient; however, there is no mechanism within the protocol to guarantee delivery. It is up to the receiving application to detect loss or corruption and recover data using error correction techniques. If data is lost, the stream may suffer a dropout.
• The Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and the Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP) were specifically designed to stream media over networks. RTSP runs over a variety of transport protocols, while the latter two are built on top of UDP.
• Another approach that seems to incorporate both the advantages of using a standard web protocol and the ability to be used for streaming even live content is the HTTP adaptive bitrate streaming. HTTP adaptive bitrate streaming is based on HTTP progressive download, but contrary to the previous approach, here the files are very small, so that they can be compared to the streaming of packets, much like the case of using RTSP and RTP.
• Reliable protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), guarantee correct delivery of each bit in the media stream. However, they accomplish this with a system of timeouts and retries, which makes them more complex to implement. It also means that when there is data loss on the network, the media stream stalls while the protocol handlers detect the loss and retransmit the missing data. Clients can minimize this effect by buffering data for display. While delay due to buffering is acceptable in video on demand scenarios, users of interactive applications such as video conferencing will experience a loss of fidelity if the delay that buffering contributes to exceeds 200 ms.
• Unicast protocols send a separate copy of the media stream from the server to each recipient. Unicast is the norm for most Internet connections, but does not scale well when many users want to view the same television program concurrently.

Multicasting broadcasts the same copy of the multimedia over the entire network to a group of clients

• Multicast protocols were developed to reduce the data replication (and consequent server/network loads) that occurs when many recipients receive unicast content streams independently. These protocols send a single stream from the source to a group of recipients. Depending on the network infrastructure and type, multicast transmission may or may not be feasible. One potential disadvantage of multicasting is the loss of video on demand functionality. Continuous streaming of radio or television material usually precludes the recipient's ability to control playback. However, this problem can be mitigated by elements such as caching servers, digital set-top boxes, and buffered media players.
• IP Multicast provides a means to send a single media stream to a group of recipients on a computer network. A multicast protocol, usually Internet Group Management Protocol, is used to manage delivery of multicast streams to the groups of recipients on a LAN. One of the challenges in deploying IP multicast is that routers and firewalls between LANs must allow the passage of packets destined to multicast groups. If the organization that is serving the content has control over the network between server and recipients (i.e., educational, government, and corporate intranets), then routing protocols such as Protocol Independent Multicast can be used to deliver stream content to multiple Local Area Network segments.
• Peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols arrange for prerecorded streams to be sent between computers. This prevents the server and its network connections from becoming a bottleneck. However, it raises technical, performance, quality, and business issues.

Notes

Citations

Communication between two computers (shown in grey) connected through a third computer (shown in red) acting as a proxy.

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server. The proxy server evaluates the request according to its filtering rules. For example, it may filter traffic by IP address or protocol. If the request is validated by the filter, the proxy provides the resource by connecting to the relevant server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it 'caches' responses from the remote server, and returns subsequent requests for the same content directly.

The proxy concept was invented in the early days of distributed systems as a way to simplify and control their complexity. Today, most proxies are a web proxy, allowing access to content on the World Wide Web.

Uses

A proxy server has a large variety of potential purposes, including:

• To keep machines behind it anonymous, mainly for security.
• To speed up access to resources (using caching). Web proxies are commonly used to cache web pages from a web server.
• To apply access policy to network services or content, e.g. to block undesired sites.
• To access sites prohibited or filtered by your ISP or institution.
• To log / audit usage, i.e. to provide company employee Internet usage reporting.
• To bypass security / parental controls.
• To circumvent Internet filtering to access content otherwise blocked by governments.
• To scan transmitted content for malware before delivery.
• To scan outbound content, e.g., for data loss prevention.
• To allow a web site to make web requests to externally hosted resources (e.g. images, music files, etc.) when cross-domain restrictions prohibit the web site from linking directly to the outside domains.

A proxy server that passes requests and responses unmodified is usually called a gateway or sometimes tunneling proxy.

A proxy server can be placed in the user's local computer or at various points between the user and the destination servers on the Internet.

A reverse proxy is (usually) an Internet-facing proxy used as a front-end to control and protect access to a server on a private network, commonly also performing tasks such as load-balancing, authentication, decryption or caching.

Types of proxy

Forward proxies

A forward proxy taking requests from an internal network and forwarding them to the Internet.

Forward proxies are proxies where the client server names the target server to connect to. Forward proxies are able to retrieve from a wide range of sources (in most cases anywhere on the Internet).

The terms "forward proxy" and "forwarding proxy" are a general description of behavior (forwarding traffic) and thus ambiguous. Except for Reverse proxy, the types of proxies described in this article are more specialized sub-types of the general forward proxy concept.

Open proxies

An open proxy forwarding requests from and to anywhere on the Internet.

An open proxy is a forwarding proxy server that is accessible by any Internet user. Gordon Lyon estimates there are "hundreds of thousands" of open proxies on the Internet. An anonymous open proxy allows users to conceal their IP address while browsing the Web or using other Internet services. There are varying degrees of anonymity however, as well as a number of methods of 'tricking' the client into revealing itself regardless of the proxy being used.

Reverse proxies

A reverse proxy taking requests from the Internet and forwarding them to servers in an internal network. Those making requests connect to the proxy and may not be aware of the internal network.

A reverse proxy (or surrogate) is a proxy server that appears to clients to be an ordinary server. Requests are forwarded to one or more origin servers which handle the request. The response is returned as if it came directly from the proxy server.

Reverse proxies are installed in the neighborhood of one or more web servers. All traffic coming from the Internet and with a destination of one of the neighborhood's web servers goes through the proxy server. The use of "reverse" originates in its counterpart "forward proxy" since the reverse proxy sits closer to the web server and serves only a restricted set of websites.

There are several reasons for installing reverse proxy servers:

• Encryption / SSL acceleration: when secure web sites are created, the SSL encryption is often not done by the web server itself, but by a reverse proxy that is equipped with SSL acceleration hardware. See Secure Sockets Layer. Furthermore, a host can provide a single "SSL proxy" to provide SSL encryption for an arbitrary number of hosts; removing the need for a separate SSL Server Certificate for each host, with the downside that all hosts behind the SSL proxy have to share a common DNS name or IP address for SSL connections. This problem can partly be overcome by using the SubjectAltName feature of X.509 certificates.
• Load balancing: the reverse proxy can distribute the load to several web servers, each web server serving its own application area. In such a case, the reverse proxy may need to rewrite the URLs in each web page (translation from externally known URLs to the internal locations).
• Serve/cache static content: A reverse proxy can offload the web servers by caching static content like pictures and other static graphical content.
• Compression: the proxy server can optimize and compress the content to speed up the load time.
• Spoon feeding: reduces resource usage caused by slow clients on the web servers by caching the content the web server sent and slowly "spoon feeding" it to the client. This especially benefits dynamically generated pages.
• Security: the proxy server is an additional layer of defense and can protect against some OS and WebServer specific attacks. However, it does not provide any protection to attacks against the web application or service itself, which is generally considered the larger threat.
• Extranet Publishing: a reverse proxy server facing the Internet can be used to communicate to a firewalled server internal to an organization, providing extranet access to some functions while keeping the servers behind the firewalls. If used in this way, security measures should be considered to protect the rest of your infrastructure in case this server is compromised, as its web application is exposed to attack from the Internet.

Performance Enhancing Proxies

A proxy that is designed to mitigate specific link related issues or degradations. PEPs (Performance Enhancing Proxies) are typically used to improve TCP performance in the presence of high Round Trip Times (RTTs) and wireless links with high packet loss. They are also frequently used for highly asynchronous links featuring very different upload and download rates.

Uses of proxy servers

Filtering

A content-filtering web proxy server provides administrative control over the content that may be relayed through the proxy. It is commonly used in both commercial and non-commercial organizations (especially schools) to ensure that Internet usage conforms to acceptable use policy. In some cases users can circumvent the proxy, since there are services designed to proxy information from a filtered website through a non filtered site to allow it through the user's proxy.

A content filtering proxy will often support user authentication, to control web access. It also usually produces logs, either to give detailed information about the URLs accessed by specific users, or to monitor bandwidth usage statistics. It may also communicate to daemon-based and/or ICAP-based antivirus software to provide security against virus and other malware by scanning incoming content in real time before it enters the network.

Many work places, schools, and colleges restrict the web sites and online services that are made available in their buildings. This is done either with a specialized proxy, called a content filter (both commercial and free products are available), or by using a cache-extension protocol such as ICAP, that allows plug-in extensions to an open caching architecture.

Some common methods used for content filtering include: URL or DNS blacklists, URL regex filtering, MIME filtering, or content keyword filtering. Some products have been known to employ content analysis techniques to look for traits commonly used by certain types of content providers.

Requests made to the open internet must first pass through an outbound proxy filter. The web-filtering company provides a database of URL patterns (regular expressions) with associated content attributes. This database is updated weekly by site-wide subscription, much like a virus filter subscription. The administrator instructs the web filter to ban broad classes of content (such as sports, pornography, online shopping, gambling, or social networking). Requests that match a banned URL pattern are rejected immediately.

Assuming the requested URL is acceptable, the content is then fetched by the proxy. At this point a dynamic filter may be applied on the return path. For example, JPEG files could be blocked based on fleshtone matches, or language filters could dynamically detect unwanted language. If the content is rejected then an HTTP fetch error is returned and nothing is cached.

Extranet Publishing: a reverse proxy server facing the Internet can be used to communicate to a firewalled server internal to an organization, providing extranet access to some functions while keeping the servers behind the firewalls. If used in this way, security measures should be considered to protect the rest of your infrastructure in case this server is compromised, as its web application is exposed to attack from the Internet

Most web filtering companies use an internet-wide crawling robot that assesses the likelihood that a content is a certain type. The resultant database is then corrected by manual labor based on complaints or known flaws in the content-matching algorithms.

Web filtering proxies are not able to peer inside secure sockets HTTP transactions, assuming the chain-of-trust of SSL/TLS has not been tampered with. As a result, users wanting to bypass web filtering will typically search the internet for an open and anonymous HTTPS transparent proxy. They will then program their browser to proxy all requests through the web filter to this anonymous proxy. Those requests will be encrypted with https. The web filter cannot distinguish these transactions from, say, a legitimate access to a financial website. Thus, content filters are only effective against unsophisticated users.

As mentioned above, the SSL/TLS chain-of-trust does rely on trusted root certificate authorities; in a workplace setting where the client is managed by the organization, trust might be granted to a root certificate whose private key is known to the proxy. Concretely, a root certificate generated by the proxy is installed into the browser CA list by IT staff. In such scenarios, proxy analysis of the contents of a SSL/TLS transaction becomes possible. The proxy is effectively operating a man-in-the-middle attack, allowed by the client's trust of a root certificate the proxy owns.

A special case of web proxies is "CGI proxies". These are web sites that allow a user to access a site through them. They generally use PHP or CGI to implement the proxy functionality. These types of proxies are frequently used to gain access to web sites blocked by corporate or school proxies. Since they also hide the user's own IP address from the web sites they access through the proxy, they are sometimes also used to gain a degree of anonymity, called "Proxy Avoidance".

Caching

A caching proxy server accelerates service requests by retrieving content saved from a previous request made by the same client or even other clients. Caching proxies keep local copies of frequently requested resources, allowing large organizations to significantly reduce their upstream bandwidth usage and costs, while significantly increasing performance. Most ISPs and large businesses have a caching proxy. Caching proxies were the first kind of proxy server.

Some poorly-implemented caching proxies have had downsides (e.g., an inability to use user authentication). Some problems are described in RFC 3143 (Known HTTP Proxy/Caching Problems).

Another important use of the proxy server is to reduce the hardware cost. An organization may have many systems on the same network or under control of a single server, prohibiting the possibility of an individual connection to the Internet for each system. In such a case, the individual systems can be connected to one proxy server, and the proxy server connected to the main server. An example of a software caching proxy is Squid.

DNS proxy

A DNS proxy server takes DNS queries from a (usually local) network and forwards them to an Internet Domain Name Server. It may also cache DNS records.

Bypassing filters and censorship

If the destination server filters content based on the origin of the request, the use of a proxy can circumvent this filter. For example, a server using IP-based geolocation to restrict its service to a certain country can be accessed using a proxy located in that country to access the service.

Likewise, a badly configured proxy can provide access to a network otherwise isolated from the Internet.

Logging and eavesdropping

Proxies can be installed in order to eavesdrop upon the data-flow between client machines and the web. All content sent or accessed – including passwords submitted and cookies used – can be captured and analyzed by the proxy operator. For this reason, passwords to online services (such as webmail and banking) should always be exchanged over a cryptographically secured connection, such as SSL.

By chaining proxies which do not reveal data about the original requester, it is possible to obfuscate activities from the eyes of the user's destination. However, more traces will be left on the intermediate hops, which could be used or offered up to trace the user's activities. If the policies and administrators of these other proxies are unknown, the user may fall victim to a false sense of security just because those details are out of sight and mind.

In what is more of an inconvenience than a risk, proxy users may find themselves being blocked from certain Web sites, as numerous forums and Web sites block IP addresses from proxies known to have spammed or trolled the site. Proxy bouncing can be used to maintain your privacy.

Gateways to private networks

Proxy servers can perform a role similar to a network switch in linking two networks.

Accessing services anonymously

An anonymous proxy server (sometimes called a web proxy) generally attempts to anonymize web surfing. There are different varieties of anonymizers. The destination server (the server that ultimately satisfies the web request) receives requests from the anonymizing proxy server, and thus does not receive information about the end user's address. However, the requests are not anonymous to the anonymizing proxy server, and so a degree of trust is present between the proxy server and the user. Many of them are funded through a continued advertising link to the user.

Access control: Some proxy servers implement a logon requirement. In large organizations, authorized users must log on to gain access to the web. The organization can thereby track usage to individuals.

Some anonymizing proxy servers may forward data packets with header lines such as HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, or HTTP_FORWARDED, which may reveal the IP address of the client. Other anonymizing proxy servers, known as elite or high anonymity proxies, only include the REMOTE_ADDR header with the IP address of the proxy server, making it appear that the proxy server is the client. A website could still suspect a proxy is being used if the client sends packets which include a cookie from a previous visit that did not use the high anonymity proxy server. Clearing cookies, and possibly the cache, would solve this problem.

Implementations of proxies

Web proxy

A web proxy passes along http protocol requests like any other proxy server. However, the web proxy accepts target URLs within a user's browser window, processes the request, and then displays the contents of the requested URL immediately back within the users browser. This is generally quite different than a corporate intranet proxy which some people mistakenly refer to as a web proxy.

Suffix proxy

A suffix proxy allows a user to access web content by appending the name of the proxy server to the URL of the requested content (e.g. "en.wikipedia.org.SuffixProxy.com"). Suffix proxy servers are easier to use than regular proxy servers. But do not offer anonymity and the primary use is bypassing web filters; however, this is rarely used due to more advanced web filters.

Transparent proxy

Also known as an intercepting proxy or forced proxy, a transparent proxy intercepts normal communication without requiring any special client configuration. Clients need not be aware of the existence of the proxy. A transparent proxy is normally located between the client and the Internet, with the proxy performing some of the functions of a gateway or router.

RFC 2616 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol—HTTP/1.1) offers standard definitions:

"A 'transparent proxy' is a proxy that does not modify the request or response beyond what is required for proxy authentication and identification".

"A 'non-transparent proxy' is a proxy that modifies the request or response in order to provide some added service to the user agent, such as group annotation services, media type transformation, protocol reduction, or anonymity filtering".

In 2009 a security flaw in the way that transparent proxies operate was published by Robert Auger, and the Computer Emergency Response Team issued an advisory listing dozens of affected transparent and intercepting proxy servers.

Purpose

Intercepting proxies are commonly used in businesses to prevent avoidance of acceptable use policy, and to ease administrative burden, since no client browser configuration is required. This second reason however is mitigated by features such as Active Directory group policy, or DHCP and automatic proxy detection.

Intercepting proxies are also commonly used by ISPs in some countries to save upstream bandwidth and improve customer response times by caching. This is more common in countries where bandwidth is more limited (e.g. island nations) or must be paid for.

Issues

The diversion / interception of a TCP connection creates several issues. Firstly the original destination IP and port must somehow be communicated to the proxy. This is not always possible (e.g. where the gateway and proxy reside on different hosts). There is a class of cross site attacks which depend on certain behaviour of intercepting proxies that do not check or have access to information about the original (intercepted) destination. This problem can be resolved by using an integrated packet-level and application level appliance or software which is then able to communicate this information between the packet handler and the proxy.

Intercepting also creates problems for HTTP authentication, especially connection-oriented authentication such as NTLM, since the client browser believes it is talking to a server rather than a proxy. This can cause problems where an intercepting proxy requires authentication, then the user connects to a site which also requires authentication.

Finally intercepting connections can cause problems for HTTP caches, since some requests and responses become uncacheble by a shared cache.

Therefore intercepting connections is generally discouraged. However due to the simplicity of deploying such systems, they are in widespread use.

Implementation methods

Interception can be performed using Cisco's WCCP (Web Cache Control Protocol). This proprietary protocol resides on the router and is configured from the cache, allowing the cache to determine what ports and traffic is sent to it via transparent redirection from the router. This redirection can occur in one of two ways: GRE Tunneling (OSI Layer 3) or MAC rewrites (OSI Layer 2).

Once traffic reaches the proxy machine itself interception is commonly performed with NAT (Network Address Translation). Such setups are invisible to the client browser, but leave the proxy visible to the web server and other devices on the internet side of the proxy. Recent Linux and some BSD releases provide TPROXY (transparent proxy) which performs IP-level (OSI Layer 3) transparent interception and spoofing of outbound traffic, hiding the proxy IP address from other network devices.

Detection

There are several methods that can often be used to detect the presence of an intercepting proxy server:

• By comparing the client's external IP address to the address seen by an external web server, or sometimes by examining the HTTP headers received by a server. A number of sites have been created to address this issue, by reporting the user's IP address as seen by the site back to the user in a web page.[7]
• By comparing the sequence of network hops reported by a tool such as traceroute for a proxied protocol such as http (port 80) with that for a non proxied protocol such as SMTP (port 25). [8],[9]
• By attempting to make a connection to an IP address at which there is known to be no server. The proxy will accept the connection and then attempt to proxy it on. When the proxy finds no server to accept the connection it may return an error message or simply close the connection to the client. This difference in behaviour is simple to detect. For example most web browsers will generate a browser created error page in the case where they cannot connect to an HTTP server but will return a different error in the case where the connection is accepted and then closed.
• By serving the end-user specially programmed flash files that send HTTP calls back to their server.

Tor onion proxy software

The Vidalia Tor-network map.

Tor (short for The Onion Router) is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet activity, including "visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages and other communication forms", back to the user. It is intended to protect users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability to conduct confidential business by keeping their internet activities from being monitored.

"Onion routing" refers to the layered nature of the encryption service: The original data are encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times, then sent through successive Tor relays, each one of which decrypts a "layer" of encryption before passing the data on to the next relay and ultimately the destination. This reduces the possibility of the original data being unscrambled or understood in transit.

The Tor client is free software, and there are no additional charges to use the network.

I2P anonymous proxy

The I2P anonymous network ('I2P') is a proxy network aiming at online anonymity. It implements garlic routing, which is an enhancement of Tor's onion routing. I2P is fully distributed and works by encrypting all communications in various layers and relaying them through a network of routers run by volunteers in various locations. By keeping the source of the information hidden, I2P offers censorship resistance. The goals of I2P are to protect users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability to conduct confidential business.

Each user of I2P runs an I2P router on their computer (node). The I2P router takes care of finding other peers and building anonymizing tunnels through them. I2P provides proxies for all protocols (HTTP, irc, SOCKS, ...).

The software is free and open-source, and the network is free of charge to use.

External links

• Proxy software and scripts at Curlie
• Free web-based proxy services at Curlie
• Free http proxy servers at Curlie
• Test proxies anonymity employ various methods to attempt to detect if an IP address is a proxy server or not.

The results of a search for the term "lunar eclipse" in a web-based image search engine

A search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information placed on web pages on the Internet. The response from the service is generally presented in a vertical list on what is most often referred to as a results page. The information may be a mix of web pages, images, videos, maps and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data from public databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running a web crawler which applies their search algorithm to all new and changed web pages it finds. Internet content that is not capable of being searched by a web search engine is generally described as the "deep web."

History

Search engine timeline

Year	Engine	Current status
1993	W3Catalog	Inactive
	Aliweb	Inactive
	JumpStation	Inactive
	World-Wide Web Worm	Inactive
1994	WebCrawler	Active (Aggregator)
	Go.com	Inactive (redirects to Disney)
	Lycos	Active
	Infoseek	Inactive (redirects to Disney)
1995	Daum	Active
	Magellan	Inactive
	Excite	Active
	SAPO	Active
	Yahoo! (directory)	Active (as Yahoo! Search since 2004)
	AltaVista	Inactive (acquired by Yahoo!: 2003, redirected: 2013)
1996	Dogpile	Active (Aggregator)
	Inktomi	Inactive (acquired by Yahoo!)
	HotBot	Active (Lycos.com)
	Ask Jeeves	Active (rebranded as Ask.com)
1997	Northern Light	Inactive
	Yandex	Active
1998	Google	Active
	Ixquick	Active (alias of Startpage)
	MSN Search	Active (as Bing)
	empas	Inactive (merged with NATE)
1999	AlltheWeb	Inactive (redirects to Yahoo!)
	GenieKnows	Active (rebranded Yellowee.com)
	Naver	Active
	Teoma	Inactive (redirects to Ask.com)
	Vivisimo	Inactive
2000	Baidu	Active
	Exalead	Active
	Gigablast	Active
2001	Kartoo	Inactive
2003	Info.com	Active
	Scroogle	Inactive
2004	Yahoo! Search	Active (originally Yahoo! (directory), 1995)
	A9.com	Inactive
	Sogou	Active
2005	AOL Search	Active
	SearchMe	Inactive
2006	Soso	Inactive (redirects to Sogou)
	Quaero	Inactive
	Search.com	Active
	ChaCha	Inactive
	Ask.com	Active (originally Ask Jeeves, 1996)
	Live Search	Active (as Bing, originally MSN Search, 1998)
2007	wikiseek	Inactive
	Sproose	Inactive
	Wikia Search	Inactive
	Blackle.com	Active (alias of Google)
2008	Powerset	Inactive (redirects to Bing)
	Picollator	Inactive
	Viewzi	Inactive
	Boogami	Inactive
	LeapFish	Inactive
	Forestle	Inactive (redirects to Ecosia)
	DuckDuckGo	Active
2009	Bing	Active (originally MSN Search, 1998)
	Yebol	Inactive
	Mugurdy	Inactive
	Scout (by Goby)	Active
	NATE	Active
	Ecosia	Active
2010	Blekko	Inactive (sold to IBM)
	Cuil	Inactive
	Yandex (English)	Active
2011	YaCy	Active (Peer-to-peer search engine)
2012	Volunia	Inactive
2013	Qwant	Active
	Infoseek	Inactive (redirects to Disney)
2014	Egerin	Active (Kurdish/Sorani search engine)
2015	Cliqz	Active (browser-integrated search engine)
2016	Search Encrypt	Active

Internet search engines themselves predate the debut of the Web in December 1990. The Who is user search dates back to 1982 and the Knowbot Information Service multi-network user search was first implemented in 1989. The first well-documented search engine that searched content files, namely FTP files was Archie, which debuted on September 10^th, 1990.

