Top Ten Mysterious Cyber Crimes

Pc Magazine has a great article on the Top Ten Mysterious Cyber Crimes of all time. The article can be found here.

Which one do you think should be ranked #1? Why?
Which one/s do you think shouldn't be in the top 10? Why?

Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail Account is Hacked

If you're a typical Yahoo mail user and you forget your password, you have to answer a series of questions before you can access your account. The questions are typically personal in nature and can typically only be answered by the account owner.

However, Sarah Palin's account was hacked because someone was able to figure out the answers to her personal questions through quick Web searches and mental logic. The full details can be found here . Basically, Ms. Palin's personal questions were:

1) Her birthday (answer found on Wikipedia)
2) Zip Code (Found at US Mail Website. The hacker knew she was from Wasilia, AK)
3) Where she met her spouse (Through some research, the hacker discovered that she eloped with her high school sweetheart, so the name of her high school was the answer)

The truth of the matter is that anyone who knows you well, friends and relatives for example, probably know enough to break into any of your Web based accounts if the site requires you answer personal questions when you forget your password. Think about the above three questions. How many people do you know that could answer all three of them?

Questions:
1) Why would someone want to hack into Sarah Palin's account?
2) Do you think the hacker should be prosecuted?
3) Why would the hacker brag about hacking into the account?
4) Can you think of any personal questions that might be more difficult for someone to answer than the ones listed above? (Keep it clean!)

Fair Use? You Tube Video Pulled Due to Background Music

A 30 second You Tube video of a toddler dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy was pulled because it supposedly violated copyright law.

After several weeks the video reappeared on You Tube as the publisher (Universal Music Publishing Group) realized that there was no copyright violation since the video only contained 20+ seconds of the song, the creator (the parent of the child dancing) wasn't trying to make any money, and the video would never be misconstrued as a video for the actual song. Her son's dancing was the focal point of the video - not the song itself. Furthermore, the sound quality was extremely poor as the music was recorded playing through a speaker that sounded as if it was in another room. As a result, the creator had the right to incorporate the song into the video through Fair Use law.

Here's a blog post detailing the situation in greater detail. As you can see, the creator is suing because she believes the video should never have been taken down in the first place. Although she was not authorized to use the song, she should have been able to incorporate it into the video due to fair use. She claims that Universal and Prince abused the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DCMA was created to deal with illegal downloading. Universal claims that it shouldn't have to decide if Fair Use is warranted if a video clip incorporates copyrighted material. They should just be able to demand that the clip be removed. If the plaintiff wins the case, it would seem that music publishers will have to decide if Fair Use is warranted before ordering clips to be removed.

More info on her lawsuit can be found here.

Questions:

1)Why do you think the publishing company demanded the video be removed?
2) Do you think copyright laws were violated? Why or why not?
3) Why do you think the video's creator is countersuing?
4) Why do the music companies view thousands of videos looking for copyright violation?

Here's the video:

For Rent - Microsoft Office

Microsoft is now allowing you to purchase the Home and Student edition of Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) for $70 as part of its new product, Microsoft Equipt.

However, you are not buying the right to use Office forever as the product comes with a one year subscription. After a year, the product will stop working the same way the free downloadable sixty day trial from Office2007.com stops working after 60 days.

You can buy the full version of Office 2007 for between $120 and $149, so why would you "borrow" it like a library book for a year at about 1/2 the price? Well, if you pay the subscription fee every year, you'll receive continuous updates INCLUDING any new version of Office that are released. Think Office 2010 or Office 2013. Also, you can install the software on up to three different machines using the same license key.

Here's the official description of what the product contains. I'm not familiar with the Windows Live product, but it sounds like Microsoft's way to send email and store files/photos online. OneCare seems to be Microsoft's attempt to enter the security related software market.

Windows Live OneCare award-winning protection and performance—antivirus, antispyware, firewall, online identity theft protection, automated tune-ups, file and photo backup, and multi-PC management

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 to get things done and organized—Word 2007, Excel® 2007, PowerPoint® 2007, and OneNote® 2007

Windows Live tools to stay in touch with friends and family—Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Writer, and Windows Live Toolbar

Here's a link to the product page at Circuit City. As of this posting there were two comments listed. I'm not sure either poster realizes that they are renting the software.

Questions:

1) Are you interested in purchasing this product? Why or why not?
2) Why do you think Microsoft released Equipt?
3) Are there any software applications you'd consider renting instead of purchasing? Why or why not?
4) What type of person would be interested in purchasing this product?
5) Is there any benefit to renting software vs. purchasing?

Twitter - Want to Let the World Know What You're Eating Right Now?

There is a relatively new Website taking the world by storm. Twitter!. The purpose of the site is to let the world know what little things you do throughout the day. For example you can log into your Twitter account during breakfast and let your followers know what you're eating. If you're settling down to watch a DVD, you can let the world know what movie you're going to check out. Who will read your postings? Your followers, other Twitter members who choose to keep track of your actions. You've either let them know about your Twitter page or they found you by searching.

