Ben Galicki

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Wiki Entry Number 1: Planetariums

At a very basic level, planetariums are just theatres. Although they do not meet the general or stereotypical design or layout, they serve the same function. They are places where celestial images or the night sky itself is presented for study or entertainment. They currently use either straight forward projectors or entire full-dome projectors to imitate the motions of the heavens accurately. The first of these centers where the movement of the stars is studied is linked all the way to Archimedes of Syracuse whose work created an archaic device that could predict the movement of the moon and sun in the sky. Credit also has to be given to other famous astronomers like Copernicus, whom, without their ideas, accurate maps of the sky would be impossible. (Chartrand, 1973)
Until roughly 1903 very few steps were made in the direction of a fully functional room to demonstrate the night sky. During the relative peace of the late 19th century Oskar von Miller envisioned and began to build an institution dedicated to the study of science and technology. This institution would have a special sections designed specifically for the study of astronomy; and would later be turned into the world famous the Deutsches Museum in München. By 1923 in Jena, Germany, Carl Zeiss finished his creation. It was a projector that was powered by light bulbs and projected stars onto a 10 meter dome. After its creation it was shipped to the Deutsches Museum in München for its first showing. ( History of Planetariums ) (Chartrand, 1973)
The showing was a hit. Orders for this Zeiss projector began to pour in and planetariums sprouted up all over Germany and them Europe. By the 1930 planetariums were even erected in America. Unfortunately, the first Zeiss projectors along with many others were destroyed during World War II, most were rebuilt. By the 1950s astronomers had gathered at Harvard and created the first Spitz projector. This one was able to display different stars at different levels of brightness. (Chartrand, 1973)
Planetariums soon became “computerized” and digital. The projector is often now just a small black dome controlled by a computer instead of a large physical apparatus that must physically move to simulate the movement of the earth.
At first the impact of planetariums on computers seems minimal. But at closer inspection most early computers we have learned about in class have been used for calculations for engineers or data crunching machines for large businesses and the government. The use of the planetarium was one of the first “computers” to be used for not only scientific research but also education. Even today, most planetariums’ serve solely as instruction tools for students and nonstudents alike. Projection has also been taken further because of planetariums. The need for more accurate and larger than normal projectors has catapulted companies like Zeiss into creating clear and high-tech projectors along with other technological marvels. Finally, planetariums have brought in a large popularity for science in general. Being able to captivate young people at an early age has recruited many people into the scientific field.
Works Cited
History of Planetariums . (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2010, from BCIT Planetarium : http://commons.bcit.ca/planetarium/history.html
Chartrand, M. R. (1973, September). A Fifty Year Anniversary of a Two Thousand Year Dream. Retrieved May 29, 2010, from International Planetarium Society: http://www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/articles/twothousandyr_dream.html

Wiki Entry Number 2: Zork

Marc Blank and Dave Lebling were college students when, like many in their field, they became infatuated by the new computer game called Adventure. Adventure was a text based adventure game spread through ARPANET. The game was not distributed to the public and was just played my other college students and researchers. They enjoyed the game but wanted to improve on it; they wanted to add a deeper and richer story line with more options. They began working on a new game they called Zork. The word itself was a name for a program or code that was still a work in progress; although it became the end title for their project. The two students wrote the program from 1977 to 1979. (Watrall, 2010) Zork became an instant success on academic, pre-internet network called ARPANET; so successful that they decided to decided to start their own software publishing company. The software publisher was soon named Infocom. The gamers who played Zork were mostly also hackers and others in their field and offered and suggested many new improvements to the game. By 1979 Zork had reached 1 mb in size, which was actually too large for almost any contemporary computer. Luckily many new systems were coming out (like the Apple 2) that were able to handle such a large game. (Watrall. 2010)

Zork continued to gain popularity and by 1980 they released Zork I to the public. Its popularity grew and they were able to make a sequel, Zork II. They continued the series as a trilogy with Zork III. The legacy of these games continues today. People are still able to download and play the originals, but new versions and visual spin-offs have also come about. (Watrall, 2010) The actual game was juts text; something very odd to any modern gamer. There was no intense 3D graphics or special effects. The text described a situation and the gamer had to enter in text to interact with the described environment. The puzzles and situations themselves could be very complicated and re-playability was apparently very high. The burden of visuals was on the gamer, but much like reading a book, it could be a very enjoyable experience. (Tyers, 1998)