Prior to September, 1993, the World Wide Web was entirely indexed by hand. There was a list of web servers edited by Tim Berners-Lee and hosted on the CERN web site. One Google.nl snapshot of the list in 1992 remains, but as more and more web servers went online, the central list could no longer keep up. On the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) site, new servers were announced under the title "What's New!"

The first tool used for searching content (as opposed to users) on the Internet was Archie. The name stands for "archive," without the "v". It was created by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, all computer science students at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public, anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites to create a searchable database of file names; however, Archie Search Engine did not index the contents of these sites, since the amount of data was so limited it could be readily searched manually.

The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota) led to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead. Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers. While the name of the search engine "Archie Search Engine" was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, "Veronica" and "Jughead" are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor.

In the summer of 1993, no search engine existed for the web, though numerous specialized catalogues were maintained by hand. Oscar Nierstrasz at the University of Geneva wrote a series of Perl scripts that periodically mirrored these pages and rewrote them into a standard format. This formed the basis for W3Catalog, the web's first primitive search engine, released on September 2^nd, 1993.

In June 1993, Matthew Gray, then at MIT, produced what was probably the first web robot, the Perl-based World Wide Web Wanderer, and used it to generate an index called 'Wandex'. The purpose of the Wanderer was to measure the size of the World Wide Web, which it did until late 1995. The web's second search engine, Aliweb, appeared in November 1993. Aliweb did not use a web robot, but instead depended on being notified by website administrators of the existence at each site of an index file in a particular format.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications' Mosaic™ web browser wasn't the first to exist, but it was the first to make a major splash. In November 1993, Mosaic v1.0 broke away from the small pack of existing browsers by including features like icons, bookmarks, a more attractive interface and pictures—that made the software easy to use and appealing to "non-geeks."

JumpStation (created in December 1993 by Jonathon Fletcher) used a web robot to find web pages and to build its index, and used a web form as the interface to its query program. It was, thus, the first WWW resource-discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine (crawling, indexing and searching) as described below. Because of the limited resources available on the platform it ran on, its indexing was limited to the titles and headings found in the web pages the crawler encountered, with such limits naturally extending to the searches performed on it as well.

One of the first "all text" crawler-based search engines was WebCrawler, which came out in 1994. Unlike its predecessors, it allowed users to search for any word on any webpage, which has long been the standard for all major search engines of the modern era. It was also the first one widely known by the public. Later in 1994, Lycos (which started at Carnegie Mellon University) was launched and became a major commercial endeavor in the field.

Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista. Yahoo! was among the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but its search function operated on its web directory, rather than its full-text copies of web pages. Information seekers could also browse the directory instead of doing a keyword-based search.

In 1996, Netscape was looking to give an exclusive deal to a single search engine to appear as the featured search engine in their eponymous web browser. There was so much interest that instead Netscape struck deals with five of the major search engines: for $5 million/year, each search engine would be in rotation on the Netscape search engine page. The five engines were: Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek, and Excite.

Google adopted the idea of selling search terms in 1998, from a small search engine company named goto.com. This move had a significant effect on the SE business, which went from struggling to one of the most profitable businesses in the internet.

Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s. Several companies entered the market spectacularly, receiving record gains during their initial public offerings. Some have taken down their public search engine, and are marketing enterprise-only editions, such as Northern Light. Many search engine companies were caught up in the dot-com bubble, a speculation-driven market boom that peaked in 1999 and ended in 2001.

• Around 2000, Google's search engine rose to prominence. The company achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called PageRank, as was explained in the paper Anatomy of a Search Engine written by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the later founders of Google. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Google also maintained a minimalist interface to its search engine. In contrast, many of its competitors embedded a search engine in a web portal. In fact, Google search engine became so popular that spoof engines emerged such as Mystery Seeker.

By 2000, Yahoo! was providing search services based on Inktomi's search engine. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi in 2002, and Overture (which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista) in 2003. Yahoo! switched to Google's search engine until 2004, when it launched its own search engine based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions.

Microsoft first launched MSN Search in the fall of 1998 using search results from Inktomi. In early 1999 the site began to display listings from Looksmart, blended with results from Inktomi. For a short time in 1999, MSN Search used results from AltaVista instead. In 2004, Microsoft began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot).

Microsoft's rebranded search engine, Bing, was launched on June 1, 2009. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft finalized a deal in which Yahoo! Search would be powered by Microsoft Bing technology.

Approach

A search engine maintains the following processes in near real time:

1. Web crawling
2. Indexing
3. Searching

Web search engines get their information by web crawling from site to site. The "spider" checks for the standard filename robots.txt, addressed to it, before sending certain information back to be indexed depending on many factors, such as the titles, page content, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), headings, as evidenced by the standard HTML markup of the informational content, or its metadata in HTML meta tags. "[N]o web crawler may actually crawl the entire reachable web. Due to infinite websites, spider traps, spam, and other exigencies of the real web, crawlers instead apply a crawl policy to determine when the crawling of a site should be deemed sufficient. Some sites are crawled exhaustively, while others are crawled only partially".

Indexing means associating words and other definable tokens found on web pages to their domain names and HTML-based fields. The associations are made in a public database, made available for web search queries. A query from a user can be a single word. The index helps find information relating to the query as quickly as possible. Some of the techniques for indexing, and caching are trade secrets, whereas web crawling is a straightforward process of visiting all sites on a systematic basis.

Between visits by the spider, the cached version of page (some or all the content needed to render it) stored in the search engine working memory is quickly sent to an inquirer. If a visit is overdue, the search engine can just act as a web proxy instead. In this case the page may differ from the search terms indexed. The cached page holds the appearance of the version whose words were indexed, so a cached version of a page can be useful to the web site when the actual page has been lost, but this problem is also considered a mild form of linkrot.

High-level architecture of a standard Web crawler

Typically when a user enters a query into a search engine it is a few keywords. The index already has the names of the sites containing the keywords, and these are instantly obtained from the index. The real processing load is in generating the web pages that are the search results list: Every page in the entire list must be weighted according to information in the indexes. Then the top search result item requires the lookup, reconstruction, and markup of the snippets showing the context of the keywords matched. These are only part of the processing each search results web page requires, and further pages (next to the top) require more of this post processing.

Beyond simple keyword lookups, search engines offer their own GUI- or command-driven operators and search parameters to refine the search results. These provide the necessary controls for the user engaged in the feedback loop users create by filtering and weighting while refining the search results, given the initial pages of the first search results. For example, from 2007 the Google.com search engine has allowed one to filter by date by clicking "Show search tools" in the leftmost column of the initial search results page, and then selecting the desired date range. It's also possible to weight by date because each page has a modification time. Most search engines support the use of the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to help end users refine the search query. Boolean operators are for literal searches that allow the user to refine and extend the terms of the search. The engine looks for the words or phrases exactly as entered. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called proximity search, which allows users to define the distance between keywords. There is also concept-based searching where the research involves using statistical analysis on pages containing the words or phrases you search for. As well, natural language queries allow the user to type a question in the same form one would ask it to a human. A site like this would be ask.com.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve. There are two main types of search engine that have evolved: one is a system of predefined and hierarchically ordered keywords that humans have programmed extensively. The other is a system that generates an "inverted index" by analyzing texts it locates. This first form relies much more heavily on the computer itself to do the bulk of the work.

Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and thus some of them allow advertisers to have their listings ranked higher in search results for a fee. Search engines that do not accept money for their search results make money by running search related ads alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads.

Market share

Google is the world's most popular search engine, with a market share of 74.52 percent as of February, 2018.

The world's most popular search engines (with >1% market share) are:

Search engine	Market share (as of February 2018)
Google	—	Template:Bartable
Bing	Template:Bartable
Baidu	Template:Bartable
Yahoo!	Template:Bartable

East Asia and Russia

In some East Asian countries and Russia, Google is not the most popular search engine.

In Russia, Yandex commands a marketshare of 61.9 percent, compared to Google's 28.3 percent. In China, Baidu is the most popular search engine. South Korea's homegrown search portal, Naver, is used for 70 percent of online searches in the country. Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Taiwan are the most popular avenues for internet search in Japan and Taiwan, respectively.

Europe

Markets in Western Europe are mostly dominated by Google, with some exceptions such as the Czech Republic, where Seznam is a strong competitor.

Search engine bias

Although search engines are programmed to rank websites based on some combination of their popularity and relevancy, empirical studies indicate various political, economic, and social biases in the information they provide and the underlying assumptions about the technology. These biases can be a direct result of economic and commercial processes (e.g., companies that advertise with a search engine can become also more popular in its organic search results), and political processes (e.g., the removal of search results to comply with local laws). For example, Google will not surface certain neo-Nazi websites in France and Germany, where Holocaust denial is illegal.

Biases can also be a result of social processes, as search engine algorithms are frequently designed to exclude non-normative viewpoints in favor of more "popular" results. Indexing algorithms of major search engines skew towards coverage of U.S.-based sites, rather than websites from non-U.S. countries.

Google Bombing is one example of an attempt to manipulate search results for political, social or commercial reasons.

Several scholars have studied the cultural changes triggered by search engines, and the representation of certain controversial topics in their results, such as terrorism in Ireland and conspiracy theories.

Customized results and filter bubbles

Many search engines such as Google and Bing provide customized results based on the user's activity history. This leads to an effect that has been called a filter bubble. The term describes a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see, based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history). As a result, websites tend to show only information that agrees with the user's past viewpoints, effectively isolating the user in a bubble that tends to exclude contrary information. Prime examples are Google's personalized search results and Facebook's personalized news stream. According to Eli Pariser, who coined the term, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble. Pariser relayed an example in which one user searched Google for "BP" and got investment news about British Petroleum while another searcher got information about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and that the two search results pages were "strikingly different". The bubble effect may have negative implications for civic discourse, according to Pariser. Since this problem has been identified, competing search engines have emerged that seek to avoid this problem by not tracking or "bubbling" users, such as DuckDuckGo. Other scholars do not share Pariser's view, finding the evidence in support of his thesis unconvincing.

Christian, Islamic and Jewish search engines

The global growth of the Internet and electronic media in the Arab and Muslim World during the last decade has encouraged Islamic adherents in the Middle East and Asian sub-continent, to attempt their own search engines, their own filtered search portals that would enable users to perform safe searches. More than usual safe search filters, these Islamic web portals categorizing websites into being either "halal" or "haram", based on modern, expert, interpretation of the "Law of Islam". ImHalal came online in September 2011. Halalgoogling came online in July 2013. These use haram filters on the collections from Google and Bing (and others).

While lack of investment and slow pace in technologies in the Muslim World has hindered progress and thwarted success of an Islamic search engine, targeting as the main consumers Islamic adherents, projects like Muxlim, a Muslim lifestyle site, did receive millions of dollars from investors like Rite Internet Ventures, and it also faltered. Other religion-oriented search engines are Jewgle, the Jewish version of Google, and SeekFind.org, which is Christian. SeekFind filters sites that attack or degrade their faith.

Search engine submission

Search engine submission is a process in which a webmaster submits a website directly to a search engine. While search engine submission is sometimes presented as a way to promote a website, it generally is not necessary because the major search engines use web crawlers, that will eventually find most web sites on the Internet without assistance. They can either submit one web page at a time, or they can submit the entire site using a sitemap, but it is normally only necessary to submit the home page of a web site as search engines are able to crawl a well designed website. There are two remaining reasons to submit a web site or web page to a search engine: to add an entirely new web site without waiting for a search engine to discover it, and to have a web site's record updated after a substantial redesign.

Some search engine submission software not only submits websites to multiple search engines, but also add links to websites from their own pages. This could appear helpful in increasing a website's ranking, because external links are one of the most important factors determining a website's ranking. However, John Mueller of Google has stated that this "can lead to a tremendous number of unnatural links for your site" with a negative impact on site ranking.

See also

• Semantic Web

Further reading

• Steve Lawrence; C. Lee Giles (1999). "Accessibility of information on the web". Nature. 400 (6740): 107–9. doi:10.1038/21987. PMID 10428673. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |quotes= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Bing Liu (2007), Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents and Usage Data. Springer,ISBN 3-540-37881-2
• Bar-Ilan, J. (2004). The use of Web search engines in information science research. ARIST, 38, 231-288.
• Levene, Mark (2005). An Introduction to Search Engines and Web Navigation. Pearson.
• Hock, Randolph (2007). The Extreme Searcher's Handbook.ISBN 978-0-910965-76-7
• Javed Mostafa (February 2005). "Seeking Better Web Searches". Scientific American. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |quotes= (help)
• Ross, Nancy; Wolfram, Dietmar (2000). "End user searching on the Internet: An analysis of term pair topics submitted to the Excite search engine". Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 51 (10): 949–958. doi:10.1002/1097-4571(2000)51:10<949::AID-ASI70>3.0.CO;2-5.
• Xie, M.; et al. (1998). "Quality dimensions of Internet search engines". Journal of Information Science. 24 (5): 365–372. doi:10.1177/016555159802400509.
• Information Retrieval: Implementing and Evaluating Search Engines. MIT Press. 2010.

External links

• Search Engines at Curlie
• Google Knowledge Graph Entities Search Engine
• Book Search Engine

An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information by hiding the client computer's identifying information.

Purposes

There are many purposes for using anonymizers. Anonymizers help minimize risk. They can be used to prevent identity theft, or to protect search histories from public disclosure.

However, anonymizers can also be used by individuals wishing to avoid the consequences of engaging in criminal, disruptive, or socially unacceptable behaviour online. For example much of the child pornography distributed through the internet is accessed through anonymizers. Also, they are used to bypass web technologies that limit online content access to a certain number of minutes or quantity of data.

Some countries, especially dictatorships or Islamic countries, fail to serve the rights of minority groups, or oppress any opposition to their government. These countries apply heavy censorship on the internet, sometimes with the death penalty. Anonymizers can help in allowing free access to all of the internet content, but cannot help against persecution for accessing the Anonymizer website itself. Furthermore, as information itself about Anonymizer websites are banned in these countries, users are wary that they may be falling into a government set trap.

Libertarian and other movements concerned with the growing Orwellian grip of governments in free societies advocate using Anonymizer services in order to avoid government or other organized tracking.

Anonymizers are also used by people who wish to receive objective information with the growing Target marketing on the internet and targeted information. For example, large news outlets such as CNN target the viewers according to region and give different information to different populations. Websites such as YouTube obtain information about the last videos viewed on a computer, and propose "recommended" video's accordingly, and most of the online targeted marketing is done by showing advertisements according to that region. Anonymizers are used for avoiding this kind of targeting and getting a more objective view of information.

Use of anonymizers

Protocol specific anonymizers

Sometimes anonymizers are implemented to work only with one particular protocol. The advantage is that no extra software is needed. The operation occurs in this manner: A connection is made by the user to the anonymizer. Commands to the anonymizer are included inside a typical message. The anonymizer then makes a connection to the resource specified by the in-bound command and relays the message with the command stripped out.

An example of a protocol specific anonymizer is an anonymous remailer for e-mail. Also of note are web proxies, and bouncers for FTP and IRC.

Protocol independent anonymizers

Protocol independence can be achieved by creating a tunnel to an anonymizer. The technology to do so varies. Protocols used by anonymizer services may include SOCKS, PPTP, or OpenVPN.

In this case either the desired application must support the tunneling protocol, or a piece of software must be installed to force all connections through the tunnel. Web browsers, FTP and IRC clients often support SOCKS for example, unlike telnet.

Use of multiple relays

One example of "daisy-chained" anonymizing proxies is the "Tor network". Tor does not encrypt your traffic from end to end, rather it builds up a series of encrypted connections through the relays in the Tor network. An additional layer of encryption should be used with Tor if end-to-end encryption is required. See risks of using anonymous proxy servers.

Another example is I2P - the Anonymous Network. It works similarly to Tor, yet with some crucial differences: I2P is an internal network. It is totally decentralized and does not rely on central lists servers and unlike Tor it uses no bidirectional tunnels, which makes timing attacks far more difficult, and it is end-to-end encrypted. As you never know if a given mix logs all connections or not, the only way to be really sure there is no logging is to run your own anonymizing mix node and blend your traffic with those of other users, who in turn need not trust you, as they blend their traffic with yours and other users' traffic in their own mix nodes. This is the philosophy behind i2p - each nodes routes traffic for others and blends its own traffic in, whereas one's own traffic will be relayed by other peers through so-called tunnels made-up of various other peers. The network is highly dynamic and totally decentralized. It also takes care of other nodes learning about your node existing, for without peers using your node, there would be no traffic to blend yours with. As all traffic always stay within the i2p network, a routing user's i2p will never show on public websites' logs.

Another example of multiple relays is sending an e-mail to an anonymizing remailer, which relays it to another remailer, which eventually relays it to its destination.

References

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and the World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, ads in blogs, promotional blogs, Rich media ads, Social network advertising, interstitial ads, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam. Many of these types of ads are delivered by an ad server.

Competitive advantage over traditional advertising

One major benefit of online advertising is the immediate publishing of information and content that is not limited by geography or time. To that end, the emerging area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have hitherto adopted an interruptive strategy.

Another benefit is the efficiency of advertiser's investment. Online advertising allows for the customization of advertisements, including content and posted websites. For example, AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdSense enable ads to be shown on relevant web pages or alongside search result

Online advertisement

The internet has become an ongoing emerging source that tends to expand more and more. The growth of this particular media attracts the attention of advertisers as a more productive source to bring in consumers.

A clear advantage consumers have with online advertisement is the control they have over the item, choosing whether to check it out or not.

Online advertisements may also offer various forms of animation. In its most common use, the term "online advertising" comprises all sorts of banner, e-mail, in-game, and keyword advertising, on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace has received increased relevance. Web-87related advertising has a variety of sites to publicize and reach a niche audience to focus its attention to a specific group. Research has proven that online advertising has given results and is a growing business revenue. For the year 2012, Jupiter research predicted $34.5 billion in US online advertising spending.

Revenue models

Main article: Compensation methods

The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM, CPC, and CPA.

• CPM (Cost Per Mille) or CPT (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is when advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. "Per mille" means per thousand impressions, or loads of an advertisement. However, some impressions may not be counted, such as a reload or internal user action.

• CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is when advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.

• CPV (Cost Per View) is when advertisers pay for each unique user view of an advertisement or website (usually used with pop-ups, pop-unders and interstitial ads).

• CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) is when advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. Under the Pay per click pricing system, advertisers pay for the right to be listed under a series of target rich words that direct relevant traffic to their website, and pay only when someone clicks on their listing which links directly to their website. CPC differs from CPV in that each click is paid for regardless of whether the user makes it to the target site.

• CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPF (Pay Per Performance) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser pays only for the amount of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up. This model ignores any inefficiency in the sellers web site conversion funnel. The following are common variants of CPA:
  • CPL (Cost Per Lead) advertising is identical to CPA advertising and is based on the user completing a form, registering for a newsletter or some other action that the merchant feels will lead to a sale.
  • CPS (Cost Per Sale), PPS (Pay Per Sale), or CPO (Cost Per Order) advertising is based on each time a sale is made.
  • CPE (Cost Per Engagement) is a form of Cost Per Action pricing first introduced in March 2008. Differing from cost-per-impression or cost-per-click models, a CPE model means advertising impressions are free and advertisers pay only when a user engages with their specific ad unit. Engagement is defined as a user interacting with an ad in any number of ways.

• Cost per conversion Describes the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an ad campaign by the number of conversions. The definition of "Conversion" varies depending on the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

Privacy

The use of online advertising has implications on the privacy and anonymity of users. If an advertising company has placed banners in two Web sites. Hosting the banner images on its servers and using third-party cookies, the advertising company is able to track the browsing of users across these two sites.

Third-party cookies can be blocked by most browsers to increase privacy and reduce tracking by advertising and tracking companies without negatively affecting the user's Web experience. Many advertising operators have an opt-out option to behavioral advertising, with a generic cookie in the browser stopping behavioral advertising.

Malware

There is also a class of advertising methods which are considered unethical and may even be illegal. These include external applications which alter system settings (such as a browser's home page), spawn pop-ups, and insert advertisements into non-affiliated webpages. Such applications are usually labelled as spyware or adware. They may mask their questionable activities by performing a simple service, such as displaying the weather or providing a search bar. These programs are designed to dupe the user, acting effectively as Trojan horses. These applications are commonly designed so as to be difficult to remove or uninstall. The ever-increasing audience of online users, many of whom are not computer-savvy, frequently lack the knowledge and technical ability to protect themselves from these programs.

Ethics

Online advertising encompasses a range of types of advertising, some of which are deployed ethically and some are not. Some websites use large numbers of advertisements, including flashing banners that distract the user, and some have misleading images designed to look like error messages from the operating system, rather than advertisements. Websites that unethically use online advertising for revenue frequently do not monitor what advertisements on their website link to, allowing advertisements to lead to sites with malicious software or adult material. The ethical propriety of advertisers that use web searches for competitors' brands to trigger their own ads has been questioned.

Website operators that ethically use online advertising typically use a small number of advertisements that are not intended to distract or irritate the user, and do not detract from the design and layout of their websites. Many website owners deal directly with companies that want to place ads, meaning that the website linked to by the advertisement is legitimate.

The overuse of technologies like Adobe Flash in online advertising has led to some users disabling it in their browsers, or using browser plug-ins like Adblock or NoScript. Many sites use centralized advertising services whose advertisement may be blocked as a side effect of security and privacy measures, because the services require JavaScript and cross-site requests to function, while such features are often not necessary to use the sites and are a potential source of vulnerabilities.

Some companies perform customer engagement studies in online marketing to insure consumer satisfaction, through the use of online compliance centers, building and deploying fraud detection tools, while inspecting websites and publishers to insure website pages offer the highest degree of information security and compliancy with Can Spam Requirements.

Types

Though, as seen above, the large majority of online advertising has a cost that is brought about by usage or interaction of an ad, there are a few other methods of advertising online that only require a one time payment. The Million Dollar Homepage is a very successful example of this. Visitors were able to pay $1 per pixel of advertising space and their advert would remain on the homepage for as long as the website exists with no extra costs.

