Mapping South African internet user's opinions about the use of peer-to-peer file sharing technology to infringe on copyrighted films and/or television series content

The aim of this study was to investigate the various reasons consumers continue to infringe on copyrighted content, specifically in the South African context, even if the law forbids it. This investigation is two-fold since it also recognises that there are many individuals who do not infringe on copyrighted content even though they have access to peer-to-peer file sharing technology. This information could prove valuable since it can then be used to find comprehensive market-led solutions to the problem that targets the end-user. This study adopted a mixed method approach in order to cross validate findings and to reveal aspects of empirical reality. The target population for this study consisted of 100 adult South Africans who have access to the internet. Data was collected through an online, self-administered questionnaire. Quantitative data was analysed through descriptive statistics, while qualitative data was analysed through thematic analysis. The results show that there are variety of factors that influence respondents’ attitudes towards copyright infringement of films and/or television series through peer-to-peer file sharing technology, each of which is discussed in detail. The study concluded by identifying 24 factors that favourably influence people’s attitudes towards copyright infringement, including high prices of legitimate goods, historical inequality in South Africa, and perceived low risk of being caught and punished. Based on the conclusion above, the study recommends that policy makers such as government officials, boards of directors, managers, committees, and executives use the results of the study when making decisions and determining policies, especially in the South African context.Communication ScienceM.A. (Communication Science

Towards a General Framework for Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Digital rights management (DRM) can be defined as a technology that enables persistent access control. The common understanding of DRM is that of a technology that enables means to thwart piracy of digital multimedia through limiting how the media is used by the consumer. It can be observed that many of these restrictions can be applied to any type of data. Therefore, it should be possible to create a two part DRM system -- a common DRM system that enforces the basic access controls (such as read, write and execute) and an application specific DRM system that enforces the application specific access controls (such as print and play). The aim of this dissertation is to create such a framework for distribution independent DRM systems. Most vendors promote DRM as a copyright protection mechanism, and thus consumers expect a number of rights that are allowed by copyright legislation, but which are not available for the DRM protected media. However, DRM is not an enforcement of copyright law, but rather an enforcement of a licensing regime. Thus, there is incorrect (and possibly false) marketing of DRM enabled media from the vendors of DRM enabled media, leading to dissatisfied consumers. We think that one of the main reasons for the current situation, is that there is no defined legal framework governing the operation of DRM systems. In this dissertation, we address this gap, by developing a legal framework for DRM systems as one of the components of our DRM framework. Negotiation can be defined as the process which leads to the conclusion of a contract. Since DRM is the enforcement of licensing agreements, there is a need to cater for negotiation protocols in DRM systems. Negotiations provide the consumer with the power to request different rights packages, especially when consumers have a legitimate need for rights not granted normally to other consumers (for example, disabled consumers have needs that may not be met with standard rights set). Negotiations also allow the possibility for the licensors to extract the maximum value from the consumers. For this reason, the inclusion of negotiation protocols in DRM systems can become a powerful tool, and in this dissertation we present the first negotiation protocols for DRM systems. Even though the definition of DRM as an access control model has existed since at least 2002, there has been no formal description of DRM as an access control model. Thus, there are no formal models for any of the rights expression languages which express DRM access control policies, and various authors have commented on ambiguities present in interpretation and enforcement of licenses expressed in these languages -- a result of a lack of formal definition of these languages. In this dissertation, we develop a formal model for a Licensing Rights Expression Language (LiREL), which is designed to provide a mechanism to express access control policies which are also sound legal license documents. Our formal model also discusses the enforcement of the access control policies, and is thus the first formal model for DRM as a mechanism for access control. Access control is a two part process: authentication of the parties involved and authorisation of the parties to access the resources. Authorisation in DRM provides some unique challenges: there is a need to support multiple platforms, without guaranteed network connectivity and minimal trust between the parties involved. For this reason, the associated authentication framework becomes more complex. While many access control models define user management as part of their model, we have taken a different approach, and removed user management from the core DRM system. Instead, our authorisation process requires a trusted verification of the user's credentials and then decides on the access control request. For this reason, our user authentication framework is ticket based, and shares similarities to Kerberos tickets. DRM also requires a strong data identity management. However, all the current identity systems for data do not provide verification service for data identity. For this reason, we developed Verifiable Digital Object Identity (VDOI) System, to address this gap. These components are combined towards a general framework for digital rights management that advances the understanding, organisation and implementation of DRM compared to approaches or solutions which are currently available

Personal imaging

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-223).In this thesis, I propose a new synergy between humans and computers, called "Humanistic Intelligence" (HI), and provide a precise definition of this new form of human-computer interaction. I then present a means and apparatus for reducing this principle to practice. The bulk of this thesis concentrates on a specific embodiment of this invention, called Personal Imaging, most notably, a system which I show attains new levels of creativity in photography, defines a new genre of documentary video, and goes beyond digital photography/video to define a new renaissance in imaging, based on simple principles of projective geometry combined with linearity and superposition properties of light. I first present a mathematical theory of imaging which allows the apparatus to measure, to within a single unknown constant, the quantity of light arriving from each direction, to a fixed point in space, using a collection of images taken from a sensor array having a possibly unknown nonlinearity. Within the context of personal imaging, this theory is a contribution in and of itself (in the sense that it was an unsolved problem previously), but when also combined with the proposed apparatus, it allows one to construct environment maps by simply looking around. I then present a new form of connected humanistic intelligence in which individuals can communicate, across boundaries of time and space, using shared environment maps, and the resulting computer-mediated reality that arises out of long-term adaptation in a personal imaging environment. Finally, I present a new philosophical framework for cultural criticism which arises out of a new concept called 'humanistic property'. This new philosophical framework has two axes, a 'reflectionist' axis and a 'diffusionist' axis. In particular, I apply the new framework to personal imaging, thus completing a body of work that lies at the intersection of art, science, and technology.by Steve Mann.Ph.D