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Prior research suggests that high prices may motivate the decision to pirate entertainment goods. We analyzed a natural experiment that decreased the tax rate, and hence also the net prices of e-books, by 14% in Ireland while several other European countries were not affected. Using country-specific data on piracy visits, we found that this price decrease caused only a small and statistically insignificant decrease in total e-book piracy visits. However, we further decomposed piracy visits into those of direct pirates, who navigated directly to piracy sites, and indirect pirates, who searched to find piracy sites. The 14% price decrease caused no change in direct piracy visits but caused a statistically significant 27% decrease in indirect piracy visits. These findings align with prior research suggesting that search can play an important role in piracy, but only for some pirates. Our results demonstrate the potential of using price to mitigate piracy, but they also highlight the challenges firms face in competing with piracy for experienced pirates. We conclude by detailing both the policy and managerial implications of our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by several elements, including the unwillingness to pay for material, the spread of subscription services, and the profitability of illegal activity, digital piracy has grown to be a common problem in the contemporary world. Along with financial damages for businesses and content creators, this phenomenon has legal repercussions for individuals involved in piracy and cybersecurity issues. The effective fight against digital piracy depends on an awareness of the drivers and hazards connected with this illegal activity. With an eye towards a thorough knowledge of this intricate problem, in this study, the focus centers on the reasons, attitudes, and actions behind digital piracy. Through examining how people defend their behavior in particular situations, in this study, the aim is to clarify the ethical issues and decision-making procedures related to piracy—even among otherwise law-abiding people. Combining a variety of the relevant literature and ideas, including situation ethics theory, in this study, we seek to provide insights for legislators, business players, and academics eager to meet the difficulties presented by digital piracy. This study adds to the continuous discussion on lessening the detrimental effects of digital piracy on content creators, businesses, and cybersecurity by looking at the underlying reasons for piracy and supporting legal access to material. Along with a dearth of research on the origins and moral questions of digital piracy, there is a lot of contradictory material. By examining the factors behind this unlawful activity, clarifying the complex dynamics involved, and offering understanding of the causes of digital piracy, this study seeks to close a significant void in the knowledge. The findings of this study will enable individuals to develop strategies for handling this prevalent issue in the digital era. Developing successful interventions that can reduce this illegal conduct and safeguard the interests of content producers, businesses, and cybersecurity overall depends on an awareness of the reasons behind digital piracy. This study advances the knowledge of the difficulties presented by this global phenomenon by investigating the ethical issues and decision-making procedures related to digital piracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article treats a phenomenon that has become nearly impossible to stop due to the current technological and informational advances: online piracy. It defines piracy and copyright, focusing on academic piracy. The article examines the main potential causes, starting with an analysis of social context prior to the first copyright law, exploring the economic factors that contributed to the rise of piracy. One of these factors is the influence of monopolies within the book market that raised prices and made books hard to afford for the lower classes. This situation created an opportunity for the first “pirates” to emerge, as they are known today. Four specialized studies on piracy were examined: one study explored the reasons for software piracy in 2000, while the other three investigated academic piracy in universities in Portugal (2013) and Denmark (2023; 2024). The main goals of this article are to understand how widespread academic piracy is in Romanian universities and to analyze the information-seeking behavior of Romanian students during their research process. Upon the conclusion of the study, it was found that a significant percentage (75.2%) of students are aware of at least one of the piracy resources mentioned in the questionnaire, and 69.1% of the participants use the academic databases provided by the universities. While most students believe that these resources are easy to find and use, 29.6% responded that they are not sufficient for their research needs, and 44.3% indicated that they are sometimes useful. Over a third of the students surveyed (35.2%) use pirated resources as their first option, and many of them (58.7%) declared that they are unaware of the legal status of these pirate sites. In conclusion, the students’ awareness about the ethics and legality of the research is questionable and one of the main reasons for their use of pirating resources is the lack of legal options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the pervasive issue of digital piracy in the movie industry. Despite substantial efforts to combat piracy, its impact remains significant, resulting in substantial financial losses for companies. Digital rights management (DRM) has been introduced as a countermeasure to counter this challenge. While the security of video applications, including commercial and military videos, has gained prominence in recent research, this paper focuses on enhancing the encryption algorithm and presenting encryption results. Specifically, it explores the AES 128 encryption algorithm's vulnerabilities in the MPEG-DASH media file and proposes a randomized algorithm for video file encryption. To bolster security, the randomized approach leverages three robust algorithms: AES 256, Two-Fish, and Serpent. The randomized algorithm demonstrated significantly higher resistance to brute-force attacks than AES 128 CBC, as exemplified by a test scenario with a key length of 32 and 100 media chunks. By utilizing this combination of unbroken algorithms, the paper offers an efficient solution for offline-protected media storage, ultimately