File sharing on the Internet

MGM and Grockster clash in the courts over the legality of file-sharing software. “It’s wrong to download copyrighted songs and movies from the Internet without paying nothing”, says the MGM representative.

Does p2p (peer-to-peer) technology encourage illegal activity? A bitter battle on this issue is now being fought in the US Supreme court. On one side is MGM, representing the movie business. Estimates claim the film industry is losing $4 billion in lost revenues to piracy annually. Hollywood and the recording industry have already sued thousands of individuals for alleged illegal downloads. The music business has seen global annual record sales go down from $40bn to 30bn over the last four years. The industry, which has suffered massive redundancies and restructuring, says the swapping of music files over the internet is one of the major parts of music piracy. 750 million unauthorised or free songs are swapped online every month.

On the other side are Grokster and StreamCast Networks. They allow users to trade music and movie files without going to a central site like Napster, which was shut down in 2001. Can these companies be accountable for bootlegged (нелегальный) material swapped using their software? Supporters say this is ridiculous – a ban on devices which could theoretically be used to infringe copyright would include technological innovations such as the DVD, iPods.

What will happen in the future? Sony Pictures digitised its top 500 films, such as Spiderman2, and made them available for mobile phones and digital stores. Within a year, people could download and own films in the same way as they use Apple’s itunes for music.

Exercise 5.Look through the following statements and discuss them.

1. The more integrated Facebook becomes, the less willing we'll be to recreate that same web of social connections we've reinvented time and again.

2. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

While many of us may complain about Facebook's on-site chat breaking down, being slow or crashing our browsers, the fact remains that Facebook is where we've based our online social life and chat is a basic extension of this.

4. Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now. Twitter asks “what’s happening” and makes the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately.

5. The latest researches about dangers that occurred in the social networking showed that people were sharing not only detailed location information about themselves and their friends, they were also by default broadcasting when they were away from their own home.

LESSON IV

Exercise 1.These words you should know.

genuine – искренний, подлинный logo – логотип

to confirm – подтвердить fraudulent – поддельный

to siphon off – перекачивать (деньги) nuisance – неудобство

fake – фальшивый, фальшивка pop-up – всплывающий

to run up a bill – делать долги unsolicited – незатребованный

rival company – конкурирующая компания remedy – лекарство

public service - компания общественного обслуживания ( по снабжению газом, электроэнергией, водой )

Exercise 2.These terms you should learn.

fraud - обман, мошенничество fraudsters – мошенник

gambling – азартная игра counterfeit – подделка (о товаре)

email attachment – прикрепленные (файлы) junk e-mail – «макулатура»

webcast – веб-вещание swapping - подкачка

CMS - (Content Management System) - система управления контентом

Exercise 3.Don’t mix such words.

spyware - шпионящее ПО scumware - вредоносный софт

adware - бесплатный программный продукт с размещенной в нём рекламой

scam – жульничество ad (advert, advertisement) - объявление

hacker – взломщик, цель которого не только доступ к программе или системе, но и сами данные cracker – взломщик доступа в систему

keylogger or keystroke logger - программа или аппаратное устройство, регистрирующее каждое нажатие клавиш на клавиатуре компьютера, не требует ПО на контролируемом компьютере и применяется для контроля за действиями служащих

malware (malicious software) - вредоносные программные средства; вредоносные программы ( напр., вирусы )

Exercise 4.Check your memory: spamming, recipient, trick, false, to pretend, to deceive, virus warning, unsolicited spam, regular source, to subscribe, hot spot.

READ AND TRANSLATE THE TEXT

Cyber crime

Hi-tech fraud. Both the US and the UK are experiencing a rise in ‘phishing’, pronounced ‘fishing’. Fraudsters send an e-mail message that seems to come from a bank (Citibank, Lloyds) or a company like E-bay or Amazon. The message looks genuine, and may direct you to a website, which includes a corporate logo. You are asked to send or confirm personal information, such as your bank account number or password. This information is then used for fraudulent activity, such as online gambling, or to siphon off money from your account. As many as 20% of recipients are fooled by this scam.

This is another example of spamming. The nature of spam is changing from being just a nuisance to more serious financial scams. Many mails sell fake pharmaceuticals on the black market. Financial and pharmaceutical spam now make up an incredible 70% of all spam.