The impact of Zork on the computer gaming industry was huge. The game was not a simple spaceship shooter game that was popular in the era, but a complex puzzle game that threw the gamers into a deep story line. The story was interesting and took the players hours and hours to complete. It was also one of the first games published to the public and one of the first (if not the first) game to reach the size of one megabyte. Zork created a legacy and was of the most influential adventure/dungeon games. Although only a one player game it was obviously the starting point of multiplayer games like MUD. It also heavily influenced the next generation of adventure/dungeon games like Mystery House and other games that used graphics.

Works Cited
Tyers, K. (1998, May 10). Zork I: The Great Underground Empire. Retrieved June 10, 2010, from Adventure Classic Gaming: http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/reviews/66/
Watrall, Ethan. (2010, June). DIGITAL GAMES Lecture

Wiki Entry Number 3: ARPANET

ARPANET is considered to be the predecessor to the modern internet. Originally with only four terminals acting as archaic routers in 1969, the network grew to 213 by 1981. (ARPANET) Its name is derived from the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) out of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). The development and launch of the project (under the supervision of the DoD) was said to be in direct response to the Soviet’s launch of Sputnik; even though all rumors of its purpose of being able to survive a nuclear attack have been proven untrue. (ARPANET) It was the first packet switching network; which is based off the old telephone circuit switching system. This packet system is now the main form of communication around the world, obviously including the modern internet. Packet sweating networks takes data and breaks the data down into data grams. These data grams are then reassembled into packets were they can not only be sent, but different packets can be sent to different places independently. (Hauben)

J. C. R. Licklider, of the Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) company, had the idea of a network to connect computers across the country. The idea was picked up by the DoD, and Licklider was appointed to a position in APRA to come up with a viable computer network. Licklider enlisted Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor to assist in this endeavor. (ARPANET)They were soon able to link three APRA sponsored computers at System Development Corporation, UC Berkeley, and MIT and use each as a terminal to run user commands on another. The three men soon were soliciting for sponsors to become part of their new network. Many critics were skeptical at their seemingly outlandish goals. Four terminals were chosen: The Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. At each site there was a small computer called Interface Message Processors (contemporary routers). These routers preformed the packet-ing functions and were connected to modems to send the messages. (Internet History , 2006) The first message was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969. He was sending the message to Stanford Research Institute. The initial message was “login” but the system crashed part way through and only “lo” was sent. It was still an exciting accomplishment that would lead to more and more uses for this new system. (ARPANET)

ARPANET had three applications to run and provide services for the users. The first and most important was email. The first email was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. Impressively, by 1973, 75% of the ARPANET traffic was made up of email. By 1973 ARPANET offered file transfers, and voice protocols were also added. These calls had many bugs and never became too popular. (ARPANET) Overall, ARPANET was a revolutionary idea and system that was the basis of the modern internet. The development was an arduous process that began in 1962 and wasn’t funny implemented and functional to late 1969. Many ideas of a communication network were proposed throughout the years, but until the packet system and the new invention of routers, nothing came into fruition.

Works Cited
ARPANET. (n.d.). Retrieved June 25, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
Hauben, M. (n.d.). History of ARPANET. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~acc/docs/arpa.html
Internet History . (2006). Retrieved June 25, 20120, from Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/

Wiki Article: Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Age

Abstract
In this digital age technology is changing very rapidly. Unfortunately, our legal and legistive process is at teh same level as it was hundreds of years ago. It can take years for new laws to be passed or for old ones to be changed. The technology we used can now circumvent old laws, or make new, innocuous things illegal under old laws. Here are some modern examples in which laws or the legal system has failed in the world of intellectual property in the new digital, scientific, and quickly moving age of man.