strengthening the security and privacy of the MPEG-DASH DRM system and mitigating the risk of media file piracy. The randomized algorithm consistently outperformed AES 128 CBC in terms of execution time across multiple media files, with the randomized algorithm completing the encryption process in 34,610 milliseconds for Media File 1, compared to AES 128 CBC, which required 59,910 milliseconds, showcasing a notable enhancement in speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rampant piracy issue in the Philippines has significant repercussions for both the entertainment industry and the government. To address this concern, the Optical Media Board (OMB) was established in 2003 as a government agency; responsible for enforcing intellectual property laws related to optical media. Despite the OMB's efforts, piracy remains a persistent problem, particularly in the digital domain. The researcher conducted surveys among OMB personnel and licensed clients, utilizing a quantitative descriptive method and purposive sampling technique. The comprehensive evaluation of the OMB's anti-piracy efforts revealed that the board was very effective in several key areas, including: intelligence/enforcement operations, information campaigns, digital piracy operations and quasi-judicial functions. Both OMB personnel and clients acknowledged the high effectiveness of these areas. However, there were perceptible differences in the perception of information campaigns among the respondents. The study recommends that the OMB intensify its efforts in this domain by disseminating information about piracy trends, emerging threats, and best practices to stakeholders. This collaborative approach aims to enhance the overall effectiveness of government-led anti-piracy initiatives. Furthermore, the challenges faced by the OMB are highlighted in the study, particularly the international nature of piracy operations, which is widely regarded as a formidable obstacle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crazy, unconscious use of the Internet, and the increase in cybercrime and hacking, which resulted in the loss of a large number of sensitive data, the risk of piracy, etc. were the motivation for protecting rights, securing and hiding essential information such as images, audio, etc. Watermarking was a popular security, copyright and privacy approach and one of the problems in modern quantum digital computing that produced more powerful quantum protection techniques than the classical one that used classical techniques such as digital wavelet transformation and Hungarian algorithms. Recent advances in quantum image representation and processing help to manipulate data hidden. This paper proposes a new watermark technique in which a color watermark image is hidden within another color-carrying image after transformation into the quantum domain using the recently completed quantum color image representation technique. Finally, a comparison is made between the proposed method and the most recent watermarking techniques is establish in terms of PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio), which shows the high precision of the proposed technique and improves the imperceptibility compared to the related schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document discusses the importance of digital security in educational contexts and the need for teachers and students to have adequate digital competence. It emphasizes the need for educational institutions to promote the use of security measures and barriers to protect against viruses and malicious attacks. The document also highlights the risks associated with the use of apps and virtual learning platforms and the need for educators and parents to address these risks. Several research studies are presented, which reveal deficiencies in pre-service teachers' digital security skills and knowledge. The document concludes by calling for improved educational curricula and practices to strengthen digital security in the educational field. [Extracted from the article]

Aiming at the problem of cartoon piracy and plagiarism, this paper proposes a method of cartoon copyright recognition based on character personality actions. This method can be used to compare the original cartoon actions with the action characteristics of pirated or copied cartoons to identify whether there is piracy or plagiarism. Firstly, an image preprocessing scheme for character extraction is designed. GrabCut interactive image segmentation algorithm was used to obtain cartoon characters, and then binarization and morphological processing were performed on the results. Secondly, a feature extraction scheme based on character profile, moving character and character pose is designed. By extracting the perimeter and area of the character contour, the length-to-width ratio of the smallest rectangle and the inclination angle of the contour, the character contour features are obtained. The three-dimensional coordinates are established by the central point position of the cartoon character in the two-dimensional image and the change of the character's zoom in and out, and the character's motion angle characteristics are calculated. By skeletonizing a character to obtain the pose characteristics, and using deburring operation to remove redundant branches, then extract the skeleton joint angle information. Finally, feature fusion is performed on the extracted features. The experimental results show that the proposed method breaks the limitation of the conventional single feature based recognition, and can better extract the character features including contour feature, motion feature and pose feature through multi-feature based extraction, so as to protect the cartoon copyright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illegal file sharing of copyrighted contents through popular file sharing networks poses an enormous threat to providers of digital contents, such as, games, softwares, music and movies. Though empirical studies of network effects on piracy is a well-studied domain, the dynamics of peer effect in the context of evolving social contagion has not been enough explored using dynamical models. In this research, we methodically study the trends of online piracy with a continuous ODE approach and differential equations on graphs to have a clear comparative view. We first formulate a compartmental model to study bifurcations and thresholds mathematically. We later move on with a network-based analysis to illustrate the proliferation of online piracy dynamics with an epidemiological approach over a social network. We figure out a