Post 2- Ethics of Digital Technologies

Task One

Copyright

What is Copyright?
Copyright protects original works from being used without permission from the author or owner. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the owner of the copyright for a limited time. These rights includes the following. 

• Producing the work- This means the owner can create more copies of his work.
• Permitting the reproduction of the work- This means the owner allow other individuals copy or reproduce more materials.
• performing the work- This means the creator of the work can perform the work that he created or allow other people to perform his work with his permission.
• publishing the work- This means the owner can publish his work so that people can view his work.

So basically if you're the owner of the material you own the rights of the material's distribution. Copyright is activated automatically which means that the work is automatically protected by Copyright, Copyright is simple to acquire no registration necessary . According to Copyright Act 1994 people are not allowed to reproduce the owner's work, sell the work, present the work in public, and create modifications. In New Zealand, the work is remained Copyrighted for 50 years after the end of the calendar year in which the author died. The copyright act seeks to provide a balance between the interest of authors, owners and users of Copyrighted material.

Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a license that the Owner can apply to their work. It allows other users to use the original content without breaking the Copyright law. Owner's content can be licences with different attributions.

There are 6 different licences to chose from. All of the six licenses have different attribution and it is necessary for the users follow. (e.i. the owner of the material licensed his work with 'Attribution-ShareAlike' as the license states you can make modifications and you can even make money from it as long as they credit the original owner.


ATTRIBUTION
This license lets other people distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long they credit you for the original creation.


ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercial as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.


ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE-
This licence lets other remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.

ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE-
This license lets other remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercial, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.


ATTRIBUTION-NO DERIVATIVES
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.


ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NO DERIVATIVES
This license is the most restrictive of creative licenses six main licenses, only allowing others to download your work and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially.


So basically Creative Commons  allow the Users to use the copyrighted material without breaking the Copyright law. This means the users can use the original owner's content depending on what Creative Commons license it acquires.

Piracy

What is Piracy?
Piracy is unauthorized production or use of copyrighted material. Piracy takes place when people break the Copyright law. It is breached by producing different file copies of copyrighted material without the original owner's permission. Two of the most popular file sharing websites in the whole world are Megaupload and Mega. 

Some facts about Megaupload:

• They are both FILESHARING websites. 
• Megaupload was shut down by the FBI
• NZ police raided KimDot Com's house arrested him and froze his assets
• They want to extradite kimdotcom

What is the difference MegaUpload and MEGA?

MegaUpload:

Megaupload's data is encrypted on their servers. They have the ability to decrypt your data. (For example if they get forced to with legal action or someone compromises their servers).

MEGA:

Same as Megaupload's, MEGA's data is encrypted on their servers. They do not have the ability to decrypt them. (For example if they get their servers removed from their possession, the person in possession of the servers will only have encrypted information.

The pivotal difference is that now when you upload something to mega, the only person that can control who has access is you. Thus leaving Mega with the ability to claim that they did not know what was on their servers.

For example the files could be movies(Game of Thrones), Games(Battlefield 4), and 'Pornography' (no example). No one would have any way of knowing except the people that uploaded and those that they allow.

Megaupload was basically 'upload and download whatever you want', so, naturally, it got into trouble because people were downloading copyrighted content. MEGA aims to get rid of that by asking you to set a key and share it with only those whom you want to.

Summary

Copyright, Creative Commons and Piracy are all related. Basically it works like this, Copyright protects your work. Creative Commons licenses allow you to share your work without other asking you personally. Piracy comes in when a individual breaks the Copyright law.


References 

• legistation.govt.nz
• wikipedia