<p>How does collective action operate in digital space, particularly for those social movements at the cutting edge of technologically innovative contentious politics? This dissertation analyzes activist (and hacktivist) groups engaged in what I call <i>digital contention</i> with state and corporate institutions over the future of Internet policy and governance, or what they see as “the freedom of the Internet.” Based on case studies of the Digital Rights movement and the Anonymous hacktivist collective, I use a combination of computational and qualitative analyses of online texts, along with participant-observation at meetings and protest events, to explore how certain collective action dynamics are changing in digital space. Specifically, these include how movements internally perceive political opportunities and threats, as well as how they construct frames to communicate to external audiences. I find that: 1) Political opportunity is less important than threat for activists in digital contention, which is likely due to the lower costs of collective action; and 2) The digital divide and technological knowledge gap create a barrier to frame resonance which digital activists address either through “strategic inclusiveness” or “communities of anonymity,” both of which encourage diversity among participants while also reifying other inequalities in different ways. These findings have significance for the study of social movements, communication and technology studies, and Internet policy. I argue that they portend changing dynamics that may ultimately affect all forms of collective action, and indeed the balance of power in whole societies, in the future as digital technology continues to spread into every facet of our lives.</p>

Die Arbeit umfasst die Synthese von lipophilen Inositolen und Glycerollipiden, welche auf ihre Raftophilie getestet wurden. Des weiteren wurden eine Reihe neuer Ceramide synthetisiert und diese in Bioassays auf ihre Wirksamkeit gegenüber diversen Krankheiten wie Influenza getestet.

在數位內容下載市場蓬勃發展的同時，非法傳輸的流量亦不惶多讓，是以DRM機制成為了著作權利人進入網路世界的絕佳後盾，以DRM提高複製的門檻，並據以實施其商業模式，故於各數位內容核心產業皆可見DRM應用之蹤跡，卻同時引發了究竟DRM是Digital “Rights” Management 亦或Digital “Restriction” Management的爭議。是天使？或是惡魔？便形成了人們對於DRM的不同觀感。 本研究係從技術、法律以及管理三個面向分別切入，由技術面看DRM保護著作物之極限何在，由法律面看相關科技保護措施之立法造成何種影響，合理使用的空間是否因DRM之實施而造成限縮，接著由管理面向看DRM在數位內容產業價值鏈中所扮演之角色及其與價值鏈上各端權力角力衝突之關係，最後由標準面看目前DRM相關標準的運作以及互通性標準的發展趨勢。並從個案研究觀察DRM在不同產業情境中的應用。 本研究認為，DRM技術本身是中性的，其關鍵在於商業設計運用。而在盜版問題無法完全根絕之情況下，以DRM作為因應之道將使得受限內容之經濟價值不若自由流通之內容，因為內容產業的發展關鍵在於「人氣」，而盜版永遠無法取代創意與使用者對於內容之需求。因此，既然無法防堵非法傳輸之現象，則不妨與之直接面對面進行作戰，權利人既掌握了關鍵的內容，則可以針對盜版的弱點提供更優質的服務。就我國目前數位內容產業發展之情境來看，現階段或許有採取DRM進行保護的必要性，以便在推動合法消費市場之際，平衡兼顧保護著作權人以及著作利用人之權益。然而，在虛擬世界中欲全面防堵非法散佈有其技術上之侷限性，消費者亦多半養成了免費取得之使用模式與心態，因此長期而言，或許應設法從創新的商業模式來扭轉此態勢。 / Though the use of digital rights management (DRM) has been controversial, it is still widely used in the digital world. Advocates think of DRM as an indispensable way to prevent unauthorized duplication and dissemination of copyrighted works while opponents often suggest that the term “rights” should be replaced by “restriction” to best describe how DRM works. This thesis aims to analyze the issues of DRM from three perspectives. First starting with the technical point of view to see how DRM works and found out that DRM technology does have its limitation for copyright protection. That’s the reason why treaties and legislations such as the WCT, WPPT, and DMCA are needed to build the last ditch in the war with piracy. However, the attempt backfired as companies other than rights holders used it as a way to prevent market competition. As the rights holders can effectively control the access of their work with DRM, there comes another dispute about the “Paracopyright” effect. Most important of all, the use of DRM divests the users of the rights they had in the analog world, such as simply lending a book to a friend. From the perspective of management, a cost benefit analysis indicates that the benefit of using DRM to prevent unauthorized duplication obviously overwhelms by its cost and risk. In the context where the content providers, service providers, and device manufacturers all attempt to dominate the whole value chain, DRM also became one of the most powerful instruments for that purpose. Closed ecosystems are built one after another especially in the online music industry in order to bundle the consumers with specific players and music services and thus caused the antitrust issue. The online music industry and the e-book industry were chosen as case studies in the fourth chapter of the thesis. Based on different industry context, DRM strategy and its impact would differ and therefore results in a variety of business models. For example, the consumers in the US are relatively more aware of the use of DRM and are more willing to pay for authorized content. In contrast, the awareness of DRM of consumers in Taiwan is much lower and the price they are willing to pay is also far lower than what the music labels can accept. As a result, the streaming model prevails over pay-per-download model in the online music market of Taiwan. And the feasibility and necessity of DRM also varies in different industries. Before the digitalization of books, authors already had libraries providing free copies as piracy do today, and the prevalence of scanning machines and copy machines makes it even harder to prevent illegal file sharing. Accordingly, there is far less reason to use DRM in the e-book industry than in the online music industry. DRM technology is neutral in itself, and the key point is how it is designed based on different business models. The defect of DRM is neither a technical nor a legal issue, but rather a business issue. As piracy can never be eradicated, coping it with DRM would only make the value of restricted contents much less than freely distributed contents. Popularity is what really matters in the content industry. DRM has its technical limit and causes so many legal issues accompanied with the cost and risk of maintaining such fragile systems. What rights holders have in hand are the creativity and the market’s need for new content, which could never be replaced by piracy. So why not fight it face to face? Digital content industry is considered one of the most promising industries in Taiwan. However, local consumers have entrenched mindset of “free” contents. In present context, DRM is somehow needed while promoting the growth of legal market, in order to provide sufficient incentive to enrich the society with more and more creativity, and fairly protect both the rights of content providers and content users. But in the long run, a more creative or even subversive business model should be the solution to meet the trend of digital convergence.