• Floating ad: An ad which moves across the user's screen or floats above the content.
• Expanding ad: An ad which changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage.
• Polite ad: A method by which a large ad will be downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed
• Wallpaper ad: An ad which changes the background of the page being viewed.
• Trick banner: A banner ad that looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert.
• Pop-up: A new window which opens in front of the current one, displaying an advertisement, or entire webpage.
• Pop-under: Similar to a Pop-Up except that the window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until they close one or more active windows.
• Video ad: similar to a banner ad, except that instead of a static or animated image, actual moving video clips are displayed. This is the kind of advertising most prominent in television, and many advertisers will use the same clips for both television and online advertising.
• Map ad: text or graphics linked from, and appearing in or over, a location on an electronic map such as on Google Maps.
• Mobile ad: an SMS text or multi-media message sent to a cell phone.
• Superstitial: An animated adv on a Web page from Enliven Marketing Technologies. It uses video, 3D content or Flash to provide a TV-like advertisement. Used to be known as Unicast Transitional ads as they were originally made by Unicast Communications but the company was acquired by Viewpoint Corporation in 2004, which then changed its name to Enliven in 2008.
• Interstitial ad: a full-page ad that appears before a user reaches their original destination.

In addition, ads containing streaming video or streaming audio are becoming very popular with advertisers.

E-mail advertising

Legitimate Email advertising or E-mail marketing is often known as "opt-in e-mail advertising" to distinguish it from spam.

Display advertising

Display advertising appears on web pages in many forms, including web banners. These banners can consist of static or animated images, as well as interactive media that may include audio and video elements. Display advertising on the Internet is widely used for branding. This is why metrics like interaction time are becoming more relevant. This may change in the future as display advertising is becoming much more targeted to users, much like how search engine ads can be extremely relevant to users based on what they are searching for. Display advertisers use cookie and browser history to determine demographics and interests of users and target appropriate ads to those browsers. Banner ad standards have changed over the years to larger sizes, in part due to increased resolution of standard monitors and browsers, in part to provide advertisers with more impact for their investment. The standards continue to evolve. Banner ads can be targeted to internet users in many different ways in order to reach the advertiser's most relevant audience. Behavioral retargeting, demographic targeting, geographic targeting, and site based targeting are all common ways in which advertisers choose to target their banner ads.

Affiliate marketing

Main article: Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising where advertisers place campaigns with a potentially large number of small (and large) publishers, whom are only paid media fees when traffic to the advertiser is garnered, and usually upon a specific measurable campaign result (a form, a sale, a sign-up, etc.). Today, this is usually accomplished through contracting with an affiliate network.

Affiliate marketing was an invention by CDNow.com in 1994 and was excelled by Amazon.com when it launched its Affiliate Program, called Associate Program in 1996. The online retailer used its program to generate low cost brand exposure and provided at the same time small websites a way to earn some supplemental income.

Behavioral targeting

In addition to contextual targeting, online advertising can be targeted based on a user's online behavior. This practice is known as behavioral targeting. For example, if a user is known to have recently visited a number of automotive shopping / comparison sites based on clickstream analysis enabled by cookies stored on the user's computer, that user can then be served auto-related ads when they visit other, non-automotive sites.

In the United States the Federal Trade Commission has been involved in the oversight of behavioral targeting for some time. In 2011 the FTC proposed a "Do Not Track" mechanism to allow Internet users to opt-out of behavioral targeting.

Semantic advertising

Semantic advertising applies semantic analysis techniques to web pages. The process is meant to accurately interpret and classify the meaning and/or main subject of the page and then populate it with targeted advertising spots. By closely linking content to advertising, it is assumed that the viewer will be more likely to show an interest (i.e., through engagement) in the advertised product or service.

Ad server market structure

Given below is a list of top Ad server vendors in 2008 with figures in millions of viewers published in an Attributor survey. Since 2008 Google controls estimated 69% of the online advertising market.

Vendor	Ad viewers (millions)
Google	1,118
DoubleClick (Google)	1,079
Yahoo!	362
MSN (Microsoft)	309
AOL	156
Adbrite	73
Total	3,097

It should be noted that Google acquired DoubleClick in 2007 for a consideration of $3.1 billion. The above survey was based on a sample of 68 million domains.

See also

• Industry calculations:
  • Click Through Rate (CTR)
  • Cost Per Action (CPA)
    • effective Cost Per Action (eCPA)
  • Cost Per Click or Pay Per Click (CPC or PPC)
  • Cost Per Impression (CPI)
    • Cost Per Mille (CPM), also known as Cost Per Thousand (CPT)
      • effective Cost Per Mille (eCPM)
• Compensation methods
• Classified advertising
• Web advertising:
  • Ad filtering
  • Advertising network
  • Article marketing
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Central ad server
  • Click fraud
  • Dot Commercials
  • In-text advertising
  • Online classified advertising
  • Overlay
  • Pay per click
  • Pay per play
  • Performance-based advertising
  • Pop-up ad
  • Semantic advertising
  • Unicast ad
  • Web banner
• E-mail advertising:
  • e-mail spam
  • opt-in e-mail advertising
  • spamming
• Search Engines
  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Mobile Advertising
  • Mobile Marketing
  • Mobile Development
  • WAP

References

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators, such as PayPal, from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is not dedicated to infringement.

Proponents of the bill allege that it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites. They cite examples such as Google's $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to buy illegal prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.

Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions. Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the next Congressional hearing on the matter, such as the 2012 Wikipedia blackout on January 18, 2012.

The House Judiciary Committee held hearings on November 16 and December 15, 2011. The Committee was scheduled to continue debate in January 2012.

Contents

The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws. The Attorney General could also bar search engines from displaying links to the sites.

The bill also establishes a two-step process for intellectual property rights holders to seek relief if they have been harmed by a site dedicated to infringement. The rights holder must first notify, in writing, related payment facilitators and ad networks of the identity of the website, who, in turn, must then forward that notification and suspend services to that identified website, unless that site provides a counter notification explaining how it is not in violation. The rights holder can then sue for limited injunctive relief against the site operator, if such a counter notification is provided, or if the payment or advertising services fail to suspend service in the absence of a counter notification.

The bill provides immunity from liability to the ad and payment networks that comply with this Act or that take voluntary action to cut ties to such sites. Any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement would be liable for damages. The second section increases the penalties for streaming video and for selling counterfeit drugs, military materials or consumer goods. The bill would increase the penalties for unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content and other intellectual property offenses.

At the end of October co-sponsor Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Intellectual Property sub-panel, told The Hill that SOPA is a rewrite of the Senate's bill that addresses some tech industry concerns, noting that under the House version of the legislation copyright holders won't be able to directly sue intermediaries like search engines to block infringing websites and would instead need a court's approval before taking action against third parties.

Goals

Protecting intellectual property of content creators

According to Rep. Goodlatte, "Intellectual property is one of America's chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace, yet American inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws. This legislation will update the laws to ensure that the economic incentives our Framers enshrined in the Constitution over 220 years ago—to encourage new writings, research, products and services— remain effective in the 21st century's global marketplace, which will create more American jobs."

Rights-holders see intermediaries—the companies who host, link to, and provide e-commerce around the content—as the only accessible defendants.

Sponsor Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said, "Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America's intellectual property are critical to our economy's long-term success." Smith added, "The Stop Online Piracy Act helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators."

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) representative who testified before the committee said that the motion picture and film industry supported two million jobs and 95,000 small businesses.

Protection against counterfeit drugs

Pfizer spokesman John Clark testified that patients could not always detect cleverly forged websites selling drugs that were either mis-branded or simply counterfeit.

RxRights, a consumer advocacy group, issued a statement saying that Clark failed "to acknowledge that there are Canadian and other international pharmacies that do disclose where they are located, require a valid doctor's prescription and sell safe, brand-name medications produced by the same leading manufacturers as prescription medications sold in the U.S." They had earlier said that SOPA "fails to distinguish between counterfeit and genuine pharmacies" and would prevent American patients from ordering their medications from Canadian pharmacies online.

Bill sponsor Smith accused Google of obstructing the bill, citing its $500 million settlement with the DOJ on charges that it allowed ads from Canadian pharmacies, leading to illegal prescription drug imports. Shipment of prescription drugs from foreign pharmacies to customers in the US typically violates the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Controlled Substances Act.

Impact on online freedom of speech

On TIME's Techland blog, Jerry Brito wrote, "Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?" Similarly, the Center for Democracy and Technology warned, "If SOPA and PIPA are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent."

Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard University professor of constitutional law, released an open letter on the web stating that SOPA would “undermine the openness and free exchange of information at the heart of the Internet. And it would violate the First Amendment.”

The AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida, arguing in favor of SOPA, has stated that free speech was not a relevant consideration, because "Freedom of speech is not the same as lawlessness on the Internet. There is no inconsistency between protecting an open Internet and safeguarding intellectual property. Protecting intellectual property is not the same as censorship; the First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks."

In autocratic countries

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, proxy servers, such as those used during the Arab Spring, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be outlawed by the act.

John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, expressed disagreement with the use of his research findings to support SOPA. He wrote that "SOPA would make many [DNS] circumvention tools illegal", which could put "dissident communities" in autocratic countries "at much greater risk than they already are". He added, "The single biggest funder of circumvention tools has been and remains the U.S. government, precisely because of the role the tools play in online activism. It would be highly counter-productive for the U.S. government to both fund and outlaw the same set of tools.

Marvin Ammori has stated the bill would make The Tor Project illegal. Funded by the State Department the Tor Project, facilitates pro-free speech encryption technology to be used by dissidents in repressive regimes (that consequently outlaw it). Ammori points out that the US Supreme Court case of Lamont v. Postmaster General 381 U.S. 301 (1965) makes it clear that Americans have the First Amendment right to read and listen to such foreign dissident free speech, even if those foreigners themselves lack an equivalent free speech right (for example under their constitution or through Optional Protocols under the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

Impact on websites

Impact on websites that host user content

Opponents have warned that SOPA would have a negative impact on online communities. Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites such as YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar", she says. The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) warned that websites Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seemed likely to shut down if the bill becomes law. Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would enable law enforcement to take down an entire domain due to something posted on a single blog, arguing, "an entire largely innocent online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority."

Additional concerns include the impact on common Internet functions such as linking or access data from the cloud. EFF claimed the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter. Christian Dawson, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits. The Electronic Frontier Foundation have stated that the requirement that any site must self-police user generated content would impose significant liability costs and explains "why venture capitalists have said en masse they won’t invest in online startups if PIPA and SOPA pass."

Proponents of the bill countered these claims, arguing that filtering is already common. Michael O'Leary of the MPAA testified on November 16 that the act's effect on business would be more minimal, noting that at least 16 countries already block websites, and that the Internet still functions in those countries. MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd noted that Google figured out how to block sites when China requested it. Some ISPs in Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Italy blocked The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit. Maria Pallante of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.

Weakening of "safe harbor" protections

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that provides a "safe harbor" for websites that host content. Under that provision, copyright owners who felt that a site was hosting infringing content are required to request the site to remove the infringing material within a certain amount of time. SOPA would bypass this "safe harbor" provision by placing the responsibility for detecting and policing infringement onto the site itself, and allowing judges to block access to websites "dedicated to theft of U.S. property."

According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about a site could be enough to block it, with the burden of proof resting on the site. A provision in the bill states that any site would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a site must actively monitor its content and identify violations to avoid blocking, rather than relying on others to notify it of such violations.

Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice".

Goodlatte stated, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]".

O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."

General impact on web-related businesses

An analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, "The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges."

Art Bordsky of advocacy group Public Knowledge similarly stated, "The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it."

On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation," and said, "This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed."

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, spoke out strongly against the bill, stating, "The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet," and that "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."

Lukas Biewald, founder of CrowdFlower, stated, "It'll have a stifling effect on venture capital... No one would invest because of the legal liability."

Booz & Company on November 16 published a Google-funded study finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the bill became law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent.

As reported by David Carr of The New York Times in an article critical of SOPA and PIPA, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies sent a joint letter to Congress, stating "We support the bills’ stated goals – providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ Web sites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. However, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of Web sites.” Smith responded, saying, the article "unfairly criticizes the Stop Online Piracy Act", and, "does not point to any language in the bill to back up the claims. SOPA targets only foreign Web sites that are primarily dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. Domestic Web sites, like blogs, are not covered by this legislation." Smith also said that Carr incorrectly framed the debate as between the entertainment industry and high-tech companies, noting support by more than "120 groups and associations across diverse industries, including the United States Chamber of Commerce".

Impact on users uploading illegal content

Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law, expressed concern that users who upload copyrighted content to sites could potentially be held criminally liable themselves, saying, "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct, purportedly criminalizing the former and permitting the latter, in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."

An aide to Smith said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation".

Internal networks

A paper by the Center for Democracy and Technology claimed that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content."

According to A. M. Reilly of Industry Leaders Magazine, under SOPA, culpability for distributing copyright material is extended to those who aid the initial poster of the material. For companies that use virtual private networks (VPN) to create a network that appears to be internal but is spread across various offices and employees' homes, any of these offsite locations that initiate sharing of copyright material could put the entire VPN and hosting company at risk of violation.

Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) head Cary Sherman wrote, "Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."

Impact on web-browsing software

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that free and open source software (FLOSS) projects found to be aiding online piracy could experience serious problems under SOPA. Of special concern was the web browser Firefox, which has an optional extension, MAFIAAFire Redirector, that redirects users to a new location for domains that were seized by the U.S. government. In May 2011, Mozilla refused a request by the Department of Homeland Security to remove MAFIAAFire from its website, questioning whether the software had never been declared illegal.

Potential effectiveness

Edward J. Black, president and CEO of the Computer & Communication Industry Association, wrote in the Huffington Post that "Ironically, it would do little to stop actual pirate websites, which could simply reappear hours later under a different name, if their numeric web addresses aren't public even sooner. Anyone who knows or has that web address would still be able to reach the offending website."

An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News stated, "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."

John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society commented, "DNS filtering is by necessity either overbroad or underbroad; it either blocks too much or too little. Content on the Internet changes its place and nature rapidly, and DNS filtering is ineffective when it comes to keeping up with it."

Technical issues

Deep-packet inspection and privacy

According to Markham Erickson, head of NetCoalition, which opposes SOPA, the section of the bill that would allow judges to order internet service providers to block access to infringing websites to customers located in the United States would also allow the checking of those customers' IP address, a method known as IP blocking. Erickson has expressed concerns that such an order might require those providers to engage in "deep packet inspection", which involves analyzing all of the content being transmitted to and from the user, raising new privacy concerns.

Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would "instigate a data obfuscation arms race" whereby by increasingly invasive practices would be required to monitor users' web traffic resulting in a "counterproductive cat-and-mouse game of censorship and circumvention would drive savvy scofflaws to darknets while increasing surveillance of less technically proficient Internet users."

Domain Name System (DNS)

The Domain Name System (DNS) servers, most often equated with a telephone directory, translate browser requests for domain names into the IP address assigned to that computer or network. The original bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for infringing domains to their assigned IP addresses. DNS is robust by design against failure and requires that a lack of response is met by inquiries to other DNS servers.

Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET North America, objected that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of the Domain Name System.

According to David Ulevitch, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS, the passage of SOPA could cause Americans to switch to DNS providers located in other countries who offer encrypted links, and may cause U.S. providers, such as OpenDNS itself, to move to other countries, such as the Cayman Islands.

In November 2011, an anonymous top-level domain, .bit, was launched outside of ICANN control, as a response to the perceived threat from SOPA, although its effectiveness (as well as the effectiveness of other alternative DNS roots) remains unknown.

On January 12, 2012, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing PIPA, and House sponsor Lamar Smith announced that provisions related to DNS redirection would be pulled from their respective bills.

Internet security

A white paper by several internet security experts, including Steve Crocker and Dan Kaminsky, wrote, "From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific."

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)

Stewart Baker, former first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security and former General Counsel of the National Security Agency, stated that SOPA would do "great damage to Internet security" by undermining Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a proposed security upgrade for DNS, since a browser must treat all redirects the same, and must continue to search until it finds a DNS server (possibly overseas) providing untampered results. On December 14, 2011 he wrote that SOPA was "badly in need of a knockout punch" due to its impact on security and DNS:

from the [Attorney General]’s point of view, the browser’s efforts to find an authoritative DNS server will look like a deliberate effort to evade his blocking order. The latest version of SOPA will feed that view. It allows the AG to sue “any entity that knowingly and willfully provides ... a product ... designed by such entity or by another in concert with such entity for the circumvention or bypassing of” the AG’s blocking orders. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this provision is aimed squarely at the browser companies. Browsers implementing DNSSEC will have to circumvent and bypass criminal blocking, and in the process, they will also circumvent and bypass SOPA orders.

DNSSEC is a set of protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for ensuring internet security. A white paper by the Brookings Institution noted, "The DNS system is based on trust," adding that DNSSEC was developed to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and that "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."

On November 17, Sandia National Laboratories, a research agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, released a technical assessment of the DNS filtering provisions in the House and Senate bills, in response to Representative Zoe Lofgren's (D-CA) request. The assessment stated that the proposed DNS filtering would be unlikely to be effective, would negatively impact internet security, and would delay full implementation of DNSSEC.

On November 18, House Cybersecurity Subcommittee chair Dan Lungren stated that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding, "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it."

Transparency in enforcement

Brooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation."

Supporters

Legislators

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)

The Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and was initially co-sponsored by Howard Berman (D-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), John Conyers (D-MI), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Timothy Griffin (R-AR), Dennis A. Ross (R-FL), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Lee Terry (R-NE). As of January 16, 2012, there were 31 sponsors.

Companies and organizations

The legislation has broad support from organizations that rely on copyright, including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, Macmillan US, Viacom, and various other companies and unions in the cable, movie, and music industries. Supporters also include trademark-dependent companies such as Nike, L'Oréal, and Acushnet Company.

Both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support H.R. 3261, and many industries have also publicly praised the legislation.

In June 2011, former Bill Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry and former George W. Bush advisor Mark McKinnon, business partners in Public Strategies, Inc., started a campaign which echoed McCurry's earlier work in the network neutrality legislative fight. McCurry represented SOPA/PIPA in Politico as a way to combat theft on-line, drawing a favorable comment from the MPAA. On the 15th, McCurry and Arts + Labs co-chair McKinnon sponsored the "CREATE – A Forum on Creativity, Commerce, Copyright, Counterfeiting and Policy" conference with members of Congress, artists and information-business executives.

On September 22, 2011, a letter signed by over 350 businesses and organizations—including NBCUniversal, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company, Revlon, NBA, and Macmillan US—was sent to Congress encouraging the passage of the legislation. Fightonlinetheft.com, a website of The Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (a project of the United States Chamber of Commerce Global Intellectual Property Center,) cites a long list of supporters including these and the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Governors Association, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Attorneys General, the Better Business Bureau, and the National Consumers League.

On November 22 the CEO of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) said, "valid and important questions have been raised about the bill". He said that definitions and remedies needed to be tightened and narrowed, but "BSA stands ready to work with Chairman Smith and his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee to resolve these issues."

On December 22, Go Daddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, stated that it supported SOPA. Go Daddy then rescinded its support, its CEO saying, "Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation—but we can clearly do better. It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

In January 2012, the Entertainment Software Association announced support for SOPA. Some association members expressed opposition to SOPA.

Opposition

Legislators

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressed opposition to the bill, as well as Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), who joined nine Democrats to sign a letter to other House members warning that the bill would cause "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation." "Issa said the legislation is beyond repair and must be rewritten from scratch," reported The Hill. Issa and Lofgren announced plans for legislation offering "a copyright enforcement process modeled after the U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) patent infringement investigations." Politico referred to support as an "election liability" for legislators. Subsequently proponents began hinting that key provisions might be deferred with opponents stating this was inadequate.

On January 14, 2012, the Obama administration responded to a petition against the bill, stating that it would not support legislation with provisions that could lead to Internet censorship, squelching of innovation, or reduced Internet security, but encouraged "all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response."

Companies and organizations

EFF home page with American Censorship Day banner

Opponents include Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn, eBay, Mozilla Corporation, Roblox, Reddit, the Wikimedia Foundation, and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU, and Human Rights Watch.

On December 13, 2011, Julian Sanchez of the Libertarian think tank Cato Institute came out in strong opposition to the bill saying that while the amended version "trims or softens a few of the most egregious provisions of the original proposal... the fundamental problem with SOPA has never been these details; it’s the core idea. The core idea is still to create an Internet blacklist..."

The Library Copyright Alliance (including the American Library Association) objected to the broadened definition of "willful infringement" and the introduction of felony penalties for noncommercial streaming infringement, stating that these changes could encourage criminal prosecution of libraries.

On November 22 Mike Masnick of Techdirt called SOPA "toxic" and published a detailed criticism of the ideas underlying the bill, writing that "one could argue that the entire Internet enables or facilitates infringement", and saying that a list of sites compiled by the entertainment industry included the personal site of one of their own artists, 50 Cent, and legitimate internet companies. The article questioned the effect of the bill on $2 trillion in GDP and 3.1 million jobs, with a host of consequential problems on investment, liability, and innovation.Paul Graham, the founder of venture capital company Y Combinator opposed the bill, and banned all SOPA-supporting companies from their "demo day" events. "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea," he asks, "how could they be good investors?"

The Center for Democracy and Technology maintains a list of SOPA and PIPA opponents consisting of the editorial boards of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, 34 other organizations and hundreds of prominent individuals.

Zynga Game Network, creator of Facebook games Texas HoldEm Poker and FarmVille, wrote to the sponsors of both bills highlighting concerns over the effect on "the DMCA's safe harbor provisions ... [which] ... have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Technology and industry's growth and success", and opposing the bill due to its impact on "innovation and dynamism".

Other

Computer scientist Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet, now Google vice president, wrote to Smith, saying "Requiring search engines to delete a domain name begins a worldwide arms race of unprecedented 'censorship' of the Web," in a letter published on CNet.

On November 18, 2011, the European Union Parliament adopted by a large majority a resolution that "stresses the need to protect the integrity of the global Internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names."

On December 15, 2011 a second hearing was scheduled to amend and vote on SOPA. Many opponents remained firm even after Smith proposed a 71-page amendment to the bill to address concerns. NetCoalition, which works with Google, Twitter, eBay, and Facebook, appreciated that Smith was listening, but says it nonetheless could not support the amendment. Issa stated that Smith’s amendment, "retains the fundamental flaws of its predecessor by blocking Americans' ability to access websites, imposing costly regulation on Web companies and giving Attorney General Eric Holder's Department of Justice broad new powers to police the Internet".