Intellectual property rights have always been a haven for artists, scientists, and anyone who wished to own an idea. The creations of the mind are much harder to control than physical property, though. If someone is using another’s land unlawfully, they can be simply removed. The control over ideas and non-tangible works is becoming nearly impossible; and the interaction or domestic and international laws are making things even more complicated. Developed countries want strong international protection of technological and copyright property rights while developing countries are striving for strict biological and traditional intellectual property protection; and technological advances over the past few decades are making everything even more complicated. The digital age has brought us two major problems on TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights): technological advances in media and technological advances in medicine. Music and the human genome have been digitized; and now music is free to everyone and genes and medicine are becoming more expensive and exclusive. The history of intellectual property has shown up that the laws have not caught up with the demands of new technology.
The protection of intellectual property rights have been around for a surprisingly long time. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886 was one of the first international laws to protect intellectual property laws. It defined copyright protection and stated that the nations must respect the copyright laws of other nations the same as their own. (The International Architecture, 2002) An example would be “national treatment” under GATT trade law. This treaty may have even been a base for the concept of national treatment. To monitor the adherence to the Berne Convention, the United Nation’s agency called World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was created. WIPO was not the first incarnation of an oversight agency though. WIPO’s origins are traced back to 1893 as BIRPI (the French acronym for the United International Bureaux forthe Protection of Industrial Property). (Singleton, 2008) The biggest contribution toward TRIPs protection came about in 1993 at the close of a round of GATT agreements. This agreement (itself called The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights [TRIPS]) overhauled and specified many aspects of international property rights. It defined and protected trademarks, patents, dispute resolution procedures, and geographical indicators definitions. (The International Architecture, 2002)
Law often doesn’t change too quickly. Larry Lessig described an example of old laws that became out of date because of advances in technology. His chief example was that of trespass law. Traditionally, trespass law protects the owners land from being trespassed under, on, or over. That simple concept worked for generations until technological advancements gave us the airplane. A court case followed and the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Technology was now at odds with traditional law, as it has and will always be. The plaintiffs argued that the planes were destructive to their chicken farm and were violating de facto trespassing law. The Supreme Court decided that planes were not violating the trespassing law because that common sense told them that it would be nearly impossible for planes to get clearance from every property owner they fly over. Common sense won out, but technology and ownership rights are at odds again.
There are countless examples of trouble with copyright laws relating to some advancement of technology; but one problem specifically doesn’t not only still resonate today due to its unsolved inherent problems, but is in recent enough history to have been experience by not only me but my fellow classmates and teachers. Copyright battles with the intellectually property of music has been a problem since the writing of songs. To help focus a look at the problems with music infringement in the digital age I chose case study to examine. The most prominent example of modern music battles is Napster.
First, a background on music patent law is necessary. The first US federal copyright law did not include music protection when it was first enacted in 1790. Eventually, in 1831, music was given copyright protection. Since 1831, all published and recorded music was protected, but there was nothing to stop anyone from performing a song they did not compose. When that law was passed the courts believed, “a public performance of a drama or musical composition is not a publication” (Halbert, 2005). To correct this, performance was protected by patent law by 1897. This change was due to the growing popularity of radio. With many music companies income coming from sheet music, when radios grew more prevalent, the sale of sheet music fell. That pressure to make money changed the law, which ended up changing soon after. Another copyright law was passed in1909, this changed the existing laws to count radio as a performance or publication because they made money; which became the defining characteristic of whether it was a breach of copyright or not. But even then there lacked a mechanism to collect the new royalties. By 1914 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers was created to protect the artists. They won many court cases in defense of artist rights, and were an advocate of seeing music as a raw material; something to be bought and sold. (Halbert, 2005)