Els sistemes de gestió de drets digitals controlen l'ús del contingut multimèdia a través de tota la cadena de valor digital. Aquesta tesis contribueix als diferents aspectes de la gestió dels drets digitals i de la protecció de la propietat intel·lectual.La contribució d'aquest tesi és la definició de formats i mecanismes estàndards que permetin la gestió del contingut a través de la cadena de valor digital. Els formats i els mecanismes seran estàndards, de forma que permetran la interoperabilitat entre sistemes de DRM que segueixin l'estàndard MPEG-21.També s'han dissenyat mecanismes estàndards per governar continguts digitals, protegir la propietat intel·lectual i per a la gestió i protecció de les notificacions d'esdeveniments dins dels sistemes de gestió de drets digitals. / Los sistemas de gestión de derechos digitales controlan el uso del contenido multimedia a través de toda la cadena de valor digital. Esta tesis contribuye a diferentes aspectos de la gestión de los derechos digitales y de la protección de la propiedad intelectual.La contribución de esta tesis es la definición formatos y mecanismos estándares que permitan la gestión del contenido a través de la cadena de valor digital. Los formatos y mecanismos serán estándares, de forma que permitirán la interoperabilidad entre sistemas de DRM que sigan el estándar MPEG-21. También se han diseñado mecanismos estándares para gobernar contenidos digitales, proteger la propiedad intelectual y para la gestión y protección de las notificaciones de eventos dentro de los sistemas de gestión de derechos digitales. / Digital rights management systems control the use of multimedia content through the complete digital value chain. This thesis contributes in different aspects of the digital rights management and of the protection of the intellectual property.Main contribution of this thesis is the definition of standardised formats and mechanisms that enable the management of governed multimedia content through the digital value chain. The formats and mechanisms will be standard in order to enable interoperability between DRM systems compliant to the MPEG-21 standard.Different mechanisms have also been defined to govern digital content, protect the intellectual property and for the management and protection of the event reports within digital rights management systems.