In December 2011, film and comics writer Steve Niles spoke out against SOPA, commenting, "SOPA does more than go after so-called 'piracy' websites...SOPA takes away all due process, shuts down any site it deems to be against the law without trial, without notification, without due process...Nobody seems to give a shit, or either they’re scared. Either way, very disappointing. I guess when it affects them they’ll get mad... I know folks are scared to speak out because a lot of us work for these companies, but we have to fight. Too much is at stake."

Protest actions

Mozilla's SOPA protest, displayed in Firefox on November 16, 2011

On November 16, 2011, Tumblr, Mozilla, Techdirt, the Center for Democracy and Technology were among many Internet companies that protested by participating in American Censorship Day. They displayed black banners over their site logos with the words "STOP CENSORSHIP".

In December 2011, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales initiated discussion with editors regarding a potential knowledge blackout, a protest inspired by a successful campaign by the Italian-language Wikipedia to block the Italian DDL intercettazioni bill, terms of which could have infringed the encyclopedia's editorial independence. Editors and others mulled interrupting service for one or more days as in the Italian protest, or alternatively presenting site visitors with a blanked page directing them to further information before permitting them to complete searches. As a result, the English-language Wikipedia will be blacked out for 24 hours on January 18.

Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, told Fox News that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week and discussion of the option spread to other media outlets.

In January 2012, Reddit announced plans to black out its site for twelve hours on January 18, as company co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced he was going to testify to Congress. "He’s of the firm position that SOPA could potentially 'obliterate' the entire tech industry", Paul Tassi wrote in Forbes. Tassi also opined that Google and Facebook would have to join the blackout to reach a sufficiently broad audience. Other prominent sites that are reported to be participating in the January 18 blackout are Cheezburger Sites, Mojang, Major League Gaming, and Boing Boing.

Wider protests have been considered and in some cases committed to by major internet sites, with high profile bodies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, Reddit, Mozilla, LinkedIn, IAC, eBay, PayPal, Wordpress and Wikimedia being widely named as "considering" or committed to an "unprecedented" internet blackout on January 18, 2012.

Legislative history

November 16 House Judiciary Committee hearing

At the House Judiciary Committee hearing, there was concern among some observers that the set of speakers who testified lacked technical expertise. Technology news site CNET reported "One by one, each witness—including a lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America—said they weren't qualified to discuss... DNSSEC." Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, similarly said, "The techno-ignorance of Congress was on full display. Member after member admitted that they really didn't have any idea what impact SOPA's regulatory provisions would have on the DNS, online security, or much of anything else."

Lofgren stated, “We have no technical expertise on this panel today.” She also criticized the tone of the hearing, saying, “It hasn’t generally been the policy of this committee to dismiss the views of those we are going to regulate. Impugning the motives of the critics instead of the substance is a mistake.”

Lungren told Politico's Morning Tech that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can't afford to let that go by without dealing with it."

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, who had wanted to testify but was not invited, stated, "The significant potential harms of this bill are reflected by the extraordinary coalition arrayed against it. Concerns about SOPA have been raised by Tea Partie, progressives, computer scientists, human rights advocates, venture capitalists, law professors, independent musicians, and many more. Unfortunately, these voices were not heard at today's hearing."

An editorial in Fortune wrote, "This is just another case of Congress doing the bidding of powerful lobbyists—in this case, Hollywood and the music industry, among others. It would be downright mundane if the legislation weren't so draconian and the rhetoric surrounding it weren't so transparently pandering."

December 15 markup of the bill

Since its introduction, a number of opponents to the bill have expressed concerns. The bill was presented for markup by the House Judiciary Committee on December 15.

An aide to Smith stated that "He is open to changes but only legitimate changes. Some site[s] are totally capable of filtering illegal content, but they won’t and are instead profiting from the traffic of illegal content.”

Markup outcome

After the first day of the hearing, more than 20 amendments had been rejected, including one by Issa which would have stripped provisions targeting search engines and Internet providers. PC World reported that the 22–12 vote on the amendment could foreshadow strong support for the bill by the committee.

The Committee adjourned on the second day agreeing to continue debate early in 2012. Smith announced a plan to remove the provision that requires Internet service providers to block access to certain foreign websites. On January 15, 2011, Issa said he has received assurances from Rep. Eric Cantor that the bill would not come up for a vote until a consensus could be reached.

January 24, related PROTECT IP Act to be voted on in Senate

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to bring the Senate's version of the legislation (the Protect IP A or PIPA) to a vote on January 24. Reid rejected a request by six Senators for a postponement, saying "this is an issue that is too important to delay."

External links

• H.R. 3261 on Thomas – Library of Congress (archive)
• H.R. 3261 on GovTrack
• Individual congressmen and senators' positions on SOPA
• Brookings Institution white paper
• What DNS Is Not

The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), also known as Senate Bill 968 or S. 968, is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.

The PROTECT IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced on October 26, 2011.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a vote on the legislation for January 24, 2012.

Contents

The PROTECT IP Act defines infringement as distribution of illegal copies, counterfeit goods, or anti-DRM technology; infringement exists if "facts or circumstances suggest [the site] is used, primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities described". The bill says it does not alter existing substantive trademark or copyright law.

The bill provides for "enhancing enforcement against rogue websites operated and registered overseas", and authorizes the United States Department of Justice to seek a court order in rem against websites dedicated to infringing activities, if through due diligence an individual owner or operator cannot be located. The bill requires the Attorney General to serve notice to the defendant. Once the court issues an order, it could be served on financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, Internet service providers, and information location tools to require them to stop financial transactions with the rogue site and remove links to it. The term "information location tool" is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines, but could cover other sites that link to content.

“

The Protect IP Act says that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order". In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending "Internet site".

”

Nonauthoritative domain name servers would be ordered to take technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent the domain name from resolving to the IP address of a website that had been found by the court to be “dedicated to infringing activities.” The website could still be reached by its IP address, but links or users that used the website’s domain name would not reach it. Search engines—such as Google—would be ordered to “(i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the [court] order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.” Trademark and copyright holders who have been harmed by the activities of a website dedicated to infringing activities would be able to apply for a court injunction against the domain name to compel financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services to stop processing transactions to and placing ads on the website, but would not be able to obtain the domain name remedies available to the Attorney General.

Supporters

Legislators

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

The PROTECT IP Act has received bipartisan support in the Senate, with introduction sponsorship by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and co-sponsorship by 40 Senators as of December 17, 2011, including: Lamar Alexander, Kelly Ayotte, Michael F. Bennet, Jeff Bingaman, Richard Blumenthal, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Benjamin L. Cardin, Robert P. Casey Jr., Saxby Chambliss, Thad Cochran, Christopher A. Coons, Bob Corker, Richard Durbin, Michael B. Enzi, Dianne Feinstein, Al Franken, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Kay Hagan, Orrin G. Hatch, Johnny Isakson, Tim Johnson, Amy Klobuchar, Herb Kohl, Mary L. Landrieu, Joseph I. Lieberman, John McCain, Robert Menendez, Bill Nelson, James E. Risch, Marco Rubio, Charles E. Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen, Tom Udall, David Vitter, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jerry Moran.

Companies and organizations

The bill is supported by copyright and trademark owners in business, industry, and labor groups, spanning all sectors of the economy. Supporters include the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, the National Association of Theatre Owners, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Directors Guild of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Screen Actors Guild, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters Guild of America, Viacom, Institute for Policy Innovation, Macmillan Publishers, Acushnet Company, Recording Industry Association of America, Copyright Alliance and NBCUniversal.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO have come together in support of the bill. In May and September 2011, two letters signed by 170 and 359 businesses and organizations, respectively—including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, Nike, 1-800 Pet Meds, L’Oreal, Rosetta Stone, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company, Revlon, NBA, and Sony—were sent to Congress which endorsed the Act and encouraged the passage of legislation to protect intellectual property and shut down rogue websites.

Others

Constitutional expert Floyd Abrams, representing the MPAA and related trade groups, wrote a Letter to Congress stating that the proposed PROTECT IP Act is constitutionally sound.

According to Robert Bennett of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank funded in part by the Information Technology Industry Council, a 2009 report developed by ITIF titled "Steal These Policies" formed the basis for both SOPA and PIPA. In January 2012 Bennett said that criticism of the bills was misinformed and overblown: "[t]he critics either don't understand what the bills do or are misrepresenting what the bills do. There's sort of a hysterical climate of criticism where people are objecting to something the bills don't do and are promoting noble causes like free speech and democracy but there is not much connection between what they are complaining about and what's in the legislation."

Opponents

Legislators

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) has publicly voiced opposition to the legislation, and placed a Senate hold on it in May 2011, citing concerns over possible damage to freedom of speech, innovation, and Internet integrity. Congressional opponents of PROTECT IP have introduced an alternative bill called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act).

Companies and organizations

The legislation is opposed by the Mozilla Corporation, Facebook, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, reddit, FunnyJunk, Google, Reporters Without Borders, Lunsoc, Human Rights Watch, and Wikipedia. Internet entrepreneurs including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley signed a letter to Congress expressing their opposition to the legislation. The Tea Party Patriots have argued that the bill "is bad for consumers". A letter of opposition was signed by 130 technology entrepreneurs and executives and sent to Congress to express their concern that the law in its present form would "hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online". English-language Wikipedia sites will be joining other Internet sites on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 in protesting the PIPA and SOPA legislation by staging a "blackout" of service for 24 hours.

Others

Law professors Mark Lemley (Stanford University), David S. Levine (Elon University), and David G. Post (Temple University) have criticized the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA.

Reception

On January 14, 2012, White House officials posted a statement saying, "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small", and "We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet."

Technical issues

According to Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge, past attempts to limit copyright infringement online by way of blocking domains have always generated criticism that doing so would fracture the Domain Name System (DNS) and threaten the global functionality of the Internet, with this bill being no different. By design, all domain name servers world-wide should contain identical lists; with the changes proposed, servers inside the United States would have records different from their global counterparts, making URLs less universal.

Five Internet engineers, Steve Crocker, David Dagon, Dan Kaminsky, Danny McPherson, and Paul Vixie prepared a whitepaper which states that the DNS filtering provisions in the bill "raise serious technical and security concerns" and would "break the Internet", while other engineers and proponents of the act have called those concerns groundless and without merit. One concern expressed by network experts is that hackers would offer workarounds to private users to allow access to government-seized sites, but these workarounds might also jeopardize security by redirecting unsuspecting users to scam websites. Supporters of the bill, such as the MPAA, have argued that widespread circumvention of the filtering would be unlikely. The CEO of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation compared the DNS provisions to car door locks, writing that even though they aren't foolproof we should still use them. A browser plugin called MAFIAAFire Redirector was created in March 2011 that redirects visitors to an alternative domain when a site's primary domain has been seized. The Mozilla Foundation says that United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested by phone that Mozilla remove the plugin, a request with which they have not yet complied. Instead, Mozilla's legal counsel has asked for further information from the DHS, including legal justification for the request.

A group of Law professors, quoting Crocker's whitepaper, say that the PROTECT IP and Stop Online Piracy acts could have the opposite of the intended impact, driving users to unregulated alternative DNS systems, and hindering the government from conducting legitimate Internet regulation. They question the constitutionality of both bills, believing they could have potentially disastrous technical consequences and would make US Internet law more like those of repressive regimes. They go on to state that both bills provide "nothing more than ex parte proceedings—proceedings at which only one side (the prosecutor or even a private plaintiff) need present evidence and the operator of the allegedly infringing site need not be present nor even made aware that the action was pending against his or her 'property.' This not only violates basic principles of due process by depriving persons of property without a fair hearing and a reasonable opportunity to be heard, it also constitutes an unconstitutional abridgement of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation supports the PROTECT IP Act and has said that concerns about the domain name remedy in the legislation are undercut by the already ongoing use of that approach to counter spam and malware.

On January 12, 2012, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would be willing to remove a controversial DNS-filtering provision from the bill. "I’ve authorized my staff to tell … the other senators that I’m willing to hold that back in the final piece of legislation," Senator Leahy said. "That in itself will remove a lot of the opposition that we now have." Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), primary sponsor of the related House bill also expressed an intent to remove the DNS blocking provisions from SOPA.

Civil liberties issues

Constitutional law expert Floyd Abrams said, "The Protect IP Act neither compels nor prohibits free speech or communication… the bill sets a high bar in defining when a website or domain is eligible for potential actions by the Attorney General…".

First Amendment scholars Laurence Tribe and Marvin Ammori raised concerns over how the Protect IP act would impact free speech, arguing that the act doesn't target just foreign rogue sites, and would extend to "domestic websites that merely ‘facilitate’ or ‘enable’ infringement. Thus, in their language, the bills target considerable protected speech on legitimate sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook." Ammori says that the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act "would miss their mark and silence a lot of non-infringing speech."

The bill has been criticized by Abigail Phillips of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for not being specific about what constitutes an infringing web site. For example, if WikiLeaks were accused of distributing copyrighted content, U.S. search engines could be served a court order to block search results pointing to Wikileaks. Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page would raise free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt stated that the measures called for in the PROTECT IP Act are overly simple solutions to a complex problem, and that the precedent set by pruning DNS entries is bad from the viewpoint of free speech and would be a step toward less permissive Internet environments, such as China's. As the chairman of the company that owns the world's largest search engine, Schmidt said "If there is a law that requires DNSs to do X and it's passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it."

Concern for user-generated sites

Opponents of the legislation warn that the Protect IP Act would have a negative impact on online communities. Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar", she says. Policy analysts for New America Foundation say this legislation would enable law enforcement to take down an entire domain due to something posted on a single blog: "Yes, an entire, largely innocent online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority."

Business and innovation issues

A legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) notes concerns by opponents such as American Express and Google that the inclusion of a private cause of action would result in stifled Internet innovation, protect outdated business models and at the cost of an overwhelming number of suits from content producers. "Legislation should not include a private right of action that would invite suits by 'trolls' to extort settlements from intermediaries or sites who are making good faith efforts to comply with the law," Google vice-president and Chief Counsel Kent Walker has said in Congressional testimony.

"Rogue sites jeopardize jobs for film and TV workers," according to the Motion Picture Association of America, which cites several government and independent industry studies on the effects of online piracy, including a report by Envisional Ltd. which concluded that one quarter of the content on the internet infringes copyright. The Recording Industry Association of America points to a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation which found that online piracy caused $12.5 billion dollars in losses to the U.S. economy and more than 70,000 lost jobs.

"If we need to amend the DMCA, let's do it with a negotiation between the interested parties, not with a bill written by the content industry's lobbyists and jammed through Congress on a fast track," wrote venture capitalist and Business Insider columnist Fred Wilson in an October 29 editorial on the changes that the House and Senate versions of the proposed legislation would make to the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. "Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and startups like Dropbox, Kickstarter, and Twilio are the leading exporters and job creators of this time. They are the golden goose of the economy and we cannot kill the golden goose to protect industries in decline," he said.

References

The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act) is a draft text for legislation proposed as an alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act by United States Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and United States Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA). The text of the bill is available for public comment at keepthewebopen.com .

On January 14, 2012, the White House is reported as stating: "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small." Also stated by the White House: "We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet."

Comparison with SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT IP Act

The OPEN Act was proposed as an alternative to the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which was approved by the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2011, and the closely related Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in November. After an initial description on December 2 as an outline of possible approaches authored by a bipartisan group of eleven lawmakers, a draft text was made public on December 8, 2011 in advance of a House Judiciary markup of the SOPA Act the following week. The OPEN Act seeks to stop transfers of money to foreign websites whose primary purpose is piracy or counterfeiting, whereas SOPA and PIPA also seek to require Internet providers and search engines to redirect users away from viewing the sites. The PROTECT IP Act proposed to do this by blocking domain name resolution, whereas SOPA imposes a broader requirement for network providers to "prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States" including blocking by IP address and possibly deep packet inspection.

OPEN places enforcement responsibility on the United States International Trade Commission (ITC), which currently adjudicates patent-related disputes, rather than the United States Justice Department. The ITC would be given power to collect fees from complainants and to hire additional personnel for investigations.

Proponents of the OPEN Act describe it on the KeepTheWebOpen website as a way to protect the rights of artists like SOPA and PROTECT IP, but differing from its rivals by not introducing new internet police powers or undermining calls for open internet in closed societies, and by protecting legitimate internet businesses, social media, legitimate websites and internet innovation. They say that their proposal, but not its rivals, ensures that intellectual property cases will be resolved by intellectual property experts, and will target the actual criminals running foreign rogue websites. They criticize SOPA, but not PROTECT IP, for failing to apply due process to judging websites.

Reception

The OPEN draft is backed by Web companies such as Google and Facebook, whereas SOPA and PIPA are backed by the movie and music industries.

The Consumer Electronics Association commended the sponsors of the bill, calling it "a quick, effective way to shut down pirate sites without damaging legitimate companies or enriching trial lawyers." The bill was also praised by the Computer and Communications Industry Association. Google copyright counsel Fred von Lohmann said for his company, "We think following the money, the money that supports foreign rogue sites, is a sensible place to start. It was quite successful in offshore gambling... We've been very clear with members of the committee that we support that."

The OPEN draft was strongly opposed by the MPAA. Spokesman Michael O'Leary wrote in an amicus curiae brief that the bill "allows companies profiting from online piracy to advocate for foreign rogue websites against rightful American copyright holders. It even allows notification to some of these companies if they want to help advocate for rogue websites." The MPAA rejects any law that fails to block Americans' access to The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker which survived prosecution in its home country of Sweden and steadfastly refuses to remove information about infringing downloads from its search index. Darrell Issa maintains that the OPEN act could be effective against the site by targeting even overseas ad networks placing ads on the site, though it is possible that the site could survive without advertisements.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote that the legislation "addresses many of the most glaring flaws in both SOPA and PIPA", though they are continuing to review and analyze the draft.Public Knowledge deemed the bill a "marked improvement" that would avoid the "vigilante justice" of its rivals.Center for Democracy and Technology senior policy counsel Eric Sohn said that the bill's definitions "appear to carefully target true bad actors--the ones who are willfully fostering widespread infringement--while excluding general purpose platforms and social networking services," whose financial focus would "starve those bad actors of their financial lifeblood, rather than pursuing the futile and costly approach of messing with the Internet's addressing system."

Copyright Alliance executive director Sandra Aistars called the OPEN Act "impractical for individual artists and creators", who would be required to argue in Washington before the trade commission rather than in their home jurisdictions, during a period of up to 18 months. The process would be much faster, however, for sites that fail to reply and participate in the ITC process, according to Issa, who said that "the ITC has a faster rocket docket than any federal court". Writing in the Huffington Post, Aistars argued that the bill placed more obstacles for individual artists than for corporate litigants seeking patent remedies before the ITC, saying that fees proposed for complainants in the action were "unprecedented" and incompatible with "justice for all", while third parties profiting from the infringement could argue for the decision to be overturned by the Administration without paying any fee. She further stated that the hearing officers assigned to hear cases by the bill were not required to have intellectual property expertise, and that the evidentiary requirement for a site owner to "willfully" commit infringement would be a mental state impossible to prove for rogue operators refusing to consent to U.S. jurisdiction.

Law professor Eric Goldman reviewed the bill in detail for Ars Technica, finding it "flawed, but more salvageable" than "SOPA's disgustingly blatant rent-seeking", praising due process features and a foreign trade policy focus while warning that the burden on US-based payment service providers and ad networks could drive business to foreign competitors and permit domestic and foreign legal action simultaneous with the ITC administrative proceeding, or other abuses.

Forbes ran a column denouncing the bill as "politically untenable" and "not a viable alternative because it is a transparent attempt to return a several year effort back to square one, while also entangling it with thorny and debilitating congressional jurisdictional turf battles and even thornier and glacial trade policy politics."

Public comment using Madison

The call for public comment on the draft was described by CNet News as "the Wiki-fication of part of the legislative process". Site visitors can read the text of the bill and suggest specific edits using what Representative Issa's staff call "Madison", described as a "digital legislative platform that lets anyone suggest changes to the draft bill, a Wikipedia of sorts for legislative text."

Supporters

The following members of Congress support the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act.

Senate

• Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)
• Mark Warner (D-VA)
• Ron Wyden (D-OR)

House

• John B. T. Campbell III (R-CA)
• Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)
• Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
• Michael F. Doyle (D-PA)
• Anna Eshoo (D-CA)
• Darrell Issa (R-CA)
• Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Jared Polis (D-CO)

References

Template:Infobox U.S. legislation The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on October 12, 1998 by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of on-line services for copyright infringement by their users.

On May 22, 2001, the European Union passed the Copyright Directive or EUCD, which addresses some of the same issues as the DMCA. The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright, the exemption from direct and indirect liability of internet service providers and other intermediaries (Title II of the DMCA), was separately addressed, and largely followed, in Europe by means of the separate Electronic Commerce Directive. (Unlike U.S. federal laws and regulations, the execution of European Union directives usually requires separate legislation by or within each of the Union's member countries.)

Provisions

Title I: WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act

DMCA Title I, the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act, amends U.S. copyright law to comply with the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, adopted at the WIPO Diplomatic Conference in December 1996. The treaties have two major portions. One portion includes works covered by several treaties in U.S. copy prevention laws and gave the title its name. For further analysis of this portion of the Act and of cases under it, see WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act.

The second portion is often known as the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. These provisions changed the remedies for the circumvention of copy-prevention systems (also called "technical protection measures") and required that all analog video recorders have support for a specific form of copy prevention created by Macrovision (now Rovi Corporation) built in, giving Macrovision an effective monopoly on the analog video-recording copy-prevention market. However, section 1201(c) of the title clarified that the title does not change the underlying substantive copyright infringement rights, remedies, or defenses. The title contains other limitations and exemptions, including for research and reverse engineering in specified situations.

Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act

DMCA Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act ("OCILLA"), creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright liability if they adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly block access to allegedly infringing material (or remove such material from their systems) if they receive a notification claiming infringement from a copyright holder or the copyright holder's agent. OCILLA also includes a counternotification provision that offers OSPs a safe harbor from liability to their users upon notice from such users claiming that the material in question is not, in fact, infringing. OCILLA also provides for subpoenas to OSPs to provide their users' identity.

Title III: Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance Act

DMCA Title III modified section 117 of the copyright title so that those repairing computers could make certain temporary, limited copies while working on a computer. It reversed the precedent set in MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993).

Title IV: Miscellaneous Provisions

DMCA Title IV contains an assortment of provisions:

• Clarified and added to the duties of the Copyright Office.
• Added ephemeral copy for broadcasters provisions, including certain statutory licenses.
• Added provisions to facilitate distance education.
• Added provisions to assist libraries with keeping phonorecords of sound recordings.
• Added provisions relating to collective bargaining and the transfer of movie rights.

Title V: Vessel Hull Design Protection Act

DMCA Title V added sections 1301 through 1332 to add a sui generis protection for boat hull designs. Boat hull designs were not considered covered under copyright law because they are useful articles whose form cannot be cleanly separated from their function.

