use they have the copyright to alltheir photos, they were able to sue the operator of the Frena BBS. The operator had no idea that therewere any Playboy images on his system (Elkin-Koren).Speaking of image files, they too can be a problem with software protection. Say you've got animage file that someone had copyrighted. You load it up in a photo-retouching program, and add a big oldgoat in the background and paint the sky red. Then you remove the artists file name. Viola, the pictureis now semi-legally copyrighted to you, as it has been significantly changed from its original, althoughI wouldn't recommend going to court over it (Grant 12). All you have to do is change a very largeportion of the image files coding. Technically, darkening or blurring the image, changing the fileformat, or interlacing the file changes the file entirely, and thus, its yours. Sounds too easy? It is.Copyrights and patents are designed to help the media it protects. But in the case oftechnology, its actually hindering it. CD-ROMs contain a lot of information, and are the perfect mediafor music. A lesser known media, the Digital Video Disc, or DVD, is much more versitile, containing 26times the storage compacity of a CD-ROM, and 11500 times more than a standard floppy disk, or about 17gigabytes (the largest hard drives are 9 gigs). However, DVDs are not available to the public. Why?Because of the ease of copying them. We've all dubbed tapes, its easy to do. However, we often opt forhigher quality originals, because there is always a bit of degradation in the copies (although its verysmall now). With DVDs, a copy is exactly that, a copy. No degradation, no reason to buy an original.All the big companies are really scared by this technology, because it will take another five bucks outof their pockets. DVDs would be one of the greatest advancements in the !short history of computers, but because of the shadier uses it could be used for, we'll ne...