The next generation of copyright problems in the media arts was the VCR. The designers of the first VCRs had installed a record button on their new products, allowing for TV to be recorded. Sony was obviously taken to court, since shouldn’t a tool used to steal be banned just like robber’s tools? The courts decided with the with VCRs, though, because, “it could not be banned as an infringing technology unless there was no ‘potential’ for a ‘substantial noninfringing use.’” (Lessig, 2002, p. 195) Unfortunately this case was not used as a precedence in the upcoming legal battle of the copyright world. Here, only a “substantial” amount had to be used for noninfringing use; which means as long as the technology can be used legally and legitimately, it should not be banned. (Lessig, 2002)
Napster may have been forcibly closed by the United States government in July of 2001 but the problems it created are still around today. Napster was up and running for the public in June 1999 created by Shawn Fanning; a college drop-out and computer hacker. He envisioned music file sharing and took the initiative to write the program that would become Napster. He shared the program with fellow hackers who distributed it further. His uncle (John Fanning) caught wind of his nephew’s work and incorporated Napster into a company and began to search for investors. (Merriden, 2001) Shawn continued to work on code and programming while his uncle worked on the business aspects of the company. The spread of Napster was the most surprising aspect of the company, though. According to Media Metrix, up to 10% of American computers connected to the internet had the application. Another estimate was that there was roughly 58 million users. Although the number could have been possibly much higher, the fact of the matter remains that it was hugely popular. Their biggest user base was college students, the reason that this topic was chosen; it’s an interesting concept that something as simple as students using a website can so greatly affect copyright law. Florida State University reported it took up 75-80% of their bandwidth. (Merriden, 2001)
Not everyone was a satisfied college student. Five global record companies, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and individual artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre did not see the free movement of art and the realities of the 21st century, but copyright infringement and the loss of money. By December of 1999 the major labels sued Napster for copyright infringement. Something interesting happened during litigation, though. Bertelsmann began intense negotiations to partner itself with Napster. The combination would give Napster a line of credit to re-work this service to work as subscription base. Bertelsmann knew that file-sharing was becoming too large to ignore, and that it would make business sense to utilize the new technology. (Merriden, 2001)
No matter how hard Napster would be tried to saved, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered the site to be shut down. Patel modified the ruling from the lower court in which Napster was not responsible for the infringement “unless the copyright holder made Napster aware of the violation.” So Napster turned off slowly as all of its music was removed by the artists. Technology had brought about a new platform for media (MP3) and subsequently a new form of distribution, unfortunately, laws had not yet caught up to meet the challenges of peer-to-peer file sharing. The court case involving the VCRs was not taken into account. Many people on Napster had legitimate claims to the music they downloaded and shared. (Merriden, 2001)
Although Napster represented a new wave of domestic copyright infringement, this was far from solely a domestic problem and it’s not always piracy. In 1994, The Cross of Changes was a hit song that sold millions of albums across the globe. The song was used in advertisements and was played at the Olympics. But the song was a live recording of a performance done by the indigenous Ami Tribe during a special concert. So while the recorders had the permission to record and use the music, they did not have the rights or royalties to the song. Just as with airplanes or piracy, the ability to record live concerts with good quality then be able to distribute them around the world was no possible decades ago. (Halbert, 2005)
Although music copyright infringement is often in the media and heavily affects college-ages individuals, it is not the only kind of intellectual copyright problem that has affected the population because of the digital age. Medical science has taken great leaps in the recent decades after technology helped us map the human genome. Modern patent law is defined by “raw material” and the “manufactured product” of a technological society (Halbert, 2005). If that is the case, how are naturally occurring human genes being patented by large corporations like Myriad Genetics?
The idea of patening living things is not recent. In Diamond vs. Chakraparty, the courts originally deiced that Chakrabarty could not patent a new single cell organism he created because it was alive, and patent law states a person cannot patent “laws of nature, physical phenomenon, and abstract ideas” (Halbert, 2005, p. 114) The Supreme Court overruled the lower courts’ decisions since Chakraparty “created” it in a lab and the amount of work done suggested a new manufactured product. Chakraparty now had commercial rights to sell this cell (which ate oil and was later used to help clean up oil spills). (Halbert, 2005)
