Post Two - Ethics of Digital Technologies

Copyright

What is Copyright?
Copyright is a basic principle that the expression of an idea is protected by copyright in it's original form. If you create something then the original material's automatically protected by copyright. In New Zealand you don't have to register for copyright for your work to be protected under copyright.

"According to the Copyright Act 1994 the copyright owner can copy, sell copies, perform/play/show or make an adaptation of their work. They can also authorize another to do any one of the above things. Educational, library, and review exceptions in the copyright act enables some passes through the copyright act under strict circumstances."

Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons features a number of public copyright licenses that allow people to use works that would usually be protected under copyright. Creative Common licenses require no registration as the user just picks a license that best suits what they will allow done with their work and they then apply it to their work. The benefits of using creative commons is that users don't have to go through the long process of gaining a Copyright license as if they don't mind their work being used under certain restrictions, the Creative Commons license they choose to apply to their work allows them to do this.






Attribution 

CC BY

"This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials."

Attribution-ShareAlike 

CC BY-SA

"This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects."

Attribution-NoDerivs
CC BY-ND

"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
CC BY-NC

"This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms."

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 

CC BY-NC-SA

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

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND

"This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially."

Piracy

What is Piracy?
Piracy is the unauthorized use of someone else's licensed work also known as Copyright infringement. Examples of piracy include websites like MegaUpload where users uploaded files that infringed Copyright rights.

How are These Three Ethical Considerations Related?

Copyright is the most important out of the three as both Creative Commons and piracy come from Copyright. Piracy is what happens when you break the Copyright law, Creative Commons allows people to work through the Copyright law legally and Copyright is the law. Creative Commons allow users a way to keep their work protected legally whilst also giving people who want to use their work a way to without having to go through the long process of gaining permission from the owner. This is also good for people who want to share their work with others yet still have some control over what happens with their work. Piracy is when people break the Copyright law by not getting permission to use the owners work or giving the correct credit asked by the user. So basically, both piracy and Creative Commons are stems of the Copyright tree.



Mega and MegaUpload
On the popular file-sharing site MegaUpload, many files infringing Copyright were being uploaded and downloaded everyday from millions of users. Basically how Megaupload worked was as an online storage for users files and they were then able to link out those files via URLs to their friends. Obviously this system was taken advantage of as many people used it to share files that infringed Copyright, making it a haven for digital pirates. Megaupload did not take down any Copyright infringing files from their site, leading it to eventually be closed down by the FBI due to it's many piracy issues.


Copyright law has been worked around by in the site Mega, rather than the website controllers having access to decrypt any files a user uploads, now only the user has that ability. Technically, with this new feature instated Mega is no longer breaking any Copyright laws as they do not know what their users are uploading and they have no ability to take down what is wrong either. This is a gray area in Copyright as technically, they can no longer be held eligible for what is on their site as they have "no idea" of what is being uploaded.

MegaUpload was shut down by the FBI and there was also a raid on the founder Kim Dotcom's mansion in New Zealand. The other six people highly involved in the matter became to be known(with Dotcom) the MegaConspiracy.


The difference between MegaUpload and Mega is that on MegaUpload the data is encrypted on their servers and the controllers of the website have the ability to decrypt any data the user uploads whereas in Mega, the data is still encrypted but the controllers of the website have no ability to decrypt any of the data a user uploads.

MegaUpload is deemed illegal whilst Mega isn't as people controlling the servers were able to see what files their users were uploading onto the site, making the controllers take responsibility as they didn't take down the illegal copyright files their users were uploading. Whereas on the site Mega, they no longer have access to decrypt users data giving only the uploader access to these files. This means the people controlling Mega can claim to have no idea as to what their users are uploading.

"A sophisticated encryption system will allow users to encode their files before they upload them on to the site's servers ... Each file will then be issued a unique, sophisticated decryption key which only the file holder will control, allowing them to share the file as they choose 

 (http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16wwmc/eli5_the_difference_between_mega_and_megaupload/)"

MegaUpload is deemed illegal in comparison to other websites that also hold copyright infringing files such as YouTube(for example), as YouTube is protected by a copyright law known as the DMCA. This law asks YouTube to give access to copyright owners to take down any infringing content.


References
www.legislation.co.nz
http://slingshot.co.nz/products/homeline-and-broadband/slingshot-mega/
http://www.quora.com/YouTube/Isnt-it-illegal-for-youtube-to-host-the-videos-that-contains-some-song-and-their-lyrics-uploaded-by-any-user
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
https://creativecommons.org/#main
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16wwmc/eli5_the_difference_between_mega_and_megaupload/