Anti-circumvention exemptions

In addition to the safe harbors and exemptions the statute explicitly provides, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1) requires that the Librarian of Congress issue exemptions from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology. Exemptions are granted when it is shown that access-control technology has had a substantial adverse effect on the ability of people to make non-infringing uses of copyrighted works.

The exemption rules are revised every three years. Exemption proposals are submitted by the public to the Registrar of Copyrights, and after a process of hearings and public comments, the final rule is recommended by the Registrar and issued by the Librarian. Exemptions expire after three years and must be resubmitted for the next rulemaking cycle. Consequently, the exemptions issued in the prior rulemakings, in 2000, 2003 and 2006 are no longer valid.

The current administratively-created exemptions, issued in July 2010, are:

• Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances:
  • Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;
  • Documentary filmmaking;
  • Noncommercial videos. (A new exemption in 2010, similar to a previous educational exemption.)
• Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset. (A new exemption in 2010.)
• Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network. (Revised from a similar exemption approved in 2006.)
• Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:
  • The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and
  • The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law. (A new exemption in 2010.)
• Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace. (A renewed exemption from 2006, based on a similar exemption approved in 2003.)
• Literary works distributed in e-book format when all existing e-book editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format. (A renewed exemption from 2006, based on a similar exemption approved in 2003.)

The Copyright Office approved two exemptions in 2000; four in 2003; six in 2006 and 2010. In 2000, the Office exempted (a) "Compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications" (renewed in 2003 but not renewed in 2006); and (b) "Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness." (revised and limited in 2003 and again in 2006). In 2003, the 2000 "literary works including computer programs" exemption was limited to "Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete" and this exemption was renewed in both 2006 and 2010. The 2003 exemption for text readers of ebooks was renewed in both 2006 and 2010. The 2003 exemption for obsolete software and video game formats was renewed in 2006 but was not renewed in 2010. The 2000 filtering exemption was revised and renewed in 2003, but was not renewed in 2006. The 2006 exemption for sound recordings allowed after security flaws were found in a copy protection system on some Sony CDs was not renewed in 2010. An exemption covering the audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department was not renewed in 2010. This exemption was replaced with an exemption on DVDs protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is for the purpose of criticism or comment using short sections, for educational, documentary or non-profit use. The 2006 exemption for wireless handsets connecting to wireless networks was revised in 2010 to specify used handsets and require authorization from the wireless network operator. Another exemption for wireless handsets was introduced in 2010 specific to interoperability software on the phone itself.

Linking to infringing content

The law is currently unsettled with regard to websites that contain links to infringing material; however, there have been a few lower-court decisions which have ruled against linking in some narrowly prescribed circumstances. One is when the owner of a website has already been issued an injunction against posting infringing material on their website and then links to the same material in an attempt to circumvent the injunction. Another area involves linking to software or devices which are designed to circumvent DRM (digital rights management) devices, or links from websites whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright protection by linking to copyrighted material.

There have been no cases in the US where a website owner has been found liable for linking to copyrighted material outside of the above narrow circumstances.

Notable court cases

Edelman v. N2H2

In July 2002, American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on the behalf of Benjamin Edelman, a computer researcher at Berkman Center for Internet and Society, seeking a Declaratory judgment to affirm his first amendment rights when reverse engineering the censorware product of defendant N2H2 in case he intended to publish the finding. N2H2 filed a motion to dismiss, which the court granted.

RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.

In August 2009, the DVD Copy Control Association won a lawsuit against RealNetworks for violating copyright law in selling its RealDVD software, allowing users to copy DVDs and store them on a harddrive. The DVD Copy Control Association claimed that Real violated the DMCA by circumventing anti-piracy measures ARccOS Protection and RipGuard, as well as breaking Real's licensing agreement with the MPAA's Content Scrambling System.

Viacom Inc. v. YouTube, Google Inc.

On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its corporate parent Google for copyright infringement seeking more than $1 billion in damages. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Viacom claims the popular video-sharing site was engaging in "massive intentional copyright infringement" for making available a contended 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's entertainment programming. Google lawyers say they are relying on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to shield them from liability.

On June 23, 2010, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton granted summary judgment in favor of YouTube. The court held that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the DMCA. Viacom has said that it will appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible.

IO Group, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc.

On June 23, 2006 IO Group, Inc. filed a complaint against Veoh Networks, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for California's Northern District. IO Group alleged that Veoh was responsible for copyright infringement by allowing videos owned by Io Group to be accessed through Veoh's online service without permission over 40,000 times between the dates June 1 and June 22.

Veoh is a Flash video site relying on user contributed content. IO Group argued that since Veoh transcoded user uploaded videos to Flash format it became a direct infringer and the materials were under their direct control, thereby disqualifying them for DMCA safe harbor protection.

The ruling judge disagreed with the argument, stating that "Veoh has simply established a system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format that is readily accessible to its users. Veoh preselects the software parameters for the process from a range of default values set by the thirdparty software... But Veoh does not itself actively participate or supervise the uploading of files. Nor does it preview or select the files before the upload is completed. Instead, video files are uploaded through an automated process which is initiated entirely at the volition of Veoh's users." The Court has granted the Veoh's motion for summary judgment, on the basis of the DMCA, holding that the defendant's video-sharing web site complied and was entitled to the protection of the statute's "safe harbor" provision. Even though Veoh won the court case, it blamed the litigation as one of the causes of its preparing to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy and its subsequent sale to Qlipso.

Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc.

After numerous DMCA takedown notices in response to his eBay listings, Timothy S. Vernor sued Autodesk in August 2007 alleging that Autodesk abused the DMCA and disrupted his right to sell used software he bought at a garage sale. In May 2008, a federal district judge in Washington State dismissed Autodesk's argument that the software's license agreement preempted the seller from his rights under the first-sale doctrine. In September 2010, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that "a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions."

Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.

In 2007, Stephanie Lenz, a writer and editor from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania made a home video of her 13-month-old son dancing to "Let's Go Crazy" and posted a 29-second video on the video-sharing site YouTube. Four months after the video was originally uploaded, Universal Music Group, which owned the copyrights to the song, ordered YouTube to remove the video enforcing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Lenz notified YouTube immediately that her video was within the scope of fair use, and demanded that it be restored. YouTube complied after six weeks—not two weeks, as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—to see whether Universal planned to sue Lenz for infringement. Lenz then sued Universal Music in California for her legal costs, claiming the music company had acted in bad faith by ordering removal of a video that represented fair use of the song.

In August 2008, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, California ruled that copyright holders cannot order a deletion of an online file without determining whether that posting reflected "fair use" of the copyrighted material.

On February 25, 2010, Judge Fogel issued a ruling rejecting several of Universal's affirmative defenses, including the defense that Lenz suffered no damages.

Flava Works Inc. v. Gunter

In the case of Flava Works Inc. v. Gunter the court denied the defentant safe harbour protection under DMCA Template:Uscsub. The court found that the defentant had knowledge of its users infringing activity and also failed to prevent future infringing activity. As such the plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction was granted.

Criticisms

Takedown Notice

The DMCA has been criticized for making it too hard for copyright owners to protect their rights. Owners of "community based" infringing websites need only take down infringing content to avoid all liability. This has led to the business model of encouraging anonymous individuals to upload copyright violations while the site owners profit from advertising or a sales percentage on pirated eBooks.

Google asserted misuse of the DMCA in a filing concerning New Zealand's copyright act, quoting results from a 2005 study by Californian academics Laura Quilter and Jennifer Urban based on data from the Chilling Effects clearinghouse. Takedown notices targeting a competing business made up over half (57%) of the notices Google has received, the company said, and more than one-third (37%), "were not valid copyright claims."

Effect on Analog Video Equipment

Analog Copy Protection (ACP), the encryption technology created by Rovi Corporation (Formerly Macrovision), is designed to thwart users' attempts to reproduce content via analog cables. When a DVD is played through an analog video cable and recorded using a VCR, Rovi’s ACP technology will distort the copy partially or completely.

The technology works by adding additional lines to the video signal. In the NTSC video standard, blank lines (vertical blanking intervals) that the user cannot see are used for functions like closed captioning. Rovi Corporation uses these blank lines to implement its ACP technology.

The implementation of ACP has been ill-regarded by some video enthusiasts. Many claim that the technology has led to signal issues with VCRs and analog video equipment. Some VCRs misread the encryption used to prevent copying, distorting the video image regardless of whether the recording is original or a copy.

The DMCA has been criticized for forcing all producers of analog video equipment to support the proprietary copy protection technology of Rovi Corporation, a commercial firm. The producers of video equipment are forced by law to support and implement the corporation's proprietary technology. This benefits Rovi Corporation financially, whereas those forced to implement it receive neither profit nor receive compensation.

Additionally, some criticize the implementation of ACP as a violation of their fair use rights. A recently developed TV-streaming product called the Slingbox uses analog signals to convey video from television to a mobile device. However, the encryption used by ACP blocks analog transmission, rendering the Slingbox unusable. Additionally ACP blocks the use of recording for educational purposes. On one or more accounts, students have not been able to cite and record cable sources properly due to ACP restrictions.

Effect on research

The DMCA has had an impact on the worldwide cryptography research community, since an argument can be made that any cryptanalytic research violates, or might violate, the DMCA. The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov in 2001, for alleged infringement of the DMCA, was a highly publicized example of the law's use to prevent or penalize development of anti-DRM measures. While working for ElcomSoft in Russia, he developed The Advanced eBook Processor, a software application allowing users to strip usage restriction information from restricted e-books, an activity legal in both Russia and the United States. Paradoxically, under the DMCA, it is not legal in the United States to provide such a tool. Sklyarov was arrested in the United States after presenting a speech at DEF CON and subsequently spent nearly a month in jail. The DMCA has also been cited as chilling to legitimate users, such as students of cryptanalysis (including, in a well-known instance, Professor Edward Felten and students at Princeton), and security consultants such as Niels Ferguson, who has declined to publish information about vulnerabilities he discovered in an Intel secure-computing scheme because of his concern about being arrested under the DMCA when he travels to the US.

Effect on innovation and competition

In at least one court case, the DMCA has been used by Open Source software projects to defend against conversion of software (i.e. license violations) that involved removal of copyright notices. This defense can be used even without timely copyright registration, and can generate attorney fee awards, which together make it a useful strategy for Open Source organizations.

Reform and opposition

There are efforts in Congress to modify the Act. Rick Boucher, a Democratic congressman from Virginia, is leading one of these efforts by introducing the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA).

A prominent bill related to the DMCA is the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), known in early drafts as the Security Systems and Standards Certification Act (SSSCA). This bill, if it had passed, would have dealt with the devices used to access digital content and would have been even more restrictive than the DMCA.

On the tenth anniversary of the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation documented harmful consequences of the anti-circumvention provisions. They document that the DMCA:

1. stifles free expression, such as in its use against Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, Princeton Professor Edward Felten, and journalists;
2. jeopardizes fair use;
3. impedes competition, such as blocking aftermarket competition in toner cartridges, garage door openers, and enforcing walled gardens around the iPod; and
4. interferes with computer intrusion laws.

See also

Economic concepts

• Protectionism

Related US laws

• Copyright Term Extension Act (1998)
• Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act (1995)
• Inducement rule
• NET Act, the "No Electronic Theft"

Proposed US legislation

• BALANCE Act, Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations Act of 2003
• Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (INDUCE) (introduced 2004)
• Pirate Act (introduced 2004)
• Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (introduced 2003 & 2005)
• Digital Transition Content Security Act (introduced 2005)
• FAIR USE Act (introduced in 2007)
• PROTECT IP Act (introduced in 2011)
• Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (introduced in 2011)

Related international law

• Bill C-60 (Canada — proposed)
• Bill C-61 (Canada — proposed)
• Bill C-32 (Canada — proposed)
• DADVSI (France — Loi sur le Droit d'Auteur et les Droits Voisins dans la Société de l'Information)
• Digital Economy Act 2010 (United Kingdom)
• EU Copyright Directive (European Union)
• Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty (proposed)

Proposed international law

• Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

DMCA anti-circumvention cases

• 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc.
• Chamberlain v. Skylink
• Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc.
• Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components
• Murphy v. Millennium Radio Group LLC
• Dmitry Sklyarov in United States v. ElcomSoft and Sklyarov
• Universal v. Reimerdes

DMCA damages cases

• Stockwire Research Group, Inc., et al. v. Lebed, et al.

DMCA notice-and-takedown issues

• Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) (more information about the DMCA 512 takedown provisions)
• Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.

References

Litman, Jessica (2000). Digital Copyright. Berlin: Prometheus Books. p. 208. ISBN 1-57392-889-5.

External links

• Template:USBill, DMCA
• U.S. Copyright Office summary of the DMCA (PDF format)
• Title 17 of the U.S. Code, Cornell Law School
• Cybertelecom's DMCA information and background material
• A citizen's guide to the DMCA
• ChillingEffects.org, a clearinghouse of DMCA 512 notices and cease and desist letters
• Info on Dealing with Digital Copyrights Infringement including filing DMCA Notices
• Interview of Marcia Hoffman from the EFF on Lenz v. Universal DMCA lawsuit
• Seth Finkelstein, How To Win (DMCA) Exemptions And Influence Policy.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) page on the DMCA
• Unintended Consequences: Ten Years under the DMCA - EFF
• Media Copyrights Law

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 ("PRO-IP Act of 2007", Template:USBill), is a United States law that increases both civil and criminal penalties for trademark, patent and copyright infringement. The law also establishes a new executive branch office, the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER).

The PRO-IP Act permits the Department of Justice to conduct civil suits on behalf of copyright holders. This provision was initially removed from the bill, but then was approved unanimously in the Senate. Not all Senators were present for this vote.

Background of the Act

The PRO-IP Act would serve to further protect rights holders in the case of secondary infringement, in which a consumer becomes liable for infringement committed by another. In Capitol Records v. Deborah Foster (2004), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) could not charge Oklahoma woman, Debbie Foster, with infringement of shared files. Judge Lee suggested that Foster could not be held responsible for the download of files, which were attributed to her adult daughter and estranged husband who used her IP number. The RIAA’s use of IP numbers to charge users with infringement was not sufficient evidence to charge Ms. Foster and other defendants in the past. However, in another RIAA case, Elektra v. Santangelo, the judge did find Patti Santangelo potentially liable for file-sharing in her home via Kazaa software, despite the fact that she may not have been aware of the illegal downloads.

In one case, Capitol v. Thomas, Capital Records did receive an award of $9,250 in statutory damages for each of the twenty-four infringed songs. Although the jury settled on charging the defendant with only $9,250 out of the possible $150,000 per song, through these cases, Capital Records, the RIAA and others were primarily concerned with sending a message to the public that illegal distribution and download of copyrighted music was unacceptable.

In addition to these domestic issues, United States has a history of participating in global enforcement of intellectual property rights. In 1995, the U.S. participated in negotiating in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which established a minimum standard for protecting various areas of IP rights. Throughout fiscal years 2004 to 2009, the government has tracked the importation of counterfeit goods, including pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, apparel, footwear, computers, software, toys and electronics. In 2006, the government confiscated, for example, cargo containers of counterfeit Nike Air Jordan shoes, as well as counterfeit Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, which together were valued at about $19 million. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office's April 2010 report, "Observations on the Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods," such goods undercut American competition with lower prices, thus causing damage to the domestic economy. The U.S. government was also strongly concerned about the piracy of digital products through peer-to-peer networks, streaming sites, and one-click hosting services. The sophistication of piracy among counterfeiters has harmed the music, motion picture, television, publishing and software industries. At the time, there was no government agency that collected or tracked data on digital copyright piracy. Alongside potential lost revenue, these pirated goods pressure producers and IP owners to compete with the counterfeit producers. Overall, this contributes to loss of brand value and reputation, as well as lost investment and innovation. Also, American companies are forced to expend further funds on protecting intellectual property in court.

Based on a study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, intellectual property theft costs American businesses an estimated $250 billion each year, as well as an estimated 750,000 jobs. Another study, from the Business Software Alliance, states that the software industry lost nearly $48 billion in sales to piracy.

Legislative history

On December 5, 2007, John Conyers (D-MI) introduced the bill into the House of Representatives. The bill (H.R. 4279) was known as Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Howard Berman (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Bob Goodlatte (R-VI) were among the sponsors of the bill.

Intellectual-property holders, such as entertainment companies, auto parts manufacturers, pharmaceuticals and unions, championed the bill.

On May 8, 2008, the House of Representatives passed the bill 410 to 11. Only 12 representatives did not vote. On July 12, 2008, H.R. 4279 was received in the House and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. On July 24, 2008, Senator Leahy (D-VT) introduced the bill (S.3325) in the Senate as Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act.

On September 26, 2008, S.3325 passed in the Senate with unanimous consent. Two days later, S.3325 passed in the House 381 to 41. In this final House vote, 2008 Presidential candidates, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, voted against the bill.

On October 13, 2008, President George W. Bush signed the bill into law. The official name of the bill reverted back to its original title when it was introduced into the House, Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act.

The Content of PRO-IP Act

The PRO-IP Act makes changes to prior intellectual property law in the areas of civil enforcement, criminal enforcement, coordination of federal intellectual property efforts and funding and resources of the Department of Justice intellectual property programs.

For civil enforcement, the PRO-IP Act increases the maximum $30,000 penalty for compilations and increases penalties for repeat offenders. It raises the penalty for statutory damages for counterfeit goods from $1,000 to $200,000, which was originally a range from $500 to $100,000. For repeat offenders, the maximum statutory damages range from $1-2 million. In addition, the Justice Department has the authority to conduct civil asset forfeiture, in which any computer or network hardware used in the act of a copyright crime may be seized and auctioned off.

In civil forfeiture, the plaintiff may also access bank accounts, financial information and other documents in order to trace the source of the infringing goods. In criminal enforcement, the PRO-IP Act offers the government more authority in seizure and forfeiture in the trafficking of counterfeit labels, documentation, and packaging.

Under Title II of the Act, the manufacturers of these products face new criminal penalties, especially if the offender knowingly or recklessly causes serious bodily injury or death, as with counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The Act also prohibits the transshipment or exportation of such goods, which would be in violation of the Trademark Act of 1946 or the Lanham Act.

Section 602 of the Copyright Act states that it is only illegal to import products that infringe a copyright. The PRO-IP revision in Section 105 clarifies this issue, stating that the import and export of such materials is illegal.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection also provides the opportunity for musicians and performers to register their work with the agency, enabling CBP to notify the artist if unauthorized copies of their work are tracked entering the U.S. from other countries.

The PRO-IP Act also established the position of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator within the Executive Office of the President. The purpose of this new position was to coordinate the anti-piracy efforts of the Department of Justice, the Patent and Trademark Office and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The appointed IPEC would be responsible for developing and implementing a Joint Strategic Plan, a program to battle counterfeiting and piracy. The appointee would also serve as chief advisor to the President on both domestic and international intellectual property enforcement policy.

Under Section 304, the IPEC must submit an annual report to Congress and must update the strategic plan every three years. The legislation also allocates $25 million annually to state and local governments to train law enforcement, educate the public and purchase technology to combat counterfeit activity.

Additional resources, for example, were allotted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which now operates a department of at least five full-time Special Agents who work with the Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS).

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the federal budget would allocate approximately $429 million between 2009 and 2013 for the implementation of the PRO-IP Act.

Proponents and Opponents of the Act

Proponents

Based on the 2010 Joint Strategic Plan, the main function of the PRO-IP Act is to protect the growth of the national economy. The act also serves to promote creativity, research and innovation, which are essential to the technology, pharmaceutical, automobile, and entertainment industries and in turn, protect the jobs in those fields. The U.S. federal government also depends on the promotion of innovation to solve global problems and to preserve national and economic security, including the prevention of criminal activity, such as the sale of counterfeit drugs that cause fatal harm to consumers. In addition, the Act reaffirms commitment to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which aims to promote scientific and artistic creativity.

In a speech at the Export-Import Bank's Annual Conference in March 2010, President Obama remarked: "...we’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property. Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people. It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor. There’s nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it –- we just want to make sure that it’s licensed, and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately."

When the bill was initially introduced, co-sponsor, Rep. Howard Berman, defended the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He suggested that individuals are willing to steal intellectual property and that the PRO-IP Act would prevent such crimes.

American businesses, such as the Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America, were long time supporters of the bill, since it was first introduced into the House. NBCUniversal Media also supported the Act due to countless pirated works on counterfeit DVDs and online, which were circulated throughout the U.S. and abroad.

In response to the changing Internet platforms, corporations like NBC have transformed traditional media companies into new models to monetize their content. Hulu, for example, began as a joint venture between NBC and News Corp, parent company to Fox. Although new resources were provided for consuming entertainment media, it was not sufficient to completely counteract copyright infringement online.

In addition to media and entertainment corporations, the U.S. auto industry, including General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, sought protection from counterfeiters. Ford and GM, who hold one third of all green technology patents and their related value, are in competition with China and India in the development of hybrid and green technology. Proponents in the auto industry suggested that the PRO-IP Act was essential to sustain financial viability, as well as enduring competitiveness.

Other groups that supported the Act include the National Music Publishers’ Association and the Copyright Alliance.

Opponents

Compilation Clause

However, the PRO-IP Act also faced opposition. Before the act was passed, Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), Net Coalition, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Public Knowledge, Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), Association of Public Television Stations and Printing Industries of America, protested the compilation clause. Under the law at the time, the copyright plaintiff was able to obtain up to $150,000 per work infringed. The compilation clause, from Section 504 (c)(1) of Title 17, states: "For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work." Under the clause, an entire stolen album would count as one work and thus, the infringer would receive a maximum penalty of $150,000. This would mean, for example, that an individual who copied fifty songs from a boxed set would be liable for a minimum $150,000 rather than $7.5 million in damages. Under the PRO-IP Act, however, legislators proposed that the plaintiff could claim up to $150,000 per infringed work. Public Knowledge argued that this proposed change to the compilation clause would "incentivize 'copyright trolls'" to collect larger damage claims than necessary.

William Patry, senior copyright lawyer for Google, was well known for calling the legislation, the most “outrageous gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the U.S.,” in response to the compilation clause.Patry, who served in the Copyright Office in the past, suggested that the penalties of the PRO-IP Act would fall on ordinary Americans, not commercial counterfeiters.

Like Patry, many believed that liability per song was an excessive penalty. Digital rights groups and other critics suggested that the Act failed to recognize the difference between commercial counterfeiters and regular consumers, who would be punished with outstanding fees. In fact, they suggested that non commercial, personal copying of such tracks could possibly be considered fair use.