IT managers estimate that over 90% of computers in organisations have been infected by some kind of spyware. Many employees unknowingly download spyware onto their machines. This software, which hides somewhere in your computer, collects information about you and what you do on the Internet – it may even record your credit card details if you shop on the Internet. On average every PC has 28 so-called spyware programs installed on it, according to one recent audit by a software firm.

Adware is a form of spyware, which installs secret advertising software on your computer, such as annoying pop-up ads. There are government moves in various countries to make spam illegal. As the Internet becomes more and more an integral part of our lives so we have to give more time to protecting ourselves against cyber-crime.

Internet is full of dangers. What can be done about them? Let’s look through four e-mails that come to the Editor of an online business magazine, each of them mentions one type of cyber crimes.

Scam e-mails. I agree that the Internet has brought us innumerable benefits, but it has also brought us Internet crime. I recently received a false mail asking for money, in the famous Nigerian scams. I was also asked for money after hurricane Katrina. Credit card fraud and identity fraud are growing. Lynette Dalgleish, Auckland

Hacking. Users of your site should watch out for the latest virus targeting business users. It is designed to destroy all Microsoft Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint documents and is activated when you click on the email attachment. What can be done to stop those who create these viruses? John, NYC

Click fraud.On 6 February, you wrote: ‘What is Click fraud?’ An advertiser pays money every time a customer clicks on their ‘pay-per-click’ link on, say, Google. So ‘click fraud’ forces the advertiser to run up a bill. For example, online robots can be programmed to click repeatedly on a link. Low-cost workers can be hired in China, India and other countries to do the same. Employees can click on rival companies’ ads to deplete (исчерпывать) their marketing budgets. It is not unknown for an unhappy worker to click repeatedly on an advert! Hope this helps. Pete, Oxford, UK

Counterfeit goods. I recently bought some jewellery on eBay, but discovered that it was fake. I complained to the seller and I received a refund (компенсация). However, I asked eBay to remove listings for identical pieces – but they refused! eBay maintains it is just a marketplace which link sellers and buyers. I do understand eBay has around 180 million members with maybe 60 million items on sale at any time … but in my view the Internet has now become a marketplace for selling counterfeit goods, with no policing! Kerry O’Connor, Dublin

ASWER THE QUESTIONS: 1. What is spyware? 2. What are the different types of spam? 3. Why does it cost companies money? 4. How much spam do you receive? 5. How do you manage with it? 6. Have you ever made an illegal copy of software or music? 7. In what circumstances do you, or would you use illegal software or buy a pirated album? 8. In your opinion, what is the solution to the problem of piracy? 9. Rank mentioned in the text cyber-crimes in order of their seriousness. 10. Decide on suitable penalties on various cyber-crimes.

VOCABULARY EXERCISES

Exercise 1.Give the equivalents to the following English and Russian words and word combinations:

· sending spam e-mails, to place spyware on a computer, stealing credit card details, identity fraud, distribution of a computer viruses, sending adware across the Internet, unsolicited junk e-mail, offensive content, insurance fraud.

· коробочное ПО, несанкционированный доступ, заказное ПО, условно-бесплатное ПО, коммерческое ПО, бесплатное ПО, мошенничество с банковским счетом, поделка, нелегальная копия.

Exercise 2.Complete the text below with the following words.

headache work adopt receive colleagues hoax dealing

set unlikely guess spend wage harmless

Spam

Looking back over the e-mails I have received in the last couple of weeks, I can see there is at least one message a day from someone I don't know, offering some service or product I am (1) ____want. In some cases I can (2) ____ where they got my e-mail address from, but in others I have no idea. For me, this unsolicited junk e-mail is not a problem, I can just erase it from my computer. However in a recent survey, (3) _____ out for the company Novell Inc. in the UK, 75% of those who were questioned claimed to receive as many as five junk e-mails a day, and 15% calculated that they (4) ______ at least an hour a day dealing with unsolicited spam.