solution for this online piracy problem by developing awareness among individuals and introducing media campaigns, which could be a valuable factor in eradicating and controlling online piracy. Next, using degree-block approximation, network analysis has been performed to investigate the phenomena from a heterogeneous approach and to derive the threshold condition for the persistence of piracy in the population in a steady state. Considering the dual control of positive peer influence and media-driven awareness, we examine the system through realistic parameter selection to better understand the complexity of the dynamics and suggest policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article determines the factors that influence the illegal electronic books download in Spain. Firstly, through the review of the existing literature, a survey is conducted on the consumption habits of electronic books and other series of questions related to social and psychological factors on noncompliance with the law. Secondly, the mentioned survey was carried out to 404 consumers for the construction of an ad hoc database. Afterwards, a binomial econometric model is used with these data. The results indicate that the social environment and the crime neutralization mechanisms play a fundamental role in the probability of incurring in the illegal download of electronic books. Other factors such as the perception of the risk of being sanctioned or persecuted are not significant. The article contributes, with data, to the potential design of policies related to piracy within the book sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technology and the Internet have revolutionized the entertainment media industry by harnessing network effects and transforming content creation and distribution. However, these advances have also brought challenges, especially regarding intellectual property, with significant long-term implications for entertainment media companies. While the existing literature on this topic is limited, this study aims to analyze the impact of these trends using the Metcalfe and McLuhan effects and provide insights to help traditional media companies thrive in this changing environment. The Metcalfe effect, exemplifying network effects, suggests that the increasing number of Internet users generates economies of scale, amplifies content value, and facilitates the emergence of distribution channels and revenue opportunities in the entertainment media industry. Additionally, the McLuhan effect emphasizes the transformative role of information media in reshaping content production and dissemination. However, the rapid development of the Internet has inadvertently facilitated the piracy of entertainment media content, necessitating the attention and implementation of effective countermeasures by industry stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardware implementations of cryptographic primitives require protection against physical attacks and supply chain threats. This raises the question of secure composability of different attack countermeasures, i.e., whether protecting a circuit against one threat can make it more vulnerable against a different threat. In this article, we study the consequences of applying logic locking, a popular design-for-trust solution against intellectual property piracy and overproduction, to cryptographic circuits. We show that the ability to unlock the circuit incorrectly gives the adversary new powerful attack options. We introduce LEDFA (locking-enabled differential fault analysis) and demonstrate for several ciphers and families of locking schemes that fault attacks become possible (or consistently easier) for incorrectly unlocked circuits. In several cases, logic locking has made circuit implementations prone to classical algebraic attacks with no fault injection needed altogether. We refer to this "zero-fault" version of LEDFA by the term LEDA, investigate its success factors in-depth and propose a countermeasure to protect the logic-locked implementations against LEDA. We also perform test vector leakage assessment (TVLA) of incorrectly unlocked AES implementations to show the effects of logic locking regarding side-channel leakage. Our results indicate that logic locking is not safe to use in cryptographic circuits, making them less rather than more secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the internet as a medium of music distribution and how it shapes the intellectual property rights of Nigerian musicians with a particular focus on their revenue. It does so by examining existing data on revenue from two recording musicians whose works are distributed via mainstream channels and the Internet. Methodologically, the article employs both descriptive and survey designs. Data were collected using questionnaires, interviews, and previous literature. The findings reveal that the gains of music copyright can be guaranteed more by the internet rather than mainstream distribution channels. This is so because the internet offers cost-effective music promotional services and credible indices for the sales of musical works. Despite the traces of music piracy on the internet, the medium breaks the oligopoly of the record labels and the subjugation of artists as principal stakeholders in the music business. In all, we argue that unless and until (Nigerian) musicians focus on the internet for their music distribution, the issue of limited revenue as a result of infringement will persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of batch DNS filtering of copyright-infringing websites, a novel administrative-based process that does not require judicial involvement. In partnership with a large telecommunication provider, we measure the impact of this intervention on piracy activity and the legal alternatives integrated into households' media subscription bundles, an aspect largely unexplored in prior literature. We find a significant reduction in Internet traffic, which proxies piracy activity. However, we do not observe statistically significant changes in the consumption of the legal alternatives under consideration, only a slight increase in TV viewership. To further understand these outcomes, we examine the heterogeneity of these results based on households' pre-block usage intensity of digital piracy and demographic characteristics. Our work contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of piracy control strategies and informs policy makers and industry practitioners about the benefits and limitations of DNS-based website blocking. • Digital pirates are heavy users of paid and free legal