The PRO-IP Act further narrow rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Under DMCA, fair use limits the statutory damages available under secondary liability and permits bypassing digital rights management (DRM) for lawful uses. Consumer advocates suggested that the PRO-IP Act, in turn, would serve as a means to protect the business interests of American film, music and software companies. “At a time when the entire digital world is going to less restrictive distribution models, and when the courts are aghast at the outlandish damages being inflicted on consumers in copyright cases, this bill goes entirely in the wrong direction,” stated Public Knowledge's president and co-founder, Gigi Sohn. Due to this controversy, the compilation clause was ultimately removed from the Act.

Attempted Infringement Clause

Another contested clause was the “attempted infringement” penalty.Section 506 (a)(1) of Title 17 states that "any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punishe...if the infringement was committed—(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; (B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means...copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or (C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public..."Under this section, Representative Steve Chabot (R-OH) had proposed that the PRO-IP Act enact stricter penalties, which would lengthen prison terms.

Consumer Rights

In addition, American consumers were concerned about Section 206, which expanded the scope of civil forfeitures. The government could confiscate an iPod, for example, that contained illegal music downloads when crossing the border.

Others claimed that the Act was a violation of net neutrality. As a result of the legislation, Internet service providers would partner with recording companies, for example, in order to detect piracy.

The legislation would also permit the Attorney General to sue individuals on behalf of rights holders, like the MPAA and RIAA.

Advocacy groups, like Public Knowledge and Electronic Frontier Foundation stated that the recording industry has threatened or filed over 30,000 lawsuits against individual consumers, suggesting that movie and television producers, software publishers, music publishers and print publishers have sufficient access to their own enforcement programs and do not need additional support from the government.

In addition, the PRO-IP Act was also criticized due to the creation of new federal offices that would further strain taxpayer dollars, such as the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, Intellectual Property Enforcement Division in the Department of Justice and additional intellectual property staff in U.S. embassies.

Implementation of the PRO-IP Act

The Bush Administration

In September 1999, Congress instituted the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Center to coordinate efforts to protect IP across federal agencies. In 2004, the Strategy for Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP) was also established in response to rising industry concerns about piracy. However, the functions of these agencies overlapped and lacked an overall strategy.

On October 8, 2008, President Bush had signed the bailout bill, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This context of hard economic times further enhanced the urgency of the PRO-IP Act’s passage. According to co-sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy, the legislation would serve as a vital means to protect copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets central to the U.S. economy and its job market. "Intellectual property—copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets—is an ever-growing sector of our economy. We are the envy of the world for the quality and the quantity of our innovative and creative goods and services. If we want to continue to lead the world in producing intellectual property, we need to protect Americans’ rights in that property," stated Senator Leahy.

The Bush Administration had questioned the legality of the “copyright czar” position, suggesting that it was a violation of separation of powers.

The Justice Department was opposed to the bill, suggesting that the power of the appointed copyright czar was unnecessary. As a result, the position was placed in the Executive Office of the President instead of the Department of Justice.

Senator Ron Wyden was one of the representatives who requested that Congress remove the provision that requires the involvement of the Department of Justice in intellectual property enforcement.

The Obama Administration

In September 2009, President Barack Obama appointed intellectual property scholar Victoria Espinel to be the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, a position informally known as the copyright czar.

Victoria Espinel, who taught as a professor at George Mason University, had prior experience working at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Espinel also served as an intellectual property advisor to the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, the House Judiciary Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.

On December 3, 2009, Espinel's appointment was confirmed. The United States Chamber of Commerce, Public Knowledge and other groups approved Espinel for this position.

By Executive Order, President Obama also created two interagencies, the Senior Advisory Committee and Intellectual Property Enforcement Advisory Committee. Espinel serves as the chair of these two groups.

Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was a strong supporter of these committees, which aimed to further support the goals of the PRO-IP Act, centered upon protecting American intellectual property and in turn, protect innovation central to the U.S. economy and its job market.

In 2009, the Justice Department reported on the implementation of PRO-IP Act in its first year. There were a variety of prosecutions in the protection of health and safety. One defendant was imprisoned for trafficking over $400,000 worth of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. These tablets, when consumed with alcohol, caused symptoms such as abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting and headaches. In another case, New York resident was incarcerated for trafficking more than a half a million tubes of counterfeit toothpaste, which contained microorganisms and diethylene glycol, a chemical used as a coolant in brake fluids. The most severe of these prosecutions included imprisonment for Kevin Xu of Texas, who trafficked counterfeit cancer drugs, which included less active ingredients than indicated on the labels. The ability to seize these counterfeit products enabled the government to protect citizen health. In commercial counterfeiting online, the Department of Justice reported the operation of forty websites that generated $800,000 selling counterfeit software online. A ring of defendants was also guilty of selling counterfeit software on eBay valued at more than $25 million. Over the course of about six years, another defendant sold pirated tele-radiological software to hospitals and outpatient facilities.

The Department of Justice also reported that the FBI was able to target piracy organizations, as well as initiate the first-ever peer-to-peer trial conviction. Apocalypse Production Crew or “APC” was one of these music piracy groups that served as a “release group,” which are the original sources in which pirated works are distributed on the Internet. In the first peer-to-peer trial conviction, Daniel Dove was convicted as the administrator of Elite Torrents, a P2P Internet piracy group, which had over 133,000 members and facilitated the distribution of more than 17,800 titles in movies, software, music and games.

In 2010, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division also coordinated work between investigatory agencies and the International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center, also referred to as IOC-2. In an attempt to close intelligence gaps between these groups, the FBI, ICE and CBP routinely contribute intellectual property data to IOC-2. The IOC-2 has also collaborated with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center to train personnel in the identification of intellectual property violations that involve organized crime.

In addition, in 2010, operations detected online piracy in the sale of counterfeit clothing and computer programs. At the Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California, merchants at eight shops were charged with trafficking counterfeit designer merchandise imported from China, such as clothing, handbags and shoes, all of which were valued over $100 million. In New York, a man had been trafficking NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB sports jerseys. The FBI was also able to track organized crime internationally, such as one group that was responsible for smuggling 120 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes, 500,000 counterfeit Coach handbags, 10,000 pairs of Coach and Gucci shoes and 500 counterfeit Cartier watches through the Port of Baltimore.

The PRO-IP Act is also utilized to prevent the theft of commercial trade secrets. Many of these cases, for example, entail former employees sharing critical information with international markets. A former Bristol-Myers-Squibb employee stole trade secrets from the company, which he planned to use to establish a pharmaceutical firm in India. Valspar Corporation chemist admitted to stealing formulas and other information valued at $20 million, which he would use working for an overseas competitor. Another chemist stole information from DuPont on Organic Light Emitting Diodes or OLED technology used for display and lighting applications. An employee for Dow AgroSciences in Indianapolis had a similar intent to take trade secrets to China.

In June 2010, Espinel’s Joint Strategic Plan integrated perspectives across federal agencies, such as U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security Justice, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and U.S. Copyright Office. It also considered 1,600 public comments and suggestions from the American public. Under this plan, the federal government will avoid purchase or use of infringing products, support transparency in the development of enforcement policy, as well as improve coordination and thus, effectiveness of intellectual property enforcement. The plan also aims to further protect American intellectual property rights through international outreach and to improve data and information collection regarding criminal violations of intellectual property. IPEC has collected data through a Budget Data Request (BDR), in which federal agencies report the resources used and measured outcomes in intellectual property enforcement.

Espinel hosted an Intellectual Property Health and Safety Forum at the White House, meeting with private sector leaders from American Express, eNom, GoDaddy, Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, Neustar, Visa and Yahoo! to take action against illegal online pharmacies, which pose a threat to health in the act of selling counterfeit drugs online. Due to interagency and cross-border efforts, the FBI was able to convict individuals selling cancer drugs that did not contain ingredients to fight cancer. The PRO-IP Act is also intended to prevent the sale of counterfeit products for use in U.S. defense and weapons systems that may possibly fail under fire, causing harm to troop missions and ultimately, public safety. In one case, a business owner was prosecuted for selling counterfeit Cisco products, which were intended to relay troop movement and intelligence for a U.S. Marine Corps base in Iraq.

As a result of this work, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE HSI) opened 1,033 intellectual property cases, which resulted in 365 arrests, 216 indictments and 170 federal and state convictions.ICE HSI has identified and seized domain names facilitating the trafficking of pirated materials. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE HSI had 19,959 intellectual property seizures, which resulted in 237 civil fines and penalties totaling over $62 million.

Many have contested the legality of these seizures, suggesting that excessive shutdowns of domain names and other rogue sites is a violation of free speech. John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has stated that the organization has "zero interest in limiting free speech" and that "ICE is not the police of the Internet."

In 2011, the federal government aims to shut down top illegal websites and to secure legislation that will enable funding for U.S. embassies to monitor American intellectual property internationally.For example, President Obama discussed enforcement of intellectual property rights with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Alongside Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Obama urged Jintao to take action against consumers who purchase Microsoft software and other counterfeit DVDs and CDs for only a fraction of the cost online or in public markets. Other European countries and Japan have also addressed this growing problem in China, where the authorities hesitate to arrest counterfeiters due to the fact that such products may possibly bolster local economies.

Since the passage of the PRO-IP Act, the National Association of Manufacturers has lobbied for further legislation, as well. In addition to identifying counterfeit and pirate products, the Association would like the legislation that compiles a “watch list” database of importers, shippers and other participants at U.S. ports. Such legislation should also increase fines, as well as develop tools to ensure that manufacturers receive timely information about acts of infringement.

References

The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act known as DMCA 512 or the DMCA takedown provisions, is a 1998 United States law that provided a safe harbor to online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) that promptly take down content if someone alleges it infringes their copyrights. Most are generally supportive of the act, although some believe it has some problematic portions and is overused.

Overview

The act added section 512 to the Copyright law in Title 17 of the United States Code (Public Law No. 105-304, 112 Stat. 2860, 2877).

This provision of United States copyright law is best known for allowing copyright holders to ask that any online service provider (OSP, including ISPs) remove access to copyright infringing material if the copyrighted material is made available through the OSP. It is a powerful device for the protection of copyright on the internet for providers that are located in the United States, though many foreign providers may also respond to such requests for fear of litigation in the United States should they have any significant business interests in the U.S.

In exchange for this, the OSP gains:

• new protection from liability to its own customers as a result of a decision to remove material.
• clear procedures for removing and restoring material.
• a safe harbor against copyright infringement claims, similar to the protection against non-intellectual property infringement liability provided by Section 230 the Communications Decency Act (CDA).

Customers gain through a reduced chance that works will be removed unnecessarily by an OSP which hasn't received an infringement complaint.

Take down and put back provisions

These are the most commonly encountered parts of the act. They provide a procedure which gives the OSP a safe harbor so long as it complies with the requirements and follows the notification and counter-notification provisions.

Takedown example

Here's an example of how the takedown procedures would work:

1. Alice puts a copy of Bob's song on her AOL-hosted website.
2. Bob, searching the Internet, finds Alice's copy.
3. Bob sends a letter to AOL's designated agent (registered with the Copyright Office) including:
   1. contact information
   2. the name of the song that was copied
   3. the address of the copied song
   4. a statement that he has a good faith belief that the material is not legal
   5. a statement that, under penalty of perjury, Bob is authorized to act for the copyright holder
   6. his signature
4. AOL takes the song down.
5. AOL tells Alice that they have taken the song down.
6. Alice now has the option of sending a counter-notice to AOL, if she feels the song was taken down unfairly. The notice includes
   1. contact information
   2. identification of the removed song
   3. a statement under penalty of perjury that Alice has a good faith belief the material was mistakenly taken down
   4. a statement consenting to the jurisdiction of US Federal District Court of Alice, or if she's outside the US, AOL
   5. her signature
7. AOL then waits 10-14 business days for a lawsuit to be filed by Bob.
8. If Bob does not file a lawsuit, then AOL puts the material back up.

Requirements to obtain the safe harbor

To obtain the safe harbor the OSP must:

• not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing (512(c)(1)(A)(1)).
• not be aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent (512(c)(1)(A)(2)).
• upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, must act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material. (512(c)(1)(A)(2) and 512(c)(1)(C))
• not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity (512(c)(1)(B)).
• have a Designated Agent registered with the US Copyright Office to receive notifications of claimed infringement (often called takedown notices). If the designated agent receives a notification which substantially complies with the notification requirements, the OSP now has actual knowledge and must expeditiously disable access to the work. The OSP must make available to the public through its service, including on its web site substantially this information:
  • the name, address, phone number and electronic mail address of the agent.
  • other contact information which the Register of Copyrights may deem appropriate.
• adopt, reasonably implement, and inform subscribers and account holders of a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers (512(i)(1)(A)).
• accommodate and not interfere with standard technical measures used to identify and protect copyrighted works (512(i)(1)(B)).

The Interim Designation of a Registered Agent is to be filed with the United States Copyright Office and must be accompanied by a $30 fee, payable to the Register of Copyrights [10]. If mailed, the Interim Designation should be addressed to: Copyright GC/I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, D.C. 20024. An OSP may also file the Interim Designation by hand, by delivering to the Public Information Office of the Copyright Office, Room LM-401, James Madison Memorial Building, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C., during normal business hours, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Designations and amendments are posted online on the Copyright Office website.

Notification of claimed infringement

If an infringement has occurred a copyright holder may send a written notification of claimed infringement to the designated agent. This must include the following (512(c)(3)(A)(i-vi)):

(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.

(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.

(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

See 512(a) and (h) below if the information is not stored on the system of the OSP but is instead on a system connected to the internet through it, like a home or business computer connected to the internet. Legal liability may result if access to material is disabled or identity disclosed in this case.

If a notice which substantially complies with these requirements is received the OSP must expeditiously remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing material (512(c)(1)(C)). So long as the notice substantially complies with clauses (ii), (iii), and (iv) the OSP must seek clarification of any unclear aspects (512(c)(3)(B)(ii)). It is prudent to seek clarification in all cases.

After the notice has been complied with the OSP must take reasonable steps to promptly notify the alleged infringer of the action (512(g)(2)(A)). Note that the OSP is not prohibited from doing so in advance, only required to do so afterward. If there is a counter notification from the alleged infringer, the OSP must respond appropriately to it.

If the OSP complies with this and the counter notification procedures, it is safe from legal liability to its own customer as a result of taking down the material.

Counter notification

An alleged infringer may file a counter notification to the OSP. The counter notification must include (512(g)(3)(A-D)):

(A) A physical or electronic signature of the alleged infringer.

(B) Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location before removal.

(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the alleged infringer has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

(D) Their name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that they consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber's address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that they will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Once a valid counter notification has been received the OSP must:

• promptly provide the person who filed the original notification with a copy of the counter notification and inform them that the material will be replaced or access to it restored in 10 business days (512(g)(2)(B)).
• replace the material and cease disabling access to it not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days following receipt of the counter notification. This does not apply, and the material should not be replaced, if the designated agent receives notification that legal action to seek a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity to the material has been commenced (512(g)(2)(C)).

Interpretation of the law

The material in this section is not the law and not legal advice, but is provided to assist the reader in understanding the various questions that arise in relation to the procedures outlined in the law.

The law provides for “expeditious” action. The meaning of expeditious in the context of this law has not yet been determined by the courts. Black's Law Dictionary defines "expeditious" as: "rapidity in action" and "performed with, or acting with, expedition; quick; speedy." In the common law, the term "expeditious" has been interpreted according to the circumstances, allowing more time than "immediate" but not undue delay. Some suggest that the most prudent courses are to comply "immediately" or to seek immediate legal advice from qualified legal counsel. In the commercial online world, taking more than 24 hours may well be viewed as undue delay. However, when legal advice is factored into the equation it is reasonable to give counsel time to review all the facts, verify the necessary elements of the notice and conduct minimal research to ascertain the current state of the law. This may reasonably occur when the material posted appears likely to be covered by fair use, for fair use is not copyright infringement. So, in some situations it may be reasonable to determine that "expeditious" would take more than 24 hours, and if the ISP was a small not-for-profit provider, or a server run by volunteers, it may not have the resources to obtain a legal opinion with the same speed that a large multinational corporation may have resources at its disposal to comply immediately. There may not even be a person immediately available who is qualified to determine if the notice complies with the standards set forth in the act. Perhaps a reasonable court would take these factors into consideration. We will have to wait and see as the courts in the United States have yet to rule on these issues.

For a commercially run on-line provider taking action within the hour to tell a customer that a takedown notice has been received and informing them that they must immediately remove the content and confirm removal, giving them six to twelve hours to comply; and otherwise informing them that the content will be taken down or their internet connection terminated, may be considered reasonable. Some courts may find this to be too great a burden on an ISP if it receives a large number of communications at the same time or has limited resources to review § 512 notices for substantial compliance. It may also depend on how the notice is sent. If the notice is sent via regular mail or via fax, there may be a lag between the sending of the notice and its reception by those who are able to act upon it. If the notification is received by a mail delivery on a Saturday when the ISPs offices are closed and not acted upon until Monday, that may be considered reasonable.

The other issue to keep in mind is that the delay in responding may not amount to a significant amount of damages and someone who has had their material removed by the § 512 procedure late may be more than satisfied with the result; it is much less expensive than filing a copyright infringement suit in federal court that might revolve around a minor technicality of the law. Indeed one of the purposes of this section was to remove a large number of potential infringement suits from the courts when the facts revolving around infringement were basically undisputed and the damages could be minimized within a short period without the intervention of a US federal district court judge. An infringer may be more than happy to know that the material has been taken down for the minor fee of having a lawyer draft a compliant "take down" notice rather than the costs of drafting, filing, serving and prosecuting a federal copyright infringement action.

It is also useful to remember that another law, the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA) still protects the ISP from liability for content provided by third parties (see below). Even if a removal is found not to be "expeditious" within the meaning of the law and the so-called "safe harbor" under the DMCA is lost, in many cases the ISP may still be protected. Through these two laws there are ways to balance the ISP's intent to assist with the protection of third party copyright and the desire to preserve good customer relations. There is also a question of the infringement that is placed by a third party being an issue of negligence or another tort on the part of the ISP. If the ISP takes steps considered reasonable person|reasonable or is found not to have a duty of care to police potential infringers on the site then the infringement may be considered "innocent" from the point of view of the ISP and the infringer may still be held to be the liable party which posts the infringing work or works.

It is sometimes stated that the ISP needs to give the alleged infringer ten days notice before acting. This is incorrect: the ISP must act expeditiously. The ten day period refers to the counter notification procedure described below after the infringing material has been removed, offering them an opportunity to counter the allegations presented to the ISP not during the stage of the so-called "take down" procedure.

It is sometimes suggested that content must be taken down before notifying the person who provided it. That is also not required, so long as the removal is expeditious. A large connectivity provider with many internet service provider|ISP customers would not be acting reasonably by disconnecting a whole ISP if it received a takedown notice for a web site hosted by that ISP on behalf of one of its customers. The law appears to allow the necessary flexibility to deal reasonably with relaying takedown requests to handle such situations.

Please note: all the hypothetical situations in this section are speculative scenarios and are not settled law. The law will not be completely interpreted until the courts have ruled on the various issues brought up by the law. While the suggestions here may appear to be compliant, a court may hold that none of these suggestions are in compliance with the act.

Providing notice of the designated agent

There is a common practice of providing a link to legal notices at the bottom of the main web page of a site. It may be prudent, though it is not required by the provisions of section 512 of the copyright law, to include the designated agent information on the page the legal link goes to, in addition to any other places where it is available. As long as the site gives reasonable notice that there is a method of compliance, that should be sufficient. Once again the courts have not ruled on the technicalities of posting of these notices.

Actual knowledge of infringement

The law also requires "actual knowledge" of infringement before action must be taken. Actual knowledge is not an opinion about infringement i.e. "I think this is infringing" or "this is copied from another site, therefore it is infringing". Since the OSP may have some potential liability to a customer under contract law for inappropriately removing the customer's material, waiting for infringement notifications before acting would appear to be a prudent course. Then, the material can be removed, with the safe harbor protecting the OSP from liability both from the customer and the third party.

In one situation (not a legal case) an online user of a message board system objected to the posting of a series of questions relating to the Bible on one of the system's private message boards. The questions had been used by The West Wing scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin. The posting involved the fictional President of the United States embarrassing another character in a dramatic scene at a fictional White House party. The online user objecting was correct that it had been used in the TV series. However, Sorkin was not the author of the original material. He had received it in repeatedly forwarded email, modified it and used it in the show. The message contained the original version plus two added paragraphs, not the show version. The original was written by Kent Ashcraft, who had effectively released it as an open letter, a work roughly comparable to a press release that the authors expected will be freely copied for further publication. The message board post was really a very clear case of fair use, not infringement. Even if it had been from the show, the use of the piece as a joke in that context would probably have been fair use [11], [12]. The clear removal of the need to make such error-prone decisions in the very complex provisions of fair use may be one of the gains of OSPs from this law.

Other provisions

512(a) Transitory network communications

Section (a) says that service providers aren't liable just because traffic passes through their networks, so long as it is not stored on their systems and is handled automatically by their systems and they don't control or modify it. Essentially, this says that ISPs aren't responsible for what flows through their networks, even if it is infringing and they know it. There are no takedown provisions.

The key technical distinction between 512(a) and (b), (c) and (d) is the location of the material. In the cases of caches (b), web sites (c) and search engine indexes (d), the information is presumably on systems controlled by the service provider. That is not the case for the situation covered by this subsection.

See section 512(h) below for cases seeking to use 512(c) takedown and 512(h) subpoena procedures for 512(a) situations. The 20 January 2003 ruling in the Verizon case did not use the technical difference mentioned in the previous paragraph. The December 2003 Verizon appeal decision did and overturned the original decision. A further appeal is possible, so the situation remains uncertain. As of February 2004 it is reported that following the December decision, no ISP has complied with a subpoena of this sort and the RIAA has instead commenced copyright infringement actions using non-OCILLA procedures.

512(b) System caching

This says that caching conducted in standard ways and not interfering with copy protection systems is fine. If the cached material is made available to end users the system provider must follow the takedown and put back provisions. This may apply to situations like the proxy and caching servers used by many large ISPs and a very wide range of other providers.

Copyright lawyers disagree on whether or not it applies to something like the Google cache [13], with some arguing that it is not collected at the direction of an end user but by Google crawling the web itself. Google may be able to do this instead under the doctrine of fair use. In the case of online newspapers Google has chosen to produce a non-caching news portal rather than resolve the question in court.

512(c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users

This applies to personal home pages, web sites, internet providers, message boards and a very wide range of other services. It is the cause of the vast majority of activities relating to this law.

This also contains the takedown procedures described earlier and referenced by other parts of the act.

The December 2003 Verizon decision stated in part that "any notice to an ISP concerning its activity as a mere conduit does not satisfy the condition of § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) and is therefore ineffective", so these takedown notices are not valid where the content is on the computer of the end user.

512(d) Information Location Tools

This brings search engines like AltaVista into the scope of the takedown and put back system for making links.