Apart from spam which tries to sell products or services, there is also the problem of virus warnings, chain letters (where terrible things will happen to you if you don't pass on the message to fifteen other people) and jokes from friends and (6) _____. Although sometimes the content involved can be offensive and contain racist or sexist language, most of it is relatively (7) _____. On the other hand, in terms of wasting employees' time, it's a real for many businesses. There are various strategies you can with spam. The easiest remedy is just to delete any messages that come from an unknown sender or look suspicious. To deal with nuisance mail that comes from a regular source, one solution is to (10) ____ up your e-mail program to ignore mail from that particular address. More legitimate spammers often give you the option to 'unsubscribe' so you don't (11) ____ any more of their messages, although in my experience this often doesn't seem to make any difference. Even so, while you are (12) _____ with spam you are not doing the work you were hired to do. If the data analysed in the survey is correct, 1.4% of the national (13) _____ force is unproductive for this reason at any time during a working day. With a national UK (14) ____ bill of f368bn a year, this means that for UK businesses spam represents an annual cost of around f5bn.

Exercise 3.Find one word in each line that does not form a word combination

tax	crime	Internet	identity	click	insurance	FRAUD
to make	to suspect	to uncover	to prevent	to commit	to discover
major	Internet	fraud	organized	serious	violent	CRIME
to fight	to reduce	to suspend	to prevent	to commit	to encourage

Exercise 4. Translate from English into Russian.

1. Computer security are the techniques developed to protect single computers and network-linked computer systems from accidental or intentional harm, including destruction of computer hardware and software, physical loss of data, deception of computer users and the deliberate invasion of databases by unauthorized individuals. 2. Using encryption information can be scrambled and unscrambled using mathematical equations and a secret code called a key, two keys are usually employed, one to encode (it is possessed by only a sender) and the other to decode the information. The latter may be possessed by several receivers. 3. The keys are modified periodically, further hampering unauthorized access and making the encrypted information difficult to decode or forge.4. In the future, passwords and tokens (a special plastic card with the password stored in microchip) may be reinforced by biometrics, identification methods that use unique personal characteristics, such as fingerprints, retinal patterns, skin oils, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), voice variations, and keyboard-typing rhythms. 5.The firewall prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to the computers on a network, and it ensures that information received from an outside source does not contain computer viruses, self-replicating computer programs that interfere with a computer's functions.

Exercise 5.Choose the best word.

1. A person who illegally accesses somebody else’s computer over the internet is called a ____. a. fraudster b. cracker c. hacker

2. A website which (in theory) cannot be accessed by a hacker is __________.

a. authorised b. secure c. updated

3. A website, which can only be viewed by authorised people, has _____ access. a. reduced b. small c. restricted

4. Unwanted advertising emails are popularly known as __________.

a. spyware b. spam c. phishing

5. Software which blocks attempts by others to access your computer over the internet is called a _______. a. firewall b. browser c. search engine

6. It's essential to ___ your anti-virus protection regularly.

a. up-to-date b. upgrade c. update

7. Anti-virus software can __________ your computer for viruses.

a. detect b. protect c. scan

8. Anti-virus software can also __ viruses on removable media, such as flash memory card. a. detect b. control c. see

9. When your anti-virus software subscription ___ … a. ends b. stops c. expires

10. … it's a good idea to ____ it immediately. a. renew b. renovate c. replace

Exercise 6.Match the lines. (Pay attention to malware and its damage)

1. virus	a. collects and sends private information from the infected computer to a third party
2. spyware	b. an undesirable program which can replicate itself across a network
3. Trojan horse	c. allows a hacker to access private information when he/she wishes
4. keystroke logger or keylogger	d. a program which adds itself to an executable file, and can cause considerable damage to the data on the infected computer
5. worm	e. records characters that are typed into a computer

Exercise 7. Write an annotation to this text.

Social Networking is the one area of the Internet that nearly every computer- literate person indulges in these days. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your company boss, your neighbor, your boyfriend or your girlfriend, everybody’s contactable via at least one of the Social Networking portals. However, since these platforms attract so many people, they also draw in the cybercriminals who are out to make a fast buck from the unwary users.