Another court case involves someone’s genes being used without their knowledge. John Moore discovered that his cancerous spleen cells had been used to create a cell line with commercial value. Moore sued UCLA for breach of fiduciary duty and for rights over his spleen genes. He won for breach of fiduciary duty for UCLA’s failure to inform him that they were using his genes, but the court did not side with him on the ownership of the genes from his internal organ. This just adds to the confusion of ownership over one’s body and the rights endowed to one’s body but not its parts. So would that make human cells just a commodity? It seems that our cells are raw materials we ourselves cannot legally own, but are able to patent the work on on the said cells with no regard to which body they came from. And this doesn’t even start to get into the philosophical debate of now labeling humans as just “things” and the commoditization of the human body itself. (Halbert, 2005)
The ability to patent gene sequencing lies in the methods used to identify genes. Genes are just amino acids, with different orders of these nucleotides creating different gene functions. But how can something that has existed before become patented? (Gibson, 2009) Donna Rawlinson MacLean (a performance artist) asked the same thing, and in 2000, filed to patent her body. She had been working tirelessly on it for many years, and she wished to make sure anything that come about from the work on herself would belong to her. Although it is somewhat ridiculous and obviously just a show, her statement is valid; when the comprehensions of the human body as just a pile of rights to be owned, the view on human rights may also change. (Halbert, 2005)
A frightening concept that is currently in litigation today is the ownership of our genes by corporations. These genes are located in every strand of DNA, in every nucleolus, of every cell, of everyone’s’ body. This is made possible by the “techniques” used to isolate and identify the gene, so even though it existed naturally before the scientist got a hold of it, it is now under the strict control of that scientist. (Gibson, 2009) No none else can study, research, or even look at that gene now. This created great controversy with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 human genes, which are believed to be linked with breast and ovarian cancer. Only Myriad Pharmaceuticals can the right to test for these genes, and since they owned them, they were able to charge whatever they wanted. Not only was price a concern, but without any other labs running tests, it was impossible for a second opinion. Women were being forced to pay up to $2000 for a simple lab test for which they could never receive a second opinion on the eventual diagnosis. The ACLU took the U.S. Patent office to court and in Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, et al. the court ruled that 15 patent claims were invalid almost quoting common sense similarly to the decision made of plane and trespassing. Although this is a major victory for the ownership of our own bodies, the question remains unanswered of when an ownership of an idea begins and when it comes from nature. These scientists did work hard and under most other circumstances their intellectual feat would have been rewarded with a patent. So even though the court is doing the right thing, the laws may never be able to fully represent the ideas that individuals have over intellectual property. (Kaye, 2010)
Overall, technology has always pushed law, not only intellectually property laws. But unlike teaching evolution in science classes or changing trespassing laws, the intangibility of intellectually property has made legal changes difficult. Peer-to-peer file sharing is still extremely common, and although cheap single song downloads are available, Bitorrent and Limewire are still being accused of taking massive profits away from the record companies. And while genetic research has provided unimaginable medical break-throughs, current copyright laws have turned scientific research into an extremely profitable economic monopoly. These are only examples of some modern, digital copyright problems that have emerged, and don’t begin to touch the problems the international community has had to deal with; geographical indicators and traditional knowledge are just two examples. International and domestic law is lagging behind in these digital times, and the intangibility of intellectual property, these rights may never be fully protected or understood.

Works Cited
Gibson, J. (2009). Intellectual Property, Medicine, and Health. Burlington: Ashgate.
Halbert, D. J. (2005). Resisting Intellectual Property. New York: Routledge. Kaye, S. (2010, March 30). Who Owns Your Genes? You Do. Retrieved June 29, 2010, from Blog of Rights: Because Freedom Can't Blog Itself: http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech-womens-rights/who-owns-your-genes-you-do
Lessig, L. (2002). The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. New York: Vintage Books.
Merriden, T. (2001). Irresistable Forces: the Business Legacy of Napster and the Growth of the Underground Internet. Oxford : Capstone.
Singleton, R. (2008). Knowledge and Technology: The Basis of the Wealth and Power. In D. Balaam, & M. Veseth, Introduction to International Political Economy (pp. 196-214). Upper Sandle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.
The International Architecture. (2002, September 12). Retrieved June 27, 2012, from Commission on Intellectualy Property Rights: http://www.iprcommission.org/papers/pdfs/final_report/Ch8final.pdf