Week 5

Plagiarism

Plagiarism deals with the copying of someone else’s work without crediting or referencing it, essentially claiming it as your own idea. The problem with plagiarism is that it is so easy to do compared to actually thinking up new ideas yourself, instead you can just take someone’s work and just claim it’s yours. There are certain moral implications with this however as it is a form of deception and software has been produced which can detect the level of plagiarism the student has done, such as ‘turnitin’ and ‘plagiarismdetect’.

 There are ways in which you can take information from different sources for use in your work, and that is to always reference where you are getting the information from. This then shows that it isn’t your work but it can be used to further your point.

There are punishable causes for plagiarising work which range from getting excluded from activities such as societies or school. As well as that they will not get a mark on the work that they submitted and might even not be able to take their remaining tests not related to the subject. In North Carolina, plagiarism or even helping some plagiarise are unlawful and thus can actually end the person up with $250,000 worth of fines or 10 years imprisonment depending on whether or not the person is making money off of the plagiarised material. A person can also be said to have self plagiarised work as well, simply by referring to work that they had done previously but not saying it is from past work.

In the case of ethical issues, there are also a number of problems such as having plagiarised work to your name can create a negative stigma that employers or lecturers would keep in mind when viewing the persons work and this can severely damage the person’s credibility and originality. ”A degree is evidence of its holder’s abilities and knowledge. If a student gains employment on the basis of a qualification they have not earned, they may be a risk to others.”, getting a degree on someone else’s work would mean that the person did not really deserve the grade they had gotten and are not an actual representation of the persons skills.

The closest law that I feel is to plagiarism would be the copyright laws, as it deals with trying to stop people from just taking the information without referencing the work. Having said that though, if the plagiarism occurred due to the user using it for their work then this would not be an offence as “there is no copyright infringement if a protected work is used for the purposes of instruction and examination”. Another opinion would be to consider plagiarism as theft as that is essentially what the plagiarised work is. It is stolen work of the original content owner’s intellect which has not got any credit attached to the original owner.

http://www.ehow.com/about_6464829_ethical-issues-regarding-plagiarism.html

http://www.out-law.com/page-5633

http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism/pintro.html

Week 4

R v Gold & Schifreen (1988) was a case that allegedly prompted the drafting of the Computer Misuse Act. As such it was a very early case and some of the issues involved reflected the newness of technology and the issues it posed.

The case of R v Gold & Schifreen was a very early case regarding Computer Hacking. In this case Stephen Gold and Robert Schifreen were found to have illegally accessed the computers and database from British Telecoms Prestel service. They had managed to get into the service by shoulder surfing an engineer for the company, retrieving both the username and password. The user name was 22222222, whilst the password was 1234, due to the unsecure nature of both the password and username, British Telecom received criticism for their security. As it was so easy for these two to get into the service and even get key information such as Prince Phillips message box, new laws had to be made in order to protect organisations in future and to. This is where the Computer Misuse act came in as to try to prevent circumstances like this again in future.

Originally Stephen Gold and Robert Schifreen were charged under Section 1 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. They were fined £750 and £600, however on appeal were acquitted of all charges. This prompted Lord David Brennan to state that the current laws did not go as far to protect against these sorts of circumstances and that they were trying to fit the crime to legislation that it did not belong to.

The Procrustean attempt^[3] to force these facts into the language of an Act not designed to fit them produced grave difficulties for both judge and jury which we would not wish to see repeated. 

– Lord Brennan

Due to this being one of the first cases that actually had intent to hack into the organisations system, it meant that the judge and courts were unprepared and thus could not give a fair punishment and to prevent against this in future the Computer Misuse Act was drawn up. This states many different ways in which the defendant could be guilty under this act, with a key point on intent to hack.

¨  The offence of unauthorised modification of computer material requires:

¤  the modification to be unauthorised

¤  the requisite intent

¤  and the requisite knowledge

The punishment under this act includes 6 months imprisonment or a fine, not exceeding £5000 for unauthorised access to a computer.  For unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences, a 6 months/maximum fine on summary conviction or 5 years/fine on indictment. Same sentences as section 2 offences for unauthorised modification of computer material,

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/contents

http://afmwebdesign.com/blog/?p=74

R v Gadd (1999) Paul Gadd aka Gary Glitter was a glam rocker from the 70’s who gained notoriety as a result of his prosecution for possession of indecent images of children. The circumstances of his arrest were that he had deposited his laptop with PC World near Bristol for repair. A technician “found” the images during the repair and notified the Police. What potential issues in relation to ACPO guidelines might there be and had this not been a case of child pornography might there have been a different outcome.