media. • DNS blocks on piracy sites lower Internet traffic, indicating less piracy. • DNS blocks don't affect pay-TV, VoD, and paid channels' consumption. • DNS blocks are less effective against piracy in households with young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of today's tremendous economic growth, social, and technological advances, the world has seen the formation of economic blocs. The intensity of the rivalry between domestic and foreign products has increased to improve their capacity in terms of quality and price, while e-commerce has grown in popularity, both with exhibitors and consumers. The citizens can search the internet for their needs at any time, in any country, but new risks have emerged that threaten the consumer who purchases and concludes contracts electronically, such as fraud risks, misrepresentation, commercial extortion, and piracy, as well as the consumer's inability to truly inspect the contractual object, and so on. In this survey, we give a study that clarifies the types of deceptive ads that are made online, whether through spam or popular advertising sites like Craigslist or online dating, and we show what action may be taken to prevent ad fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Netflix's arrival in Australia in 2015, almost a decade after its start as a streaming media platform, helped to close the cultural and technological gap in televisual content legitimately available to the national audience. Australians, eager for international content unavailable locally, had turned to Internet piracy, dramatically changing traditional national televisual consumption practices. Although commonly described as "disruptive," Netflix's arrival in Australia, according to its users, was mostly stabilizing and not as transformative to their viewing practices as it may seem. By drawing on in-depth interviews with Australian Netflix users, we provide an account of its early integration into the Australian media landscape. The methodology provides a new model for examining the experience of users engaging with technologies labeled as "disruptive." The Disruption-Experience (D-E) model is a means for exploring participants' experiences and accounting for ways that new technologies can reinforce, undermine and dramatically shift user thoughts, feelings and practices. In applying this model to the experiences of Australian Netflix users, we discovered that Netflix concretized—but did not necessarily create—a new set of expectations about agency, accessibility, and temporality that has not previously been accounted for. This is an important discovery at a time of rapid proliferation and adoption of streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services in Australia, as the competing costs and demands of multiple services could mean a return to the once-prodigious levels of illegal and unauthorized access to television content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Recent advances in networks and digital technology have provided many user‐friendly environments such as telemedicine, e‐banking, e‐content, and e‐commerce. It has revolutionized the multimedia industry and made it accessible anytime and anywhere. However, its limitation also appeared in digital content piracy, which is more prevalent nowadays. Digital rights management (DRM) systems were developed to control the illegal spreading of digital content. Protocols are being developed to enable effective and secure communication in DRM systems. As security and efficiency are essential parameters, the approach should be two birds with one stone; i.e., the protocol should achieve efficiency and security together. Our investigation identified that secure mechanisms either have increased computation/communication overhead or fail to meet specified security criteria when discussing efficient content key delivery mechanisms. So, an efficient protocol design with the right security attributes is required. We have worked on designing a content delivery mechanism keeping in mind the desirable attribute of security and without decreasing overhead. The suggested solution targets "two birds with one stone." We proved the security of the scheme in the random oracle model. We verify the security against active attacks using the formal simulation tool AVISPA. Detailed analysis is performed for the evaluation of computational and communication overhead. The comparative study is also presented to understand the gains in efficiency and security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital drugs have become a phenomenon that worries and disturbs the international community in general and the Iraqi society in particular with all its spectrums, due to its connection with the changes that occurred in the world of digital, and given the media halo created by this type of abuse, which the Internet has become a popular market for, as it is sold and marketed in the absence of a legal deterrent and explicit texts to criminalize This type of psychotropic effect, so it became necessary to shed light on this phenomenon, which attracts young people and adolescents and pulls them into the world of digital addiction, by codifying the necessary legislation that criminalizes everything that affects the human mind through software. This study is an attempt to show what digital drugs are as a new and dangerous social phenomenon of unregulated addiction, which is a product of globalization and digitalization. To confront it legislatively, socially and technically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright hacking and piracy have increased as the Internet has grown in popularity and access to multimedia material has increased. Security, property protection, and authentication have all been achieved via watermarking techniques. This paper presents a summary of some recent efforts on video watermarking techniques, with an emphasis on studies from 2018 to 2022, as well as the various approaches, achievements, and attacks utilized as testing measures against these watermarking systems. According to the findings of this study, frequency-domain watermarking techniques are more popular and reliable than spatial domain watermarking approaches. Hybrid DCT and DWT are the two most used techniques and achieve good results in the field of video watermarking, and the system is more robust against attacks. PSNR was taken into consideration as a comparison metric in various recent articles in terms of robustness in the video watermarking field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to youth culture by adolescents has changed as new communication