I found a great article on Twitter here

I've even gone ahead and created my own account so I can try and figure out why people use the site, although I can't think of anything more boring than writing about the mundane things I do throughout the day. Actually I can....READING about them.

I did a search on my last name and found a page from a Jeff Schwarz of Tucson, Arizona. He used Twitter on and off for about two months earlier this year. Here's a link to his entries: https://twitter.com/JeffSchwarz Reading through his postings makes you wonder how the site is popular! Jeff is going to mirror SQL Servers? Stop the presses! It's possible his friends, family and co-workers care, but it's worthless info to a complete stranger.

Anyway, if you want to try out Twitter and write about it here, go ahead and create an account and start posting about your experience. You can also let us know your user name so we can find you on Twitter by searching for you.

Straighter Line..The Wave of the Future?

For those of you who don't mind online learning, there is an interesting new site called Straighterline.com . Here's what's cool about it. A college can choose to partner with straighterline.com by accepting credits students earn by taking courses at the site. The best part is the courses only cost a few hundred dollars each. McGraw Hill, the respected publishing company, is behind straighterline, so it's highly likely the content is rigorous and up to par with what one would expect from a college course.

Here's the problem, as of this writing, only four colleges have signed up to partner.

My questions are:
1) How would it benefit RVCC to partner with Straighterline?
2) How would it harm RVCC?
3) Why do you think the site exists?
4) What are your opinions related to online learning?
5) Research the partner colleges. Do they seem reputable? Why or why not?
6) What courses does Straighterline offer? Why were these chosen?
7) Is there a time limit on how long a student can take to complete a course?

Illegal but Free Online Texts

The good news - the text for your course is available for free online. The bad news-it was illegally uploaded. What do you do? Do you use the illegal copy and save yourself some money, or do you buy your own legal copy?

There are a number of sites that offer illegal copies of texts. According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, sites such as TextBook Torrents offer over 5,000 full texts in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Textbook publishers have known this day would come. They actively search the Web for sites offering illegal downloads. When one is found, the site hosting the file is asked to remove it. No lawsuits are threatened, which differs from the way the RIAA goes about its business. According to the article, between 60,000 and 250,000 illegal texts are found online EVERY week.

Here's a quote from the homepage of Textbook Torrents:
On Friday 6/27, we received a request from Pearson Education, one of the bigger textbook publishers, listing 78 torrents that they wanted disabled. While they are acting on extremely shaky legal ground, we are not in a position to fight a legal battle with the organization. As a result, in the interest of allowing the continued existence of this place, I have acceded to their request.

1) What could the publishers do to solve this problem? Should it even be addressed?

2) What do you think motivates students to share copies of texts they may have purchased?

3) Why do you think college texts are more likely to be uploaded illegally then novels or non-fiction books?

4) Why do you think the publishing industry isn't taking an overly aggressive approach to removing illegally uploaded texts?

How the RIAA Catches Music Pirates

Did you know that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) uses LimeWire to catch music pirates? In case you've never heard of Limewire, it's a file sharing program that lets users connect to other users around the world in order to share music/files/video. However, some of the files shared are copyrighted. Hence, laws are broken when they're copied from user to user.

Here's the jist of it:
A) The RIAA hired a company to use Limewire to track illegal downloading.
B) The company uses a list of copyrighted songs to see who's trading illegally.
C) The IP address of the user is tracked to discover the user's network
D) Songs are sampled to discover if they are in fact the copywritten song in question. Depending on the situation, the songs are downloaded and listened to by a human or digitally compared to a copywritten file.
E) In smaller cases, the service provider/college is contacted with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice asking them to remove infringing content from its network.
F) In larger cases, the RIAA sends the service provider/college a prelitigation settlement letter allowing them to settle for several thousand dollars in lieu of going to court.
G) The process for dealing with colleges is mostly automated, while the process for dealing with service providers is completely manual.

The following article further details how the process works. Check it out here and answer one of the following questions:

1) Research the Web using Google to find out what content is included in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice.

2) Why do you think people share music even if it's illegal?

3) Should Limewire be held responsible for the actions of its users? Why or why not?

4) Should colleges be held responsible for the actions of its students? Why or why not?

5) Research the Web using Google to find out what content is included in a RIAA prelitigation settlement letter.

6) Why do you think college's have a difficult time accepting the fact that illegal downloads occur on their networks?

7) What are the benefits and drawbacks to using an automated process to discover piracy.

Here's a You Tube Video based on a Weird Al song on music piracy. Enjoy!

Employee Spying

Did you know that it's legal for your boss to spy on you while you're working? According to an article in PC Magazine, 66% of all employers monitor Internet use. One third of them have fired an employee for visiting sites like Facebook or playing games online. Other employers will read their employees' email to make sure they are not trading private information. Since employers own the machines, they can load tracking software that will track instant messages or even track each key hit by the employee.

Read the full article here . You can choose from the following questions if you're having trouble coming up with a response on your own:

1) What are some of the products employers can use to track employee Internet access? What features do these products offer?

2) Do you know if your employer tracks your movement online? If your employer tracks, what information do they look at?

3) Did you have to sign an Acceptable Use Policy when you were hired? If so, what did it contain?