Copyright

Although I have been to many info sessions and presentations including the one in NSO about copyright, I found this presentation is the most informative and I learned a lot of things from it.

First of all, "Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression." In another words, copyright protects individuals right of something of their own creation, and others will be responsible in terms of using their work. Copyright encourages people to have more new creations since they are legally protected.

I did not know that copyright began such long time ago, which was in 1790. Anther interesting fact I learned is that the term of copyright from U.S. published works is the author's life plus 70 years.

The most frequent time people violate others' copyright is from Internet, such as free music downloading. From the presentation I learned that there are people whose job is to stay on Internet and monitor who has downloaded illegal music and then they will record everything down and that person has to pay for what he/she has just violated. Usually the fine of copyright violation is very high.

There are some interesting websites that we can use for getting information about copyrights and protecting our own copyrights. such as The Creative Commons, the Fair Use, and the Public knowledge.

For downloading illegal music, there are both sides of this issue. On one side, the musician's work should be respected and their right should be protected by law so that no one else can claim the work as their own. On the contrary, downloading can expose the music more so more people will get to know about the songs as well as publicity of the musician. It actually helps to promote the musician and his songs. I think one's copyright should be protected, and therefore download music should be illegal as it already is now. It encourages the musician to create more good music, and copyright is something everyone deserves for their hard working. Buying music can also give credits to the musicians. The songs are not that expensive anyway.

TUnetwork Diagram

Tips from Joe Hatch's computer "survival skills" presentation

There are so many things that I learned form Joe Hatch's visiting presentation. I found them very useful regarding daily usage of computers for both school's or my personal lap top. He also answered most of my questions about computers in his presentation.

When I first installed clean access agent on my lap top, I felt strange and annoyed that I have to log in every time when I turn on my computer, and I had no idea what we can make out of it. After Joe explained, I understood that clean access helps your internet access and security on campus, and it also looks at your operating system and anti-virus product. I felt relived that Internet will be more secure after the installation of clean access agent.

Another tip I learned from Joe is about computer's slow performance which I found happens frequently to all the computers. As Joe explained, after computers have been used for a long time, many temporary files, cookies, and histories stored in the drives filled up spaces and therefore causes computers work slow. Sometimes system files can be infected and also makes computers do not perform properly. Joe introduced a software: CCleaner, which is a tool for cleaning computer crashes and speed it up. I found it really helpful. I installed Ccleaner on my computer right after the class and cleaned my lap top for the first time. I was shocked that even though I just bought my lap top last month, Ccleaner cleaned about 90 MB of junks out. I will use Ccleaner regularly for my laptop. This is the most useful tip I got from Joe's presentation.