Com a análise histórica da chamada propriedade intelectual, em especial das patentes, copyright e direitos autorais, esta tese trata da crise do capitalismo contemporâneo, e analisa a tendência dissimulada de ascensão de Estados, que com o uso da tecnologia informática e o recrudescimento das legislações, se tornam cada vez mais autoritários e avançam sobre direitos e liberdades civis. Para isso é reconstituída a história dos computadores, da Internet, do Movimento do Software Livre, dos Partidos Piratas, do movimento do Software Livre no Brasil, das legislações de propriedade intelectual no mundo ocidental e da globalização do comércio e das finanças / Through the historical analysis of the \"intellectual property\", in particular patents, copyright and authors rights, this thesis deals with the crisis of contemporary capitalism, and analyzes the covert increasing trend of states, that with the use of computer technology and the intensification of laws, become increasingly authoritarian, eroding civil rights and liberties secured by populations long ago. To reach this objective the history of computers, the Internet, the Free Software Movement, the Pirate Parties, the Free Software movement in Brazil, the intellectual property laws in the Western world and the globalization of trade and finance are reconstituted

Com a análise histórica da chamada propriedade intelectual, em especial das patentes, copyright e direitos autorais, esta tese trata da crise do capitalismo contemporâneo, e analisa a tendência dissimulada de ascensão de Estados, que com o uso da tecnologia informática e o recrudescimento das legislações, se tornam cada vez mais autoritários e avançam sobre direitos e liberdades civis. Para isso é reconstituída a história dos computadores, da Internet, do Movimento do Software Livre, dos Partidos Piratas, do movimento do Software Livre no Brasil, das legislações de propriedade intelectual no mundo ocidental e da globalização do comércio e das finanças / Through the historical analysis of the \"intellectual property\", in particular patents, copyright and authors rights, this thesis deals with the crisis of contemporary capitalism, and analyzes the covert increasing trend of states, that with the use of computer technology and the intensification of laws, become increasingly authoritarian, eroding civil rights and liberties secured by populations long ago. To reach this objective the history of computers, the Internet, the Free Software Movement, the Pirate Parties, the Free Software movement in Brazil, the intellectual property laws in the Western world and the globalization of trade and finance are reconstituted

Copyright law is a special category of civil law which, with the upswing of the Internet, has become important for different types of stakeholders in the global information society. The 'participative web' operates with content generated by users. This user-generated content has often disputable origins in terms of copyright clearance. The Internet has opened the possibility for developing new forms of communication between anonymous or individual users who are not easily identifiable. Especially peer-to-peer file sharing and recently the information services offered and operated by the so-called 'cyberlockers' are the reason of questioning the role of copyright protection online which needs a beneficial solution. Copyright infringement in the era of information society is a complex phenomenon with a multiplicity of contributing factors like the importance of information data with big business potential, personal attitudes shown by internet users towards the value and scarcity of intellectual property, or legal responsibility of internet service providers (ISP) who paradoxically act from the safety of the so-called safe harbours as intermediaries of information exchange, representing a new element in the communication chain between rights holders and users. Commercial and business models operating...