technologies have found new ways of offering media content to viewers. Adolescents today access more content more frequently. However, the greater their exposure, the higher the likelihood of this leading to risk behaviors such as access to pornography, plagiarism, piracy and copyright violation. The aim of the present study is, therefore, to determine the frequency of these risk behaviors linked to the Internet content accessed and downloaded by minors, analyzing this variable in accordance with gender, age and context (Spain, Italy and Greece). We analyzed the responses provided by 2,529 adolescents (1,264 girls/1,262 boys) aged between 10 and 17 years from Spain, Italy and Greece. In general, adolescent boys, especially those aged 16 and 17 years, reported engaging more frequently in risk behaviors, particularly in reference to accessing youth culture content. Likewise, in terms of context, the highest means were observed among participants from Attica (Greece) and the Madrid Region (Spain), whereas the lowest means were observed in the Marche Region (Italy) and Navarre (Spain). The results revealed statistically significant differences in terms of gender, age and context. Thereby, they highlight the importance of focusing on media education from a gender perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telegram, an encrypted digital messaging application, is an emerging hotbed for digital piracy. It has several features that make it attractive for pirates, including the ability to share large files at scale, coupled with an emphasis on privacy and security that allows for such sharing to be carried out largely anonymously. Telegram gained prominence in academic literature as a safe haven for activities in the digital realm that have increasingly found themselves subject to institutional censure. However, while most studies have delved into the matter of online video piracy on Telegram, perspectives on the economic models and revenues relied on by Telegram pirates in India remain largely unexplored. This paper proposes to discuss Telegram's ascent as a significant medium in the Audio-Visual piracy market in India and will more specifically analyse the mechanisms of piracy monetization (payment services, and ad-revenue generators) which represent an important stake in pirates' strategies. Finally, the paper argues that the analysis in terms of economic models represents a valuable contribution to current debates on copyright enforcement. The methodology relies on both primary and secondary sources complemented with semi-structured interviews with pirates and an entertainment industry professional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last ten years, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have been rapidly developed as a means to distribute digital content and to disseminate organizations worldwide. Cultural industry adopted these technologies and developed applications as a means of strategic development in the digital world and in order to "internationalize" their audience. Moreover, these technologies offered the opportunity to reshape the whole industry by enriching (physical and digital) visitors' experiences. Current research provides evidence about developing VR and AR tools that can act as internationalization facilitators when it comes to cultural industry. Research was conducted during the "VARSOCUL" project funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the Greek National Scope Action entitled "RESEARCH-CREATE-INNOVATE". The project's main result are presented, alongside with VR and AR tools developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the intention and participation in media and software piracy have been widely investigated, little is known concerning the determinants associated with electronic book piracy. With the adoption of e-book reader devices, Internet piracy remains a global concern that impacts multiple stakeholders, including authors, publishers, and libraries. The current study aims to examine the factors associated with electronic book piracy among college students. Results indicate that peer association and perceived risk are significantly linked to one's participation in e-book piracy. However, techniques of neutralization are not statistically significant. Libraries and publishers must educate students and raise awareness about the potential outcomes and risks related to e-book piracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Anime's knowledge cultures: Geek, Otaku, Zhai" by Li explores the significance of geek culture, particularly focusing on anime and its transnational impact. Li argues that geeks are active agents in the information era and sheds light on the often overlooked Asian influence in geek culture. The book delves into the emergence of the Chinese Zhai generation as leaders in the knowledge culture, examining fan interactions with media content, and challenging existing frameworks in media studies. It will appeal to scholars studying anime, postindustrialism, fan studies, and platform studies, offering insights into the complexities of geekdom and knowledge work in the contemporary era. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: Unauthorised file sharing (UFS) in online communities (OCs) is a major intellectual property concern. Researchers have traditionally viewed UFS as digital piracy and have suggested that deterrents, such as legal actions, should be in place. However, previous research has not considered the OC context and cannot explain why OC members share unauthorised files even when there is legislation against this in place. In OCs, UFS exhibits features of public goods contribution. Therefore, the authors claim that public goods contribution motivations can provide a compelling explanation for UFS in OCs. Design/methodology/approach: The authors propose a theoretical model in which two egoistic public goods contribution motivations (namely, warm-glow giving and demand for resources) are tested alongside motivations informed by the sanctions described by deterrence theory, a theory widely used within the digital piracy perspective. Findings: The authors find that warm glow and demand for resources are positively related to UFS in OCs; the effect of warm glow is moderated by users' attachment to OCs. Importantly, the results suggest that although sanctions significantly predict UFS, the effect of sanctions on UFS becomes insignificant in the presence of warm glow, demand for resources and attachment. Originality/value: The study offers new insights into why users engage in UFS and highlights that public goods contribution should be taken into account in developing anti-piracy policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 188 million people in the United States use a subscription video streaming service, yet digital piracy remains prevalent and costs the U.S. economy an estimated $29.2 billion annually. This paper investigates the relationship between a movie's availability on Netflix, the largest video subscription service, and intent to illegally stream the movie. We leverage a contract dispute that caused Epix (a cable network company) to move all its movies from Netflix to Hulu, representing a substantial decrease in the legal streaming availability of these movies. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that reducing legal streaming access via the removal of Epix movies from Netflix results in a 20% increase in piracy intent relative to movies that remained on Netflix, as measured by Google search volume. This study contributes to the understanding of the substitution between legal streaming services and movie piracy and has implications for content owners deciding what platform to offer their movie on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intellectual properties (IP) protection of deep neural networks (DNN) models has raised many concerns in recent years. To date, most of the existing works use DNN watermarking to protect the IP of DNN models. However, the DNN watermarking methods can only passively verify the copyright of the model after the DNN model has been pirated, which cannot prevent piracy in the first place. In this paper, an active DNN IP protection technique against DNN piracy, called ActiveGuard, is proposed. ActiveGuard can provide active authorisation control, users' identities management, and ownership verification for DNN models. Specifically, for the first time, ActiveGuard exploits well‐crafted rare and specific adversarial examples with specific classes and confidences as users' fingerprints to distinguish authorised users from unauthorised ones. Authorised users can input their fingerprints to the DNN model for identity authentication and then obtain normal usage, while unauthorised users will obtain a very poor model performance. In addition, ActiveGuard enables the model owner to embed a watermark into the weights of the DNN model for ownership verification. Compared to the few existing active DNN IP protection works, ActiveGuard can support both users' identities identification and active authorisation control. Besides, ActiveGuard introduces lower overhead than these existing active protection works. Experimental results show that, for authorised users, the test accuracy of LeNet‐5 and Wide Residual Network (WRN) models are 99.15% and 91.46%, respectively, while for unauthorised users, the test accuracy of LeNet‐5 and WRN models are only 8.92% and 10%, respectively. Besides, each authorised user can pass the fingerprint authentication with a high success rate (up to 100%). For ownership verification, the embedded watermark can be successfully extracted, while the normal performance of DNN models will not be affected. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that ActiveGuard is robust against model fine‐tuning attack, pruning attack, and three types of fingerprint forgery attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A phenomenon that is currently rife is covering songs created by other people to be uploaded on digital music media for commercial purposes without the creator's permission. While copyright violations have occurred so far, often without any meaningful legal settlement. One of the most visited digital music platforms by the public is a video-based digital music media called YouTube. The results are not copyright infringement if the creation and distribution of the Cover Version through information and communication technology media is non-commercial in nature and benefits the Author or related parties, if the Author expresses no objection to such production and distribution. If the act of covering a song does not meet the elements of Article 43 and Article 44, it is a Copyright infringement. What Gen Halilintar did was copyright infringement, because he made a cover of a song without fulfilling the above elements. The author does not fully agree with the judge's decision to completely reject Nagaswara's lawsuit, because what Gen Halilintar did was a copyright infringement. The basis for the judge's consideration was that the purpose of making cover came from subscribers. Many people cover songs through YouTube, Gen Halilintar covered Nagaswara's “Lagi Syantik” song without permission but still included the word cover and the song title. The judge found that the claim for royalties from this song fell to Wahana Musik Indonesia (WAMI) as the collective management agency, not to Gen Halilintar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the popularity of smart phones and digital cameras, authentication and protection of digital images have become important to every producer and consumer. Although many digital watermarking methods have been proposed to mitigate the growing problem of online piracy, their efficient deployment for real-time processing in hardware lacks sufficient attention. Hence, with the first introduction of ${Z}$ channel, this article advances a tiny and efficient architecture named TEA-Z to implement digital watermarking for color images. Avoiding complex computing units with the general color space conversion (GCSC) and simplified discrete cosine transform (DCT), TEA-Z can better achieve the design goals of low complexity, high efficiency, and easy deployment compared with the latest methods. For FPGA implementation, TEA-Z can achieve the maximum frame rate of 3150 frames/s for 256 $\times $ 256 color images and peak energy efficiency of 4.13 $\times \,\,\textbf {10}^{\textbf {5}}$ Mbps/W at the maximum frequency of 206.48 MHz. For ASIC implementation, the peak energy efficiency will be 2.40 $\times \,\,\textbf {10}^{\textbf {7}}$ Mbps/W with the tiny area of 0.00356 $\textbf {mm}^{\textbf {2}}$ and ultralow power of 0.2002 mW at the frequency of 200 MHz under 90-nm CMOS technology. Moreover, TEA-Z can provide various watermarking strategies with its configurations to meet different needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of information and communication technologies has created a new dimension in interpersonal relationships, which is commonly called cyberspace. Structural features of cyberspace such as anonymity, the lack of non-verbal indicators of interaction, their asynchrony, a sense of impunity and the lack of specific norms of