Principle 2 of ACPO, states how a person can only access the data if they are able to give evidence explaining the relevance and implication of their actions. This relates to the technician, as it begs the question, did he really need to be searching through Gary Glitters folders in order to be fixing his computer.   Because of this, I feel that if the photos on the laptop were not found to be incriminating then Gary Glitter may have a case for invasion of privacy against the technician.

– In exceptional circumstances, where a person finds it necessary to access original data held on a computer or on storage media, that person must be competent to do so and be able to give evidence explaining the relevance and the implications of their actions. – Principle 2 (ACPO)

As stated by QC, John Royce, the act of downloading the illegal content must have been done with intent and this can be seen to be the case in this scenario.

The examinations, said Mr Royce, revealed firstly that he had downloaded the material and secondly "that it was carefully, deliberately and enthusiastically done".

ACPO legislation gives the police and authorities a chance to gather further evidence in a case in order to prove themselves. However it is need to be adhered to as otherwise would breach the Computer Misuse Act.

http://legal.practitioner.com/principles.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/517604.stm

Week 3

Part 1

1)                  If a person has an idea for a novel (i.e., nothing other than a set of thoughts in their mind), they can copyright it

False, ideas cannot be copyrighted according to Section 203 of the Copyright Protection act.

2)                  Which of these extends copyright to computer programs?

The Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations and The Copyright, Design and Patents Act both extend to copyrighting computer programs.

3)                  Decompilation is when a program is taken apart.

4)                  If I publish something on the Internet it is not covered by copyright law

              False

5)                  Copying programs is allowed when the copy is a backup

6)                  Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize for a novel called ‘Wolf Hall’, in 2009. Imagine she dies next year (2012). When would you be free to copy ‘Wolf Hall’ in the UK?

               2080

7)                  If you illegally copy software you will be liable for prosecution if you run away and even if you didn’t know the law when you committed the crime.

8)                  You can decompile software when it allows you to achieve a permitted objective

9)                  A person has written software and published it. They can copyright it

               True

10)               Trojans, viruses and back-door programs are against which Act

               The Computer Misuse Act

Part 2

Jailbreaking an iPhone

The act of jailbreaking an iPhone is to remove the limitations that apple have put on to the device, in effect making the device more open to the public as applications can be downloaded through a separate application called Cydia. The members can all upload their ‘tweaks’, ‘themes’ or ‘apps’ onto Cydia meaning that they bypass Apples vigorous testing process that is normally needed when uploading to the app store.  However it can also allow the user to download free applications that would originally have to be bought through the app store. This can be done through the use of apps downloaded from Cydia which then link to several different sites with the .ipa file ready to be downloaded and installed on their device. Finally the user can also unlock their phone so that it can work on different networks, this is a bonus as they would then not be limited in having to use one network for that particular phone and instead can simply unlock it and let their original SIM work on that device.

When jailbreaking an iPhone, I stated earlier that the user would have access to free applications that a normal user would then have to pay to get hold of. This is where the copyright law could come into the situation as in effect they are stealing the applications from the developer in order to get the app free. Also another place where there is a copyright issue would be that the hacker would actually be altering code in the root of the OS to get their software onto it.  

Jailbreaking an iPhone would not be considered illegal, however it does come with other ramifications if the user chooses to do it, which includes voiding their warranty. The main reason is which it was deemed legal to jailbreak the phone was because that many people jailbreak their iPhone not to download the applications that I talked about earlier, but because  they don’t to have to deal with the limitations that apple have put in place for its users due to the restrictive nature of them.

File Sharing is illegal

File sharing really is a broad issue when talking about Copyright due to not wanting to restrict the user too much in what they can and cannot upload and share.  For example the user could upload their whole collection of personal pictures online, and this would be perfectly legal as it is originally their content to do what they want with. However it starts to get messy where the user starts to upload on to the net files that are not theirs and are copyrighted to some other person or organisation. These can range from movies or TV shows, music and computer software such as games and other applications.