Since the US National Security Agency’s former contractor Edward Snowden exposed the Agency’s mass surveillance, the EU has been making a series of attempts toward a more safeguarded and stricter path concerning its data privacy protection. On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU) invalidated the EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC on the basis of incompatibility with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the Charter). After this judgment, the CJEU examined the legality of the Safe Harbour Agreement, which had been the main legal basis for transfers of personal data from the EU to the US under Decision 2000/520/EC. Subsequently, on 6 October 2015, in the case of Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner, the CJEU declared the Safe Harbour Decision invalid. The ground for the Court’s judgment was the fact that the Decision enabled interference, by US public authorities, with the fundamental rights to privacy and personal data protection under Article 7 and 8 of the Charter, when processing the personal data of EU citizens. According to the judgment, this interference has been beyond what is strictly necessary and proportionate to the protection of national security and the persons concerned were not offered any administrative or judicial means of redress enabling the data relating to them to be accessed, rectified or erased. The Court’s analysis of the Safe Harbour was borne out of the EU Commission’s own previous assessments. Consequently, since the transfers of personal data between the EU and the US can no longer be carried out through the Safe Harbour, the EU legislature is left with the task to create a safer option, which will guarantee that the fundamental rights to privacy and protection of personal data of the EU citizens will be respected. However, although the EU is the party dictating the terms for these transatlantic transfers of personal data, the current provisions of the US law are able to provide for derogations from every possible renewed agreement unless they become compatible with the EU data privacy law. Moreover, as much business is at stake and prominent US companies are involved in this battle, the pressure toward the US is not only coming from the EU, but some American companies are also taking the fight for EU citizens’ right to privacy and protection of their personal data.

Consumers of digital contents are empowered with numerous technologies allowing them to produce perfect copies of these contents and distribute them around the world with little or no cost. To prevent illegal copying and distribution, a technology called Digital Rights Management (DRM) is developed. With this technology, consumers are allowed to access digital contents only if they have purchased the corresponding licenses from license issuers. The problem, however, is that those consumers are not allowed to resell their own licenses- a restriction that goes against the first-sale doctrine. Enabling a consumer to buy a digital license directly from another consumer and allowing the two consumers to fairly exchange the license for a payment are still an open issue in DRM research area. This thesis investigates existing security solutions for achieving digital license reselling and analyses their strengths and weaknesses. The thesis then proposes a novel Reselling Deal Signing (RDS) protocol to achieve fairness in a license reselling. The idea of the protocol is to integrate the features of the concurrent signature scheme with functionalities of a License Issuer (LI). The security properties of this protocol is informally analysed and then formally verified using ATL logic and the model checker MOCHA. To assess its performance, a prototype of the RDS protocol has been developed and a comparison with related protocols has been conducted. The thesis also introduces two novel digital tokens a Reselling Permission (RP) token and a Multiple Reselling Permission (MRP) token. The RP and MRP tokens are used to show whether a given license is single and multiple resalable, respectively. Moreover, the thesis proposes two novel methods supporting fair and secure digital license reselling. The first method is the Reselling Deal (RD) method which allows a license to be resold once. This method makes use of the existing distribution infrastructure, RP, License Revocation List (LRL), and three protocols: RDS protocol RD Activation (RDA) protocol, and RD Completion (RDC) protocol. The second method is a Multiple License Reselling (MLR) method enabling one license to be resold N times by N consumers. The thesis presents two variants of the MLR method: RRP-MR (Repeated RP-based Multi-Reselling) and HC-MR (Hash Chain-based Multi-Reselling). The RRP-MR method is designed such that a buyer can choose to either continue or stop a multi-reselling of a license. Like the RD method, the RRP-MR method makes use of RP, LI, LRL, and the RDS, RDA, and RDC protocols to achieve fair and secure reselling. The HC-MR method allows multiple resellings while keeping the overhead on LI at a minimum level and enable a buyer to check how many times a license can be further resold. To do so, the HC-MR utilises MRP and the hash chain cryptographic primitive along with LRL, LI and the RDS, RDA and RDC protocols. The analysis and the evaluation of these three methods have been conducted. While supporting the license reselling, the two methods are designed to prevent a reseller from (1) continuing using a resold license, (2) reselling a non-resalable license, and (3) reselling one license a unauthorised number of times. In addition, they enable content owners of resold contents to trace a buyer who has violated any of the usage rights of a license bought from a reseller. Moreover, the methods enable a buyer to verify whether a license he is about to buy is legitimate for re-sale. Furthermore, the two methods support market power where a reseller can maximise his profit and a buyer can minimise his cost in a reselling process. In comparison with related works, our solution does not make use of any trusted hardware device, thus it is more cost-effective, while satisfying the interests of both resellers and buyers, and protecting the content owner's rights.