512(e) Limitation on Liability of Nonprofit Educational Institutions

This protects nonprofit educational institutions from liability for the actions of faculty and graduate student employees relating to course materials placed online for use within courses provided in the preceding 3 years, provided the institution doesn't receive more than 2 infringement notifications about the same individual in a 3 year period. The institution must provide informational materials which accurately describe and promote compliance with US copyright laws.

512(f) Misrepresentations

This says that anyone who makes a false claim of infringement or false counter-notification is liable for the damages suffered by the other parties, including legal fees.

512(g) Replacement of Removed or Disabled Material and Limitation on Other Liability

This contains the put back provisions described earlier and referenced by other parts of the act.

512(h) Subpoena To Identify Infringer

This provides for subpoenas to identify infringers. Part (h)(2)(A) requires that the request to the court include "a copy of a notification described in subsection (c)(3)(A)" (a takedown notice, see above). Note that 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) states that the notice must identify the allegedly infringing material that is to be removed, and provide reasonably sufficient information for the service provider to locate the material residing on its system.

If the OSP is served with such a subpoena after or at the same time as a valid takedown notice, it must expeditiously provide the information required by the subpoena.

OSPs should exercise caution and ensure that they have received a valid takedown notice before disclosing the identities of their customer. It would be very prudent to seek immediate legal advice if a subpoena is received:

• when a valid takedown notice hasn't been served
• if the notice doesn't identify any infringing material, as required by 512(c)(3)(A)(iii)
• if either the takedown notice or the subpoena is in any other way not in compliance with the requirements.
• if the material is not on the systems of the OSP but on a computer using it as a connection to the internet. Section 512(a) provides protection for simple transfer of data on an ISP network and that section does not provide for takedown and put back procedures.

Complying with the subpoena would risk liability from the customer if their identity is disclosed based on the improper subpoena.

In 2003, the RIAA appeared to be seeking subpoenas and serving takedown notices which did not comply with these requirements, notably using the subpoena provisions for 512(a) situations, which don't provide for them. Anyone served with such a subpoena should seek the assistance of a lawyer.

On 20 December 2003, the DSL ISP Verizon prevailed on appeal in its case seeking to prevent the use of this section for transitory network communications, the decision reversing a court order to supply customer details. Case documents [14], [15]. A further appeal by the RIAA is possible. The appeal decision accepted the argument that the key distinction was the location of the files, with this section applying only when the material is stored on equipment controlled by the OSP.

On 6 October, 2003 Charter Communications became the first cable internet provider to challenge the RIAA use of this provision[16], when it filed for a motion to quash the subpoenas to obtain the identities of 150 of its customers.

512(i) Conditions for Eligibility

This outlines the requirement not to interfere with copy protection systems and the requirement to notify users of an account termination policy for repeat offenders.

It is possible that one of the objectives of the sending of what are claimed to be DMCA infringement notifications by some copyright holders is an intent to use the account termination policy requirement to get end users disconnected by their ISP. For that reason, it may be prudent for anyone receiving a notification for material on their own computer to tell the ISP that the notice isn't a valid DMCA infringement notice and remind the ISP that the DMCA only requires action under this clause for valid notices.

512(j) Injunctions

This gives the procedures for obtaining injunctions against OSPs to require them to leave material unavailable.

512(k,l,n)

These sections define an OSP, state that other defenses (notably the Communications Decency Act, though it isn't identified specifically) aren't limited and state that parts (1), (b), (c) and (d) apply independently.

512(m) Protection of Privacy

This says that OSPs retain the protections of parts (a) through (d) even if they don't monitor their service looking for infringing activity and that they are not required to remove or disable access to material if it would break another law.

Criticism

While there is broad general support for the law, some object to specific provisions or uses they find problematic.

A major objection is that the counter-notice procedure is too complicated or unknown to most site owners, especially when the ISP is not required to tell them of its existence. According to Chilling Effects, an archive of "cease-and-desist" notices: Google has taken hundreds of sites out of its index because of DMCA requests, but not a single person has filed a counter-notice, nor have they received a counter-notice from any other OSP.

One objection is to the imbalance in statements between the original complaint and the counter-notice. To get a site taken down, Bob need only state a good-faith belief that neither they nor the law have authorized the use, with no requirement that claim statement be under penalty of purjury. By contrast, to get a page back up, Alice must claim a good faith belief under penalty of perjury that the material was mistakenly taken down. This allows for situations where copyright holders can indiscriminately send out letters asking for sites to be taken down, while to get the sites back up, the recipients might need to spend time finding and consulting with a lawyer. Section (f) makes the sender of an invalid claim liable for the costs involved, including legal fees, but the cost to obtain that remedy may be high.

Another objection is to the 10-14 day delay before the ISP puts something back up in response to a counter-notice. For example, if a site advertised an upcoming labor protest outside BlamCo, BlamCo could send a DMCA notice to the site's ISP alleging copyright infringement of their name or logo a week before the protest. Even if the site's owners immediately filed a counter-notice, the site could not be put back up until after the protest, when it would be too late to be useful.

Additionally, some object that unlike court cases, there is no public record of takedown requests and counter-notices. This prevents the public from seeing how the process is used. (Chilling Effects has tried to make up for this shortcoming, but so far really only Google submits their takedown notices.)

Some also object to the provision's broadness. It covers things that would not traditionally be considered copyright problems, such as links by Google to infringing pages, and it has been suggested that OSPs like Google should receive a safe harbor without having to take sites out of search engines.

Proposed solutions: Require Bob state under penalty of perjury that he has personally investigated the file and found it to infringing and allow Alice to sue Bob for damages if his statement turns out to be negligently false. When AOL informs Alice that her site was taken down, require AOL to inform her that she can get the site put back up simply by responding to their letter with a statement that the takedown was a mistake. Finally, require AOL to submit both notice and counternotice to the Library of Congress, where they are placed on a public website.

Some also note that the provision has been widely misused. Chilling Effects estimates that something like 60% of all takedown notices it receives are flawed, but OSPs still takedown the site. Many fail to follow the requirements of the statute. Others ask for material to be taken down that isn't covered by the statute, like trademark infringement, defamation, circumvention devices, product/CD keys, and other disfavored speech.

External links

• List of Designated Agents at US © Office
• Instructions for Registration of a Designated Agent at US © Office
• Database of takedown notices
• Cybertelecom's DMCA information

DDL Intercettazioni or the Wiretapping Act is a piece of legislation put before the Italian Parliament in 2008.

Background

The Max Planck Institute calculated that in 2006, a higher proportion of Italians had had their phones tapped than citizens of any other European country. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his allies have been subject of a number of wire-taps which have been published. For instance, in December 2007 the audio recording of a phone call between Berlusconi, then leader of the opposition parties, and Agostino Saccà (general director of RAI) were published by the magazine L'espresso, attracting strong criticism of Berlusconi from several media sources.

The law was proposed by the Berlusconi IV Cabinet and presented by Italian Minister of Justice Angelino Alfano in 2008, approved by the Camera in 2009, then modified by the Italian Senate and brought up again for approval at the Camera in October 2011. Supporters argued that courts were authorising the practice of wiretapping too often, and that the media should not be privy to the results. Berlusconi said in 2010 that legislation was necessary to protect the privacy of Italian citizens.

Rights of correction

One of the measures proposed (paragraph 29) would allow anyone who believes themselves to have been offended by the content of a publication or website to enforce publication of a reply, uneditable and uncommented, in the same place and with equal prominence, within 48 hours. Failure to comply could result in a fine of up to €12,000.

Strikes and protests

Italian journalists went on strike on 9 July 2010, in protest over the wiretapping bill.

All pages on the Italian version of Wikipedia on 4 October 2011 were redirected to a statement opposing the proposed legislation. The statement is available in Italian, English, Catalan, Croatian, Esperanto, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian and Spanish.

External link

• The page about the proposed law, on the Italian Senate web site Template:It icon
• The page about the proposed law, on the Italian Chamber of Deputies web site Template:It icon

The Bill of Rights in the National Archives.

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

Originally, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress. However, starting with Gitlow v. New York, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies the First Amendment to each state, including any local government.

Text

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Background

Opposition to the ratification of the Constitution was partly based on the Constitution's lack of adequate guarantees for civil liberties. To provide such guarantees, the First Amendment (along with the rest of the Bill of Rights) was submitted to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, and adopted on December 15, 1791.

Establishment of religion

The establishment clause is "[t]he First Amendment provision that prohibits the federal and state governments from establishing an official religion, or from favoring or disfavoring one view of religion over another."

Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government. A number of the states effectively had established churches when the First Amendment was ratified, with some remaining into the early nineteenth century.

Subsequently, Everson v. Board of Education (1947) incorporated the Establishment Clause (i.e., made it apply against the states). However, it was not until the middle to late twentieth century that the Supreme Court began to interpret the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses in such a manner as to restrict the promotion of religion by the states. In the Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, Template:Ussc, Justice David Souter, writing for the majority, concluded that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion."

Separationists

Everson used the metaphor of a wall of separation between church and state, derived from the correspondence of President Thomas Jefferson. It had been long established in the decisions of the Supreme Court, beginning with Reynolds v. United States from 1879, when the Court reviewed the history of the early Republic in deciding the extent of the liberties of Mormons. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, who consulted the historian George Bancroft, also discussed at some length the Memorial against Religious Assessments by James Madison, who drafted the First Amendment; Madison used the metaphor of a "great barrier."

Justice Hugo Black adopted Jefferson's words in the voice of the Court, and concluded that "government must be neutral among religions and nonreligion: it cannot promote, endorse, or fund religion or religious institutions." The Court has affirmed it often, with majority, but not unanimous, support. Warren Nord, in Does God Make a Difference?, characterized the general tendency of the dissents as a weaker reading of the First Amendment; the dissents tend to be "less concerned about the dangers of establishment and less concerned to protect free exercise rights, particularly of religious minorities."

Beginning with the Everson decision itself, which permitted New Jersey school boards to pay for transportation to parochial schools, the Court has used various tests to determine when the wall of separation has been breached. The Everson decision laid down the test that establishment existed when aid was given to religion, but that the transportation was justifiable because the benefit to the children was more important. In the school prayer cases of the early 1960s, (Engel v. Vitale and School District of Abington Township v. Schempp), aid seemed irrelevant; the Court ruled on the basis that a legitimate action both served a secular purpose and did not primarily assist religion. In Walz v. Tax Commission, the Court ruled that a legitimate action could not entangle government with religion; in Lemon v. Kurtzman, these points were combined, declaring that an action was not establishment if

1. the statute (or practice) has a secular purpose;
2. its principal or primary effect neither advances nor inhibits religion; and
3. it does not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

This Lemon test has been criticized by Justices and legal scholars, but it remains the predominant means by which the Court enforces the Establishment Clause. In Agostini v. Felton, the entanglement prong of the Lemon test was demoted to simply being a factor in determining the effect of the challenged statute or practice. In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the opinion of the Court considered secular purpose and the absence of primary effect; a concurring opinion saw both cases as having treated entanglement as part of the primary purpose test.

Accommodationists

Accomodationists, on the other hand, read the Establishment Clause as prohibiting the Congress or any state from declaring an official religion or preferring one to another, but hold that laws do not have to be shorn of morality and history to be declared constitutional. As a result, they apply the Lemon Test only selectively, holding Justice Douglas' statement in Zorach v. Clauson, "[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being" Template:Ussc.

As such, for many conservatives, the Establishment Clause solely prevents the establishing of a state church, not from publicly acknowledging God and "developing policies that encourage general religious beliefs that do not favor a particular sect and are consistent with the secular government's goals."

Free exercise of religion

In Sherbert v. Verner the Supreme Court required states to meet the "strict scrutiny" standard when refusing to accommodate religiously motivated conduct. This meant that a government needed to have a "compelling interest" regarding such a refusal. The case involved Adele Sherbert, who was denied unemployment benefits by South Carolina because she refused to work on Saturdays, something forbidden by her Seventh-day Adventist faith. In Wisconsin v. Yoder the Court ruled that a law that "unduly burdens the practice of religion" without a compelling interest, even though it might be "neutral on its face," would be unconstitutional.

The need for a compelling interest was narrowed in Employment Division v. Smith which held no such interest was required under the Free Exercise Clause regarding a law that does not target a particular religious practice. In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah the Supreme Court ruled Hialeah had passed an ordinance banning ritual slaughter, a practice central to the Santería religion, while providing exceptions for some practices such as the kosher slaughter. Since the ordinance was not "generally applicable," the Court ruled that it needed to have a compelling interest, which it failed to have, and so was declared unconstitutional.

In 1993, the Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which sought to restore the compelling interest requirement applied in Sherbert and Yoder. In City of Boerne v. Flores the Court struck down the provisions of the Act that forced state and local governments to provide protections exceeding those required by the First Amendment on the grounds that while the Congress could enforce the Supreme Court's interpretation of a constitutional right, the Congress could not impose its own interpretation on states and localities. According to the court's ruling in Gonzales v. UDV RFRA remains applicable to federal laws and so those laws must still have a "compelling interest".

Freedom of speech

Main articles: Freedom of speech in the United States and United States free speech exceptions

Speech critical of the government

The Supreme Court never ruled on the constitutionality of any federal law regarding the Free Speech Clause until the 20th century. The Supreme Court never ruled on the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, whose speech provisions expired in 1801. The leading critics of the law, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued for the Acts' unconstitutionality based on the First Amendment, among other Constitutional provisions (e.g. Tenth Amendment). In retrospect, dicta from New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Template:Ussc acknowledges that, "[a]lthough the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history."

The Espionage Act of 1917 imposed a maximum sentence of twenty years for anyone who caused or attempted to cause "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States." Over two thousand were convicted under the Act. One filmmaker was sentenced to ten years imprisonment because his portrayal of British soldiers in a movie about the American Revolution impugned the good faith of an American ally, the United Kingdom. The Sedition Act of 1918 went even further, criminalizing "disloyal," "scurrilous" or "abusive" language against the government.

In the midst of World War I, Charles Schenck, then the general secretary of the Socialist party, was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act after a search of the Socialist headquarters revealed a book of Executive Committee minutes. The book contained a resolution, dated August 13, 1917, to print 15,000 leaflets to be mailed to men who had passed exemption boards. The contents of these leaflets intimated a fervent opposition to the draft, comparing conscripts to convicts and urging potential draftees to "not submit to intimidation." Schenck's appeal of his conviction reached the Supreme Court as Schenck v. United States, Template:Ussc. According to Schenck, the Espionage Act violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected Schenck's appeal and affirmed his conviction. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the Court, explained that "the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

The "clear and present danger" test of Schenck was elaborated in Debs v. United States, Template:Ussc. On June 16, 1918, Eugene V. Debs, a political activist, delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio, the main theme of which "was socialism, its growth, and a prophecy of its ultimate success." Debs spoke with pride of the devotion with which his "most loyal comrades were paying the penalty to the working class — these being Wagenknecht, Baker and Ruthenberg, who had been convicted of aiding and abetting another in failing to register for the draft." Moreover, hours earlier, Debs had spoken with approval of an Anti-War Proclamation and Program adopted at St. Louis in April, 1917 which advocated a "continuous, active, and public opposition to the war, through demonstrations, mass petitions, and all other means within [their] power." Following his speech, Debs was charged and convicted under the Espionage Act. In upholding his conviction, the Court reasoned that although he had not spoken any words that posed a "clear and present danger," taken in context, the speech had a "natural tendency and a probable effect to obstruct the recruiting services[.]"

Benjamin Gitlow was convicted of criminal anarchy after he was found advocating the "necessity and propriety of overthrowing and overturning organized government by force, violence and unlawful means" in the Left Wing Manifesto, as well as publishing and circulating a radical newspaper called The Revolutionary Age advocating similar ideas. In arguing before the Supreme Court, Gitlow contended that "the statute as construed and applied by the trial court penalize[d] the mere utterance, as such, of 'doctrine' having no quality of incitement, without regard to the circumstances of its utterance or to the likelihood of the unlawful sequences[.]" While acknowledging "liberty of expression 'is not absolute,'" he maintained "it may be restrained 'only in instances where its exercise bears a causal relation with some substantive evil, consummated, attempted or likely[.]'" As the statute took no account of the circumstances under which the offending literature was written, it violated the First Amendment. The Court rejected Gitlow's reasoning. Writing for the majority, Justice Edward Sanford declared that "utterances inciting to the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means, present a sufficient danger of substantive evil to bring their punishment within the range of legislative discretion....Such utterances, by their very nature, involve danger to the public peace and to the security of the state." Gitlow v. New York, Template:Ussc greatly expanded Schenck and Debs but established the general opinion of the Court that the First Amendment is incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to the states.

In 1940, Congress enacted the Smith Act, making it illegal to advocate "the propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force and violence." The law provided law enforcement a tool to combat Communist leaders. After Eugene Dennis was convicted for attempting to organize a Communist Party in the United States pursuant to the Smith Act § 2, he petitioned for certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. In Dennis v. United States Template:Ussc, the Court upheld the law 6-2 (Justice Tom C. Clark did not participate because he had ordered the prosecutions when he was Attorney General). Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson explicitly relied on Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s "clear and present danger" test as adapted by Learned Hand: "In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the 'evil,' discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as necessary to avoid the danger." Clearly, Vinson suggested, clear and present danger did not intimate "that before the Government may act, it must wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited."

Dennis has never been explicitly overruled by the Court, but its relevance within First Amendment jurisprudence has been considerably diminished by subsequent rulings. Six years after Dennis, the Court changed its interpretation of the Smith Act. In Yates v. United States, Template:Ussc. the Court ruled that the Act was aimed at "the advocacy of action, not ideas." Advocacy of abstract doctrine remains protected while speech explicitly inciting the forcible overthrow of the government is punishable under the Smith Act.

During the Vietnam Era, the Courts position on public criticism of the government changed drastically. Though the Court upheld a law prohibiting the forgery, mutilation, or destruction of draft cards in United States v. O'Brien, Template:Ussc, fearing that burning draft cards would interfere with the "smooth and efficient functioning" of the draft system, the next year, the court handed down its decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, Template:Ussc, expressly overruling Whitney v. California, Template:Ussc (a case in which a woman was imprisoned for aiding the Communist Party). Now the Supreme Court referred to the right to speak openly of violent action and revolution in broad terms:

[Our] decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not allow a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or cause such action.

Brandenburg discarded the "clear and present danger" test introduced in Schenck and further eroded Dennis. In Cohen v. California, Template:Ussc, wearing a jacket reading "Fuck the Draft" in the corridors of the Los Angeles County courthouse was ruled not to be punishable.

Political speech

Anonymous speech

In Talley v. California the Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission the Court struck down an Ohio statute that made it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature. However, in Meese v. Keene, the Court upheld the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, under which several Canadian films were defined as "political propaganda," requiring their sponsors to be identified.

Campaign finance

In Buckley v. Valeo, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of some parts, while declaring other parts unconstitutional, of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and related laws. These laws restricted the monetary contributions that may be made to political campaigns and expenditure by candidates. The Court concluded that limits on campaign contributions "serve[d] the basic governmental interest in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process without directly impinging upon the rights of individual citizens and candidates to engage in political debate and discussion." However, the Court overturned the spending limits, which it found imposed "substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech."

Further rules on campaign finance were scrutinized by the Court when it determined McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, Template:Ussc. The case centered on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, a federal law that imposed new restrictions on campaign financing. The Supreme Court upheld provisions which barred the raising of soft money by national parties and the use of soft money by private organizations to fund certain advertisements related to elections. However, the Court struck down the "choice of expenditure" rule, which required that parties could either make coordinated expenditures for all its candidates, or permit candidates to spend independently, but not both, which they agreed "placed an unconstitutional burden on the parties' right to make unlimited independent expenditures." The Supreme Court also ruled that the provision preventing minors from making political contributions was unconstitutional, relying on Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

In Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449 (2007), the Supreme Court sustained an "as applied" challenge to provisions of the 2002 law dealing with advertising shortly before a primary, caucus, or an election.

In Davis v. Federal Election Commission, 554 U.S. 724 (2008), the Supreme Court declared the "Millionaire's Amendment" provisions of the BCRA to be unconstitutional. The Court held that easing BCRA restrictions for an opponent of a self-financing candidate spending at least $350,000 of his own money violated the freedom of speech of the self-financing candidate.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. ___ (2010), the Court ruled that the BCRA's federal restrictions on electoral advocacy by corporations or unions were unconstitutional for violating the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Template:Ussc, which had upheld a state law that prohibited corporations from using treasury funds to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. The Court also overruled the portion of McConnell that upheld such restrictions under the BCRA.

Flag desecration

The divisive issue of flag desecration as a form of protest first came before the Supreme Court in Street v. New York, Template:Ussc. In response to hearing an erroneous report of the murder of James Meredith, Sidney Street burned a 48-star U.S. flag. When questioned by the police he responded: "Yes; that is my flag; I burned it. If they let that happen to Meredith, we don't need an American flag." Street was arrested and charged with a New York state law making it a crime "publicly [to] mutilate, deface, defile, or defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon either by words or act [any flag of the United States]." Street appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, arguing the law was "overbroad, both on its face and as applied," that the language was "vague and imprecise" and did not "clearly define the conduct which it forbids", and that it unconstitutionally punished the destruction of an American flag, an act which Street contended "constitute[d] expression protected by the Fourteenth Amendment." In a 5–4 decision, the Court, relying on Stromberg v. California, Template:Ussc, found that because the provision of the New York law criminalizing "words" against the flag was unconstitutional, and the trial did not sufficiently demonstrate that he was convicted solely under the provisions not yet deemed unconstitutional, the conviction was unconstitutional. The Court, however, "resist[ed] the pulls to decide the constitutional issues involved in this case on a broader basis" and left the constitutionality of flag-burning unaddressed.

The ambiguity with regard to flag-burning statutes was eliminated in Texas v. Johnson, Template:Ussc. In that case, Gregory Lee Johnson participated in a demonstration during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. At one point during the demonstration, Johnson poured kerosene over an American flag and set it aflame, shouting anti-American phrases. Johnson was promptly arrested and charged with violating a Texas law prohibiting the vandalizing of venerated objects. He was convicted, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined $2,000. In 1989, his appeal reached the Supreme Court. Johnson argued that the Texas statute imposed an unconstitutional content-based restriction on symbolic speech. The Supreme Court agreed and, in a 5–4 vote, reversed Johnson's conviction. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. asserted that "if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." Many members of Congress criticized the decision of the Court and the House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution denouncing the Court. Congress passed a federal law barring flag burning, but the Supreme Court struck it down as well in United States v. Eichman, Template:Ussc. Many attempts have been made to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to prohibit the desecration of the flag. Since 1995, the Flag Desecration Amendment has consistently mustered sufficient votes to pass in the House of Representatives, but not in the Senate. In 2000, the Senate voted 63–37 in favor of the amendment, which fell four votes short of the requisite two-thirds majority. In 2006, another attempt fell one vote short.

