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Dr. Asimov, 65, is a severe critic of Star Wars. "I'm against it, not because I'm a science-fiction writer, and therefore have special knowledge, but because I like to think I'm a sane human being." He believes Star Wars is a dangerous waste of money. "They're talking about spending $33 billion on research related to Star Wars. We're going to withdraw money from needed aspects of developing knowledge in order to set up something that probably won't work and even if it does work, won't do us any good."

Part of the problem with Star Wars is that it will take years to develop. "If I were the Soviet Union, I would have spent all this time trying to work up methods to penetrate the shield," said Asimov, who was born in Russia but grew up in New York. "I have a strong suspicion it would be cheaper to penetrate the shield than to set it up. "And if we're in real danger of a nuclear war now, trying to set up something for the middle of the 21st century isn't going to do us any good. In fact, by filling us full of false confidence, we're not going to make a strong enough effort to prevent war now."

"There are science-fiction writers, notably myself and Arthur C. Clarke, who were anti-Vietnam and are anti-Star Wars," said Asimov. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, was born in England and lives in Sri Lanka. "Clarke was howled down once by someone saying as a non-American citizen he had no right to make comments about Star Wars. That's an extremely stupid remark. "If you have no right to decry the policy of a country unless you are a citizen of that country, why the hell is Reagan always yelling about the Soviet Union? Is he a Soviet citizen?"

Within a century, it will be possible to scan a human mind and reproduce it inside a machine. Regardless of whether our minds are just very sophisticated analog computers, or whether they have a quantum-mechanical element (as Roger Penrose proposes), we will nonetheless be able to duplicate them artificially.

Already, at the close of the second millennium, a transhumanist movement has begun; Christopher Dewdney is the principal Canadian spokesperson for it. This movement holds that uploading our consciousness into machines is desirable, since that will free us from biological aging and death. On the other hand (a decidedly biological metaphor), there is more to being human than just the networks of synapses in our brains; clearly, much of what we are is tied in intimately with our bodies. We may find that uploaded humans are not happy — indeed, are incapable of happiness or any emotion.

Just as laws today are moving toward recognizing a woman's right to control her body and any separate sentience that may be contained within it, so too will the laws of the future recognize the right of humans to upload their consciousness and then dispose of the original biological versions of themselves; such eliminations will not be seen as suicides or murders, but rather as a natural, perfectly legal step, eliminating a no-longer-needed biological container and preserving the uniqueness of the individual.

alleges that "The world's four major recording studios had devised an illegal enterprise intent on maintaining their virtually complete monopoly over the distribution of recorded music."

If the relief requested in the complaint is granted, the RIAA's entire campaign will be shut down for good.

You buy a CD but can't take it to the gym. The Audio Home Recording Act legalized our right to copy music for personal use -- for example, making a tape of a CD to use in a Walkman. But new copyright legislation makes it a crime to extract music from copy-protected CDs. You pay for cable but you aren't allowed to use your VCR. In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court ruled that making a copy of a TV show was a legal, non-infringing use of broadcast content. But new HDTV standards will make it illegal to copy a digital broadcast without the permission of the TV station. You buy a DVD but you can't watch it the way you want to. It seems obvious that users should have the ability to fast-forward and rewind movies as they see fit. But new copyright laws threaten that right: it is a crime to sell a DVD player that would allow a consumer to fast-forward through the ads at the beginning of a DVD! You own an electronic book, but you can't lend it to your son at college. Your right to lend a physical book is protected by the "first sale doctrine." This law states that purchasers of copyrighted works such as music or books have the right to dispose of the works in any way that they wish: they can sell them, loan them, rent them, or give them away. But new copyright laws criminalize all of those activities for digital content such as electronic books.

Companies that choose to publish works under copy protection do so because they believe that the added expense of implementing the copy protection will be offset by even greater increases in revenue by creating a greater scarcity of casually copied media. Opponents of copy protection argue that people who obtain free copies only use what they can get for free, and would not purchase their own copy if they were unable to obtain a free copy. Some even argue that it increases profit; people who receive a free copy of a music CD may then go and buy more of that band's music, which they would not have done otherwise. Some publishers have avoided copy-protecting their products, on the theory that the resulting inconvenience to their users outweighs any benefit of frustrating "casual copying".

The Publications Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) is a collective licensing agency for writers. It collects royalties on behalf of writers from publishers with whom it has agreements for distributing such royalties.This is similar to collective licensing for songwriters.

riters give the PRC permission to act as their agent in licensing secondary rights to their previously published articles.

When the PRC signs an agreement with a secondary user, it collects the copyright fees from that publisher and distributes the royalties to its enrollees.

"DRM doesn't anger consumers, content owners abusing DRM anger consumers."

At a conference convened by the overlords of DRM, Sony vice president Scott Smyers admits that he circumvents the copy protection on DVDs (CSS) in order to make backups for personal use.

The implementation requirements for AACS are even more stringent, even more exclusive. If you don't have a team of engineers available to make your new product work with AACS, then you're out of luck.

Yesterday the world’s third largest record company, EMI, announced that it would begin selling music from its artists as digital downloads without any kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) or copy restrictions. The songs will have a higher sound quality than your typical iTunes download, but will cost $1.29 instead of the usual $.99. The company made the decision after hearing numerous complaints from its consumers that they preferred having format-less music that could be listened to on any computer or any device, using a multitude of programs.

access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices

Advocates argue it is necessary for copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams.

Some observers claim that certain DRM technologies enable publishers to enforce access policies that not only prevent copyright violations, but also prevent legal fair use.

"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:..."[1]

This paper surveys undergraduate computational science and engineering (CSE) programs at universities in the United States.

also available as a single document (PDF format)

Undergraduate Programs

Despite offers from the bnetd developers to integrate Blizzard's CD key checking system into bnetd, Blizzard claims that the public availability of any such software package facilitates piracy, and moved to have the bnetd project shut down under provisions of the DMCA.[citation needed] As this case is one of the first major test cases for the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation became involved, for a while negotiations were ongoing to resolve the case without a trial. The negotiations failed however, and Blizzard won the case on all counts: the defendants were ruled to have breached both StarCraft's End User License Agreement (EULA) and the Terms of Use of Battle.net.

BitTorrent accounted for 53 percent of all P2P Internet traffic in June of 2004.

P2P traffic accounts for two-thirds of the traffic on the 'Net

the Copyright Cartel is not going after the technology or the hosting companies. It is targeting Web site owners who have links on their sites to copyrighted material it is illegal for them to offer.