Peer to peer is a massive part in this day and age as it will allow the user to get the files they need quickly and easy and all they need to download is a P2P client. Napster was the first peer to peer client that allowed the user to download music or software through the use of hooking up their computer to others through the internet and download their files through there. This in itself, would not be considered illegal, however again it depends on if the user has the ownership of the file that they are uploading. As users who used Napster were mostly using it to share copyrighted music among their peers, it ended up with Napster going bankrupt in 2002, after several court hearings with bands such as Metallica.

Week 2

1.   The UK needs a Freedom of Information Act because everyone should have a right to the wealth of information held by public authorities. It will also make public authorities more accountable and will break down the culture of official secrecy
2. The statutory timescale for answering a request is 20 working days
3. The primary purpose of FOI legislation is to create transparency within government and make public authorities accountable to the public
4. Requests for information under the Act can be made by any person provided that they are the subject of that information
5. If a public authority requests a fee, they do not have to respond to the request until the fee is paid
6. An authority does not have to comply with a repeat or similar request from the same applicant unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between requests
7. When determining a request a Public Authority must consider whether the request is valid
8. the FOIA override the DPA when personal data is in the public interest

Week 1

 Case 1

Principles 3 and 4 relate to this scenario as the data must be “adequate and relevant”. As can be seen from the situation, the credit agency came back with the wrong information for James Wiggins due to their being several on file. This is not relevant to the data subject as it is a completely different person.

As well as that, there could be a case that being a cocaine user is sensitive data and as can be seen from principle 1 of the act, the only data that can be stored is of the insensitive type.

I would say that this is definitely against the Data Protection Act as if they had not made a mistake and instead gave the correct records to the company then he would have still had a job. This has mistake has cost him gravely as a new job needs to be found by him.

Case 2

Principles 3 and 4 can be applied to case 2 as the contents of the criminal records contains mistakes thus they would not be Personal data must be adequate, relevant and not excessive,  they should also always be up to data and accurate. Accurate being the key word here, as from the criminal records this is clearly not the case.

Principle 6 also plays a part as the user can pay to be allowed to retrieve a copy of the data for a maximum price of £10. This has clearly been applied properly so there is nothing wrong with this in the situation.

Asking for the records is not an offence and is allowed. However that is not the main point here, this is that there are 85% of records that could contain a single error, because of this people who do ask for their details would have access to information that is outdated or even completely wrong. This is what the data protection act has set up to prevent against.

Case 3

Principle 1 from the data protection act means that the user can say whether they want the data to be stored or not, this relates to the scenario due to the use of a tick box asking the user to opt out of the systems database.

Principle 8 also can be applied here, as the transference of this data means that it could be going anywhere, this includes overseas. The receiving country would then need to have taken steps to have adequate level of protection for the data. 

I would say that this is against the Data Protection Act as without the rights of the user, data cannot be transferred between companies, however sending data between companies happens quite often as the user has to sign a terms and conditions with the company, these end up being quite long and thus they tend not to read them in detail. Companies can easily say that they will be transferring data between companies in this statement and thus this is why it does not go against the Data Protection Act.

Case 4

Due to this being a website, this data could be seen worldwide of they have the servers in the locations, because of this principle 8 applies to this due to the company needing to have adequate level of protection for the data in the transference and the recording of the data.

Principle 1 deals with the handling of the data and also what the users intent is for wanting the data. The user is expected to “handle people’s personal data only in ways they would reasonably expect”. You could argue that putting the persons data up online for people to see is not how an individual would want their data to be.

Principle 2 could also apply to this case as the data obtained can only be used with one intention in mind. This means that putting on to the internet for everyone to see would easily break this rule.

Principle 5 can also be applied due to the records being kept for longer than they should be. This is a website and thus will most likely be the case depending how long they have bought the domain for.

Principle 7 also works in this situation due to the company having to take ‘Technical or organisational measures to prevent unauthorised or unlawful processing of data and accidental loss damage or destruction of data’. Due to the content being on a website, they cannot guarantee that the use of this data will not be used for anything unlawful or unauthorised.

I would say that this scenario definitely goes against the Data Protection Act as these websites could be accessed worldwide if they have been put on servers, because of this information regarding anyone could be accessed by anyone. This is extremely dangerous as can be seen from the scenario, this data could also be used for advertising as well as the data is public.

https://www.dur.ac.uk/data.protection/dp_principles/principle7/

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_guide/principle_1.aspx