Free speech zones

The "free speech zone" at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Free speech zones are areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of freedom of speech as an exercise of what is commonly called "TPM" or "time, place, manner" regulation of speech. Free speech zones are set up by the Secret Service who scout locations near which the president is to pass or speak. Officials may target those displaying signs and escort them to the free speech zones before and during the event. Protesters who refuse to go to free speech zones could be arrested and charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. In 2003, a seldom-used federal law was brought up that says that "willfully and knowingly to enter or remain in any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting" is a crime.

Commercial speech

Commercial speech is speech done on behalf of a company or individual for the purpose of making a profit. Unlike political speech, the Supreme Court does not afford commercial speech full protection under the First Amendment. To effectively distinguish commercial speech from other types of speech for purposes of litigation, the Supreme Court uses a list of four indicia:

1. The contents do "no more than propose a commercial transaction."
2. The contents may be characterized as advertisements.
3. The contents reference a specific product.
4. The disseminator is economically motivated to distribute the speech.

Alone, each indicium does not compel the conclusion that an instance of speech is commercial; however, "[t]he combination of all these characteristics...provides strong support for...the conclusion that the [speech is] properly characterized as commercial speech."

The Court in Valentine v. Chrestensen, Template:Ussc, upheld a New York City ordinance forbidding the "distribution in the streets of commercial and business advertising matter." Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Roberts explained:

This court has unequivocally held that streets are proper places for the exercise of the freedom of communicating information and disseminating opinion and that, though the states and municipalities may appropriately regulate the privilege in the public interest, they may not unduly burden or proscribe its employment in their public thoroughfares. We are equally clear that the Constitution imposes no such restraint on government as respects purely commercial advertising.

In Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Template:Ussc, the Court overruled Valentine and ruled that commercial speech was entitled to First Amendment protection:

What is at issue is whether a State may completely suppress the dissemination of concededly truthful information about entirely lawful activity, fearful of that information's effect upon its disseminators and its recipients... [W]e conclude that the answer to this one is in the negative.

In Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Association, Template:Ussc, the Court ruled that commercial speech was not protected by the First Amendment as much as other types of speech:

We have not discarded the "common-sense" distinction between speech proposing a commercial transaction, which occurs in an area traditionally subject to government regulation, and other varieties of speech. To require a parity of constitutional protection for commercial and noncommercial speech alike could invite a dilution, simply by a leveling process, of the force of the [First] Amendment's guarantee with respect to the latter kind of speech.

In Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission, Template:Ussc, the Court clarified what analysis was required before the government could justify regulating commercial speech:

1. Is the expression protected by the First Amendment? Lawful? Misleading? Fraud?
2. Is the asserted government interest substantial?
3. Does the regulation directly advance the governmental interest asserted?
4. Is the regulation more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest?

Six years later, the Supreme Court, applying the Central Hudson standards in Posadas de Puerto Rico Associates v. Tourism Company of Puerto Rico, Template:Ussc, affirmed the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico's conclusion that Puerto Rico's Games of Chance Act of 1948, including the regulations thereunder, was not facially unconstitutional. The lax interpretation of Central Hudson adopted by Posadas was soon restricted under 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, Template:Ussc, when the Court invalidated a Rhode Island law prohibiting the publication of liquor prices.

School speech

In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court extended free speech rights to students in school. The case involved several students who were punished for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court ruled that the school could not restrict symbolic speech that did not cause undue interruptions of school activities. Justice Abe Fortas wrote,

[S]chools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students...are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State.

However, since 1969 the Supreme Court has placed a number of limitations on Tinker interpretations. In Bethel School District v. Fraser, Template:Ussc, the Court ruled that a student could be punished for his sexual-innuendo-laced speech before a school assembly and, in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, Template:Ussc, the Court found that school newspapers enjoyed fewer First Amendment protections and are subject to school censorship. More recently, in Morse v. Frederick, Template:Ussc the Court ruled that schools could, consistent with the First Amendment, restrict student speech at school-sponsored events, even events away from school grounds, if students promote "illegal drug use."

Obscenity

The federal government and the states have long been permitted to limit obscenity or pornography. While The Supreme Court has generally refused to give obscenity any protection under the First Amendment, pornography is subject to little regulation. However, the exact definition of obscenity and pornography has changed over time.

When it decided Rosen v. United States in 1896, the Supreme Court adopted the same obscenity standard as had been articulated in a famous British case, Regina v. Hicklin, [1868] L. R. 3 Q. B. 360. The Hicklin standard defined material as obscene if it tended "to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall." The Court ruled in Roth v. United States, Template:Ussc that the Hicklin test was inappropriate. Instead, the Roth test for obscenity was "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."

Justice Potter Stewart, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, Template:Ussc, famously stated that, although he could not precisely define pornography, "I know it when I see it".

The Roth test was expanded when the Court decided Miller v. California, Template:Ussc. Under the Miller test, a work is obscene if:

(a)...‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,...(b)...the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c)...the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Note that "community" standards—not national standards—are applied whether the material appeals to the prurient interest; thus, material may be deemed obscene in one locality but not in another. National standards, however, are applied whether the material is of value. Child pornography is not subject to the Miller test, as the Supreme Court decided in New York v. Ferber, Template:Ussc. The Court thought that the government's interest in protecting children from abuse was paramount.

Personal possession of obscene material in the home may not be prohibited by law. In writing for the Court in the case of Stanley v. Georgia, Template:Ussc, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, "If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch." However, it is not unconstitutional for the government to prevent the mailing or sale of obscene items, though they may be viewed only in private. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, Template:Ussc, further upheld these rights by invalidating the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, holding that, because the act "[p]rohibit[ed] child pornography that does not depict an actual child..." it was overly broad and unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote: "First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought."

In United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285 (2008), by a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court upheld the PROTECT Act of 2003. The Court ruled that prohibiting offers to provide and requests to obtain child pornography did not violate the First Amendment, even if a person charged under the Act did not possess child pornography.

Libel, slander, and private action

Libel and slander

American tort liability for defamatory speech or publications—slander and libel—traces its origins to English common law. For the first two hundred years of American jurisprudence, the basic substance of defamation law continued to resemble that existing in England at the time of the Revolution. An 1898 American legal textbook on defamation provides definitions of libel and slander nearly identical to those given by Blackstone and Coke. An action of slander required:

1. Actionable words, such as those imputing the injured party: is guilty of some offense, suffers from a contagious disease or psychological disorder, is unfit for public office because of moral failings or an inability to discharge his or her duties, or lacks integrity in profession, trade or business;
2. That the charge must be false;
3. That the charge must be articulated to a third person, verbally or in writing;
4. That the words are not subject to legal protection, such as those uttered in Congress; and
5. That the charge must be motivated by malice.

An action of libel required the same five general points as slander, except that it specifically involved the publication of defamatory statements. For certain criminal charges of libel, such as seditious libel, the truth or falsity of the statements was immaterial, as such laws were intended to maintain public support of the government and the truth of the statements merely eroded public support more thoroughly. Instead, libel placed specific emphasis on the result of the publication. Libelous publications tended to "degrade and injure another person" or "bring him into contempt, hatred or ridicule."

Concerns that defamation under common law might be incompatible with the new republican form of government caused early American courts to struggle between William Blackstone's argument that the punishment of "dangerous or offensive writings...[was] necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty" and the argument that the need for a free press guaranteed by the Constitution outweighed the fear of what might be written. Consequently, very few changes were made in the first two centuries after the ratification of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court's ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.Template:Ussc fundamentally changed American defamation law. The case redefined the type of "malice" needed to sustain a libel case. Common law malice consisted "ill-will" or "wickedness". Now, a public officials seeking to sustain a civil action against a tortfeasor needed to prove by "clear and convincing evidence" actual malice. The case involved an advertisement published in The New York Times indicating that officials in Montgomery, Alabama had acted violently in suppressing the protests of African-Americans during the civil rights movement. The Montgomery Police Commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, sued the Times for libel claiming the advertisement damaged his reputation. The Supreme Court unanimously overruled the $500,000 judgment against the Times. Justice Brennan suggested that public officials may sue for libel only if the publisher published the statements in question with "actual malice" — "knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."

While actual malice standard applies to public officials and public figures, in Philadelphia Newspapers v. Hepps, Template:Ussc, the Court found that, with regard to private individuals, the First Amendment does "not necessarily force any change in at least some features of the common-law landscape." In Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc. Template:Ussc, the Court held that "[i]n light of the reduced constitutional value of speech involving no matters of public concern...the state interest adequately supports awards of presumed and punitive damages — even absent a showing of 'actual malice.'" Despite varying from state to state, private individuals generally need prove only the negligence of the defendant.

In Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc. v. Bresler, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court ruled that a Greenbelt News Review article, which quoted a visitor to a city council meeting who characterized Bresler's aggressive stance in negotiating with the city as "blackmail", was not libelous since nobody could believe anyone was claiming that Bresler had committed the crime of blackmail and that the statement was essentially hyperbole (i.e., clearly an opinion).

The Supreme Court ruled in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. Template:Ussc, opinions could not be considered defamatory. It is, therefore, permissible to suggest, for instance, that someone is a bad lawyer, but not permissible to declare falsely that the lawyer is ignorant of the law: the former constitutes a statement of values, but the latter is a statement alleging a fact.

More recently, in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court backed off from the protection from "opinion" announced in Gertz. The court in Milkovich specifically held that there is no wholesale exception to defamation law for statements labeled "opinion," but instead that a statement must be provably false (falsifiable) before it can be the subject of a libel suit.

Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, Template:Ussc, extended the "actual malice" standard to intentional infliction of emotional distress in a ruling which protected a parody.

Private action

Ordinarily, the First Amendment applied only to direct government censorship. The protection from libel suits recognizes that the power of the state is needed to enforce a libel judgment between private persons. The Supreme Court's scrutiny of defamation suits is thus sometimes considered part of a broader trend in U.S. jurisprudence away from the strict state action requirement, and into the application of First Amendment principles when private actors invoke state power.

Likewise, the Noerr-Pennington doctrine is a rule of law that often prohibits the application of antitrust law to statements made by competitors before public bodies: a monopolist may freely go before the city council and encourage the denial of its competitor's building permit without being subject to Sherman Act liability. Increasingly, this doctrine has been applied to litigation outside the antitrust context, including state tort suits for intentional interference with business relations and SLAPP Suits.

State constitutions provide free speech protections similar to those of the U.S. Constitution. In a few states, such as California, a state constitution has been interpreted as providing more comprehensive protections than the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has permitted states to extend such enhanced protections, most notably in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, Template:Ussc. In that case, the Court unanimously ruled that while the First Amendment may allow private property owners to prohibit trespass by political speakers and petition-gatherers, California was permitted to restrict property owners whose property is equivalent to a traditional public forum (often shopping malls and grocery stores) from enforcing their private property rights to exclude such individuals. Writing for the majority, Justice Rehnquist rejected the appellants argument for the common law's protection of property against trespass, writing that such an interpretation would "represent a return to the era of Lochner v. New York, Template:Ussc, when common-law rights were also found immune from revision... [it] would freeze the common law as it has been constructed by courts, perhaps at its 19th-century state of development." The Court did, however, maintain that shopping centers could impose "reasonable restrictions on expressive activity." Subsequently, New Jersey, Colorado, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico courts have adopted the doctrine; California's courts have repeatedly reaffirmed it.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never interpreted the First Amendment as having the same power to alter private property rights, or provide any other protection against purely private action. When considering private authority figures (such as parents or an employer), the First Amendment provides no protection. A private authority figure may reserve the right to censor their subordinate's speech, or discriminate on the basis of speech, without any legal consequences. "All may dismiss their employees at will,...for good cause, for no cause, or even for a cause morally wrong, without thereby being guilty of a legal wrong." With specific regard to employee free speech, a few court cases illuminate the limits of the First Amendment vis-a-vis private employment.

In Korb v. Raytheon, 574 N.E.2d 370, 410 Mass. 581 (1991), Raytheon terminated Lawrence Korb after receiving complaints of his public involvement in an anti-nuclear proliferation nonprofit known as the Committee for National Security (CNS) and his advocacy of reduced defense spending. On February 26, 1986 The Washington Post ran an article describing Korb's speech at a press conference held the day prior as "critical of increased defense spending." Following the publication of the article, several military officials "expressed their disapproval" of Korb's comments. Despite writing a letter of retraction which ran in The Washington Post, Raytheon terminated Korb's position after it continued to receive "Navy, Air Force, and Armed Services Committee objections." In adjudicating Korb's claim of wrongful discharge, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found "no public policy prohibiting an employer from discharging an ineffective at-will employee." His claim under the State Civil Rights Act was dismissed as well. In affirming the lower courts decision to dismiss, Justice Abrams wrote: "Although Korb has a secured right to speak out on matters of public concern, and he has a right to express views with which Raytheon disagrees, he has no right to do so at Raytheon's expense."

In the similar case, Drake v. Cheyenne Newspapers, Inc., 891 P.2d 80 (1995), Kerry Drake and Kelly Flores, editorial employees at Cheyenne Newspapers, Inc. were fired for refusing to wear a button urging a "no" vote on the unionization of the editorial division. Drake and Flores filed an action claiming the management engaged in a "retaliatory discharge in violation of public policy, breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing and breach of the employment contract." Drake and Flores argued that the "right to speech found in the Wyoming Constitution at Art. 1, § 20 represents an important public policy" which the Newspaper violated "when it terminated [their] employment because they exercised free speech[.]" In examining the court precedent, the Wyoming Supreme Court concluded that "[t]erminating an at-will employee for exercising his right to free speech by refusing to follow a legal directive of an employer on the employer's premises during working hours does not violate public policy." As for Drake and Flores' claim for breach of a covenant of good faith and fair dealing, the court found no "explicit promise by the Newspaper that they would terminate only for cause."

The precedent of Korb and Drake do not, however, demonstrate an absence of free speech protections at private employers, but merely the limits of such protections. In both Korb and Drake, public policy was mentioned as a possible cause of action. Since Petermann v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 344 P.2d 25 (Cal.App. 1959), courts have recognized public policy exceptions to at-will terminations. In that case, the California Court of Appeals held "it would be obnoxious to the interests of the state and contrary to public policy and sound morality to allow an employer to discharge an employee, whether the employment be for a designated or unspecified duration, on the ground that the employee declined to commit perjury, an act specifically enjoined by statute."

Some jurisdictions, courts have moved to expand some speech protections to political activity under the public policy doctrine. In Novosel v. Nationwide, Template:West, the court found some public policy protection of private-sector employee free speech, writing: "[T]he protection of an employee's freedom of political expression would appear to involve no less compelling a societal interest than the fulfillment of jury service or the filing of a workers' compensation claim." The court found "Pennsylvania law permits a cause of action for wrongful discharge where the employment termination abridges a significant and recognized public policy." Subsequently, however, the Pennsylvania courts rejected the Third Circuit's reasoning, "believing that you can't claim wrongful discharge under a provision of the Constitution unless you can show state action," which is impossible where the employer is a private enterprise.

Involuntary administration of medicine

First Amendment implications of involuntary administration of psychotropic medication arose late in the twentieth century. In Rogers v. Okin, Template:West Judge Joseph L. Tauro for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts found:

The right to produce a thought — or refuse to do so — is as important as the right protected in Roe v. Wade to give birth or abort [...] The First Amendment protects the communication of ideas. That protected right of communication presupposes a capacity to produce ideas. As a practical matter, therefore, the power to produce ideas is fundamental to our cherished right to communicate and is entitled to comparable constitutional protection.

He went on to contend that "whatever powers the Constitution has granted our government, involuntary mind control is not one of them." Two years later in Rennie v. Klein, Template:West, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit avoided the plaintiffs' First Amendment and Eighth Amendment arguments, finding it "preferable to look to the right of personal security recognized in Ingraham v. Wright", a Fourteenth Amendment case, in analyzing the constitutional implications of the involuntary administration of psychotropic medication.

Memoirs of convicted criminals

In some states, there are Son of Sam laws prohibiting convicted criminals from publishing memoirs for profit. These laws were a response to offers to David Berkowitz to write memoirs about the murders he committed. The Supreme Court struck down a law of this type in New York as a violation of the First Amendment in the case Simon & Schuster v. Crime Victims Board, Template:Ussc. That statute did not prohibit publication of a memoir by a convicted criminal. Instead, it provided that all profits from the book were to be put in escrow for a time. The interest from the escrow account was used to fund the New York State Crime Victims Board — an organization that pays the medical and related bills of victims of crime. Similar laws in other states remain unchallenged.

Freedom of the press

Main article: Freedom of the press in the United States

In Lovell v. City of Griffin, Template:Ussc, Chief Justice Hughes defined the press as, "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, is subject to restrictions on bases such as defamation law.

In Branzburg v. Hayes, Template:Ussc, the Court ruled that the First Amendment did not give a journalist the right to refuse a subpoena from a grand jury. The issue decided in the case was whether a journalist could refuse to "appear and testify before state and Federal grand juries" basing the refusal on the belief that such appearance and testimony "abridges the freedom of speech and press guaranteed by the First Amendment." The 5–4 decision was that such a protection was not provided by the First Amendment.

Taxation of the press

State governments retain the right to tax newspapers, just as they may tax other commercial products. Generally, however, taxes that focus exclusively on newspapers have been found unconstitutional. In Grosjean v. American Press Co. Template:Ussc, the Court invalidated a state tax on newspaper advertising revenues. Similarly, some taxes that give preferential treatment to the press have been struck down. In Arkansas Writers' Project v. Ragland, Template:Ussc, for instance, the Court invalidated an Arkansas law exempting "religious, professional, trade and sports journals" from taxation since the law amounted to the regulation of newspaper content.

In Leathers v. Medlock, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court found that states may treat different types of the media differently, such as by taxing cable television, but not newspapers. The Court found that "differential taxation of speakers, even members of the press, does not implicate the First Amendment unless the tax is directed at, or presents the danger of suppressing, particular ideas."

Content regulation

The courts have rarely treated content-based regulation of journalism with any sympathy. In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, Template:Ussc, the Court unanimously struck down a state law requiring newspapers criticizing political candidates to publish their responses. The state claimed that the law had been passed to ensure journalistic responsibility. The Supreme Court found that freedom, but not responsibility, is mandated by the First Amendment and so it ruled that the government may not force newspapers to publish that which they do not desire to publish.

Content-based regulation of television and radio, however, have been sustained by the Supreme Court in various cases. Since there is a limited number of frequencies for non-cable television and radio stations, the government licenses them to various companies. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that the problem of scarcity does not allow the raising of a First Amendment issue. The government may restrain broadcasters, but only on a content-neutral basis.

In Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's authority to restrict the use of "indecent" material in broadcasting.

Petition and assembly

The right to petition was an echo of the English Bill of Rights 1689 which, following the Seven Bishops case, stated it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.

The right to petition the government extends to petitions of all three branches of government: the Congress, the executive and the judiciary. According to the Supreme Court, "redress of grievances" is to be construed broadly: it includes not solely appeals by the public to the government for the redressing of a grievance in the traditional sense, but also, petitions on behalf of private interests seeking personal gain. Nonetheless, in the past, Congress has directly limited the right to petition. During the 1790s, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, punishing opponents of the Federalist Party; the Supreme Court never ruled on the matter. In 1835 the House of Representatives adopted the Gag Rule, barring abolitionist petitions calling for the end of slavery. The Supreme Court did not hear a case related to the rule, which was abolished in 1844. During World War I, individuals petitioning for the repeal of sedition and espionage laws were punished; again, the Supreme Court did not rule on the matter.

The right of assembly was originally distinguished from the right to petition. In United States v. Cruikshank, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court held that "the right of the people peaceably to assemble for the purpose of petitioning Congress for a redress of grievances, or for anything else connected with the powers or duties of the National Government, is an attribute of national citizenship, and, as such, under protection of, and guaranteed by, the United States." Justice Waite's opinion for the Court carefully distinguished the right to peaceably assemble as a secondary right, while the right to petition was labeled to be a primary right. Later cases, however, paid less attention to these distinctions.

Freedom of association

Although it is not explicitly protected in the First Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, in NAACP v. Alabama, Template:Ussc, freedom of association to be a fundamental right protected by it. In Roberts v. United States Jaycees, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court held that associations may not exclude people for reasons unrelated to the group's expression. However, in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, Template:Ussc, the Court ruled that a group may exclude people from membership if their presence would affect the group's ability to advocate a particular point of view. Likewise, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Template:Ussc, the Supreme Court ruled that a New Jersey law, which forced the Boy Scouts of America to admit an openly gay member, to be an unconstitutional abridgment of the Boy Scouts' right to free association.

International significance

Some of the provisions of the United States Bill of Rights have their roots in the English Bill of Rights and other aspects of English law. The English Bill of Rights, however, does not include many of the protections found in the First Amendment. For example, while the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech to the general populace, the English Bill of Rights protected only "Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament." The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a French revolutionary document passed just weeks before Congress proposed the Bill of Rights, contains certain guarantees that are similar to those in the First Amendment. For instance, it suggests that "every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom."

Article III, Sections 4 and 5 of the Constitution of the Philippines, written in 1987, contain identical wording to the First Amendment regarding speech and religion, respectively. These phrases can also be found in the 1973 and 1935 Philippine constitutions. All three constitutions contain, in the section on Principles, the sentence, "The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable", echoing Jefferson's famous phrase.

While the First Amendment does not explicitly set restrictions on freedom of speech, other declarations of rights sometimes do so. The European Convention on Human Rights, for example, permits restrictions "in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary." Similarly the Constitution of India allows "reasonable" restrictions upon free speech to serve "public order, security of State, decency or morality."

The First Amendment was one of the first guarantees of religious freedom: neither the English Bill of Rights, nor the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, contains a similar guarantee.

Further reading

• Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 2009)
• Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry Morrison. The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)
• Kilman, J. & Costello, G. (Eds). (2000). The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation
• Haynes, C. "Religious liberty in public life" (2004)
• Hoover Institution. "Campaign Finance" (2004)
• Irons, P. (1999). A People's History of the Supreme Court New York: Penguin.
• Emerson, Thomas I. (1963). "Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment". Yale Law Journal. The Yale Law Journal Company, Inc. 72 (5): 877–956. doi:10.2307/794655. JSTOR 794655. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)Template:Subscription
• Scarberry, Mark S. (April 2009). "John Leland and James Madison: Religious Influence on the Ratification of the Constitution and on the Proposal of the Bill of Rights" (PDF). Penn State Law Review. 113 (3): 733–800.

External links

• Cornell Law School – Annotated Constitution
• First Amendment Center – The First Amendment Library
• First Amendment Articles at the Legal Satyricon

Intellectual Property and the Internet/Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

Intellectual Property and the Internet/Italian Wikipedia

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