conduct cause that the behavior of some people online may differ significantly from their behavior in real life. Individuals with psychopathic personality disorder can use cyberspace for criminal activities such as cyberbullying, trolling, digital piracy, cybervandalism or data theft. This is a very significant problem, as some researchers predict that as digital communication develops, 'cyberpsychopaths' will become the dominant form of criminals. Currently, there is a lack of research on the relationship between the structural features of cyberspace and the expression of psychopathic personality traits and their role in committing cybercrimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyzes legal and illegal access to e-books in Lithuanian language as one of the small language publishing markets in order to better understand the digital transformation of books in Lithuania. The range of legally and illegally publicly available online e-books in Lithuanian language was identified and analyzed in few aspects, revealing the range of choice of legally and illegally available e-books in Lithuanian. The results showed that at the end of 2020, there were about 6 thousand in legal access and over 15 thousand in illegal access unique titles of e-books in Lithuanian language. Analysis of the data showed that only 10–25% of legal e-books have become illegally accessible. The rest is "published" by users of illegal websites themselves, mostly by scanning and OCRing printed books. Four main channels for accessing legal e-books have been identified: online bookstores, libraries, subscription service platforms, and academic online bookstores. Choice to read legal books on the screen in Lithuanian language is small, and illegal access channels offer several times larger choice of e-books. The decision of some large Lithuanian publishers not to publish (or publish only symbolically) e-books does not prevent them from appearing in illegal access, and readers who are becoming more and more accustomed to reading on the screen are likely to encourage the demand and emergence of illegal supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The current study aims to identify and explore causes and consequences of unauthorized use of books from readers', publishers', and authors' points of view. The case of Lithuania also assessed, especially historical background (banned alphabet, book smuggling, theft as the social norm in Soviet times) of the country. Design/methodology/approach: Aiming for more understanding why readers, authors and publishers are using or not using technology for unauthorized access of books, technology acceptance model approach was used, a total of 30 respondents (publishers, authors and readers) were interviewed in semi-structured face-to-face interviews and thematic analysis of collected qualitative data was conducted. Interviews were coded in English with coding software for further analysis. Findings: Findings indicate that the main cause for the unauthorized use of books is a lack of legal e-book titles and acquisition options. This mainly points at publishers, however, instead of using unauthorized sources as opportunities for author promotion or marketing, they rather concentrate on the causes of unauthorized use of books which they are not in control of, including access to unauthorized sources, habits and economic causes. Some publishers believe that the lack of legal e-book titles is the consequence of unauthorized use of book rather than its cause. Originality/value: This research contributed to the body of knowledge by investigating unauthorized use of books from readers', publishers' and authors' points of view which renders to have a better understanding of the causes and consequences of such behavior, as well as differences between these roles. The authors suggest that these causes lead to the intention to use and actual use of technology which is easier to use and which gives more perceived advantages – technology for unauthorized downloading and reading of books vs legal e-book acquisition options. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-03-2021-0133. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tanjong Piandang is a Chinese fishing village in Krian, Perak, Malaysia. It first appeared in Anderson's work in 1824 as a favorite resort for pirates. The people in Tanjong Piandang had the reputation of being a lawless and turbulent lot, and the British colonial government tried to demolish the settlement twice by burning it down after riots. Each time, villagers gathered together and rebuilt their houses. This paper investigates how the colonial government tried to maintain law and order in this space, and the local resistance that attempted, though ultimately failed, to keep the colonial power out their village. Most of the studies on the grassroots resistance against British rule in Malaya are concentrated on the local Malay communities, not on the Chinese who are considered as a migrant community. Therefore, Tanjong Piandang is a good case study of Chinese resistance against the British. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of the globalized integrated circuit (IC) supply chain has drawn the attention of numerous malicious actors that try to exploit it for profit. One of the most prominent targets of such parties is the third-party intellectual property (3PIP) vendors and their circuit designs. With the increasing number of transactions between vendors and system integrators, the threat of IP reuse and piracy has become a significant consideration for the IC industry. What is more, the correctness of 3PIP designs should be verified before integration, imposing another challenge for 3PIP vendors since they have to prove the functionality of their designs to system integrators while protecting the privacy of the circuit implementations. To eliminate this deadlock, we utilize the cryptographic technique of “zero-knowledge proofs” to enable 3PIP vendors to convince system integrators about various functional properties of a circuit (e.g., area, power, and frequency) without disclosing its netlist (i.e., in zero-knowledge). Our approach comprises a circuit compiler that transforms arbitrary netlists into a zero knowledge-friendly format and a library of modules that provide cryptographic guarantees for various properties of the netlist while hiding the actual gates. We evaluate our method using combinational and sequential circuits from the ISCAS and ITC benchmark suites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 60's and 70's were marked by protests against the cultural industry, with music traffic through MP3. To destroy online piracy, streaming platforms have emerged, offering “free” music. With this in mind, the general objective of the present research is to reflect on how the consumption of music interferes with its own representation. To this end, the following specif-ic objectives were established: a) to gather bibliog-raphy on the theme “free music”; b) investigate how information science can benefit people through the Internet of Things; c) highlight capitalism generated in the music market and the main points about streaming platforms and music sales. It is concluded that every technological performance of music is marked by the interest of the market (which has influenced and continues to influence cultural choices). