Copy protectionCopy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, HD-DVDs, computer software discs, video game discs and cartridges, audio CDs and some VCDs. Some methods of copy protection have also led to criticism because it caused inconvenience for paying consumers or secretly installed additional or unwanted software to detect copying activities on the consumer's computer.
Alexa InternetAlexa Internet, Inc. was an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other information on over 30 million websites. Alexa estimated website traffic based on a sample of millions of Internet users using browser extensions as well as from sites that had chosen to install an Alexa script.
Console gameA console game is a type of video game consisting of images and often sounds generated by a video game console, which are displayed on a television or similar audio-video system, and that can be manipulated by a player. This manipulation usually takes place using a handheld device connected to the console, called a controller. The controller generally contains several buttons and directional controls such as analogue joysticks, each of which has been assigned a purpose for interacting with and controlling the images on the screen.
Book scanningBook scanning or book digitization (also: magazine scanning or magazine digitization) is the process of converting physical books and magazines into digital media such as , electronic text, or electronic books (e-books) by using an . Large scale book scanning projects have made many books available online. Digital books can be easily distributed, reproduced, and read on-screen. Common file formats are DjVu, Portable Document Format (PDF), and (TIFF).
Sci-HubSci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, without regard to copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. It does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls (see Serials crisis). The site is extensively used worldwide. In September 2019, the site's operator(s) said that it served approximately 400,000 requests per day.
TorrentFreakNOTOC TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and , as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights. The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchman using the pseudonym "Ernesto Van Der Sar". He was joined by Andy "Enigmax" Maxwell and Ben Jones in 2007. Regular contributors include Rickard Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party. The online publication eCommerceTimes, in 2009, described "Ernesto" as the pseudonym of Lennart Renkema, owner of TorrentFreak.
Motion Picture AssociationThe Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1945 until September 2019, its original goal was to ensure the viability of the American film industry. In addition, the MPA established guidelines for film content which resulted in the creation of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1930.
Wayback MachineThe Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" to see how websites looked in the past. Its founders, Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, developed the Wayback Machine to provide "universal access to all knowledge" by preserving archived copies of defunct web pages. Launched on May 10, 1996, the Wayback Machine had saved more than 38.
MicroformMicroforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. For special purposes, greater optical reductions may be used. Three formats are common: microfilm (reels), microfiche (flat sheets), and aperture cards. Microcards, also known as "micro-opaques", a format no longer produced, were similar to microfiche, but printed on cardboard rather than photographic film.
Aaron SwartzAaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS; the technical architecture for Creative Commons, an organization dedicated to creating copyright licenses; the website framework web.py; and Markdown, a lightweight markup language format. Swartz was involved in the development of the social news aggregation website Reddit until he departed from the company in 2007.