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand and predict the consumer patterns of generational groups within a highly technological world, it is critical to study their experiences, social views, and attitudes about music. Today, limited information is available to the research community about "Gen Z," a population group that recently entered college life and the next largest consumer group after the Millennials. This study aims at closing this gap by exploring and comparing distinctive patterns and consumer behavior in the music market between Gen Z and Millennials. Using a group of 1624 college students from two universities in the United States, we found that Gen Z is less prone to music piracy than Millennials, and those who pirate music tend to share similar social norms, a limited understanding of copyright infringements, and poor views about the music industry. New technologies are also transforming the way future generations are drawn into music piracy. We conclude that music infringement will continue to be an ethical dilemma and the industry should continue in its effort to design consumer policies to assist young generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concentration of power in terms of user traffic and copyright content is most evident in content platforms in China. Such concentration has generated an unexpected impact on the way we understand and appreciate creativity, on copyright enforcement and determination of liability on content platforms, and on the regulation of the cultural market by the government. Specifically, the concentration of power in content platforms has not only curbed direct online piracies to a large extent but has also accelerated the fragmentation of copyright enforcement and spawned the need for algorithmic recommendation and filtering systems, which in turn has reinforced the cultural censorship system of China. This paper argues that the employment of algorithms by platforms must be treated with prudence: the algorithmic decision-making systems employed by platforms must be transparent as much as possible, and remedies must be provided for concerned users. The algorithms employed by content platforms must be adjusted to reflect not just the interests of the platforms but also the public interest in accessing and delivering information and local policy considerations. This paper suggests that our regulatory framework should reflect the algorithmic turn of content platforms in its legal and non-legal instruments and alleviate their negative impact on society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guobin Cui finds this kind of proposal misleading as various kinds of information contained in the dataset are already covered by different laws such as property law and intellectual property laws. Brownsword goes into the root of law and governance and depicts how technological advancements disrupt our belief in and respect for the law. We have witnessed the rise of platforms, blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, virtual and augmented reality, and the advancement of biotechnology and their power to better our lives. [Extracted from the article]

With an increasing risk of circuit piracy and intellectual property (IP), it is necessary to solve the problem of hardware security in digital signal processing (DSP) via hardware obfuscation. To obscure the circuit at a structural level, a high level of transformation techniques is used. High-level transformations (HLT) not only help in obfuscating the architecture of the circuit, it simultaneously meets the area-speed-power trade-offs. A key-based multiplexer design is proposed for the switch instance, which gives the desired output to the next node only if the configuration key is correct. A single bit change in the key will affect the whole functionality of the design. This key-based multiplexer helps to achieve functional obfuscation. As a result, two-level security is achieved. The objective of this paper is to prevent reverse engineering by structurally and functionally obfuscating the DSP circuit. Implemented and analyzed the area of the obfuscated 3-tap, 5-tap finite impulse response (FIR) filter, and obfuscated infinite impulse response (IIR) filter. Results are compared with those of the non-obfuscated filter circuit. Experimental results show that by applying the high level of transformations, the circuit gets obfuscated. Despite that, the area is reduced. The results confirm that the area of the obfuscated third-order IIR filter design is reduced by 24.56% as compared with its corresponding non-obfuscated filter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Society has integrated the internet into the fabric of everyday life, blurring the line between physical reality and the cyber world. As a result, society's dependence on the internet has opened the way for new cyber-based crimes. However, each state relies on several jurisdictional theories to legitimate a criminal prosecution and these, too, have become blurred. The introduction of cyberspace to these oftterritorially based jurisdictional theories has created a morass of what was once clear. Instead of grafting these the territorial jurisdictional theories, this Comment argues that the universal criminal jurisdiction historically used to prosecute piracy and modernly to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and other heinous and far-reaching offenses should be expanded to cyberspace. In many ways, cyberspace exhibits many of the characteristics that prompted universal jurisdiction originally: it is a free-flowing, non-bound space that is accessible to almost all nations without any single nation being able to control it. Moreover, the prosecution of cybercrimes via universal jurisdiction may satisfy the two core rationales underlying universal jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]