The threats out there can range from just the basic spam advertisement that we all find in our inboxes, to the more sophisticated scams designed to steal your Social Network account credentials, or ultimately, to infect your computer with a Backdoor. This can result in the loss of your private data and your money. It is important to understand that by falling victim to these criminals, you are not only endangering yourself, but also the people around you. To keep yourself safe, you need not only to follow some basic rules yourself, but also raise the awareness of your friends too!

Phishing. One of the less technically dangerous security threats emanating from the world of Social Networking is the traditional attempt to Phish for a users login credentials. Having gained access to your account, an attacker can now exploit your network of trust. He sends your friends messages that appear to originate from you, and can also use your friends’ trust in you to convince them to follow a link, install a malicious program, or to login to a Phishing site themselves.

Getting Hit in a Drive-By. Sometimes visiting a malicious website is enough to see malware unknowingly installed on a user’s computer, as sometimes vulnerabilities in your Browser allow for the execution of code. Once these pages are visited by someone with a vulnerable Browser, infection is inevitable if no current antivirus solution is present. However, the attacker first needs to attract visitors to such a page.

Another route recently adopted by attackers is spamming Twitter and posting comments on Blogger sites containing links to malicious targets. On Twitter especially, the attackers choose the most popular topics of the day and add links to their malicious sites along with their comments (on Twitter there is a concept similar to channels where certain topics are tagged with a hash-sign).

Exercise 8.Translate from Russian into English.

1. Шпионящее ПО предназначено для слежения за действиями пользователя на компьютере, оно перехватывает его почтовую переписку, вводимую им информацию, пароли и команды. 2.Спам – это сообщения по электронной почте, отправляемые многим и содержащие обычно рекламу или предложение товаров и услуг. 3. По способу распространения ПО делится на бесплатное, условно-бесплатное и коммерческое, кроме того, ПО можно разделить на массовое, коробочное и заказное.4. Проверяю почту, обратите внимание на те письма, адресатов которых вы не знаете, они могут быть спамом или нести вирус. 5. Так называемая "макулатура" включает рекламу или предложение товаров и услуг, которые часто направляются не конкретному лицу, а просто на почтовый адрес.

Exercise 9. Get ready to discuss the topic “Types of malware”

GRAMMAR EXERCISES

Exercise 1.Put the verb in brackets into the correct form .

Tokens (to be) tamper-resistant plastic cards with microprocessor chips that (to contain) a stored password that automatically and frequently (to change). When a computer (to access) using a token, the computer (to read) the token's password, as well as another password (to enter) by the user and (to match) these two to an identical token’s one (to generate) by the computer and (to store) on a confidential list.

Exercise 2.Match the two halves of the sentences.

a If software wasn't so expensive, ...

b If the item isn't paid for, ...

c Sony make equipment that is used to make pirate copies of CDs.

d companies complain that piracy means lost jobs

e Computer companies should not complain;

1 but would more jobs be created if piracy didn't exist?

2 demand for hardware is created by pirated software.

3 it’s stolen property.

4 However, they also hold copyright on music.

5 there wouldn't be any piracy.

Exercise 4. Translate the text, paying attention to the words in italics.

Piracy

Losses due to software piracy are estimated at $12.2 billion a year just in business applications. The figures for the games industry are not less impressive. Up to 108,000 jobs, $ 4.5 billion in wages, and $1 billion in tax revenues arealso lost. According to Peter Beuk (vice-president for anti-piracy programs at the Software Industry Information Association - SIIA), most of the software being sold on Internet Auction sites (91%) is pirated. Many of these copies are burned at home for about $1 a CD, and then sold as warez (pirated software) for $25-500 plus shipping (поставка ).

There is more to piracy than just disk swapping among friends. It has become an illegitimate business on its own, and issometimes carried out on a corporate level (enterprises which use multiple copies of a single licensed program to cut down on costs), or in ways unknown to the end user (dealers who install pirate copies on new computers). With huge sums of money involved, it is no surprise that organised crime has taken an interest in it.

Even in the United States and Western Europe, where the issue is addressed very seriously, the piracy rate averages 30-40 % from country to country. Russia and Asia have the most active pirate markets, with Vietnam and China leading the list with 100% and 97% rates respectively. Revenue rates are not directly linked to piracy rates because in many countries with a high piracy rate, the software market is not very big, while regions with relatively low piracy rates like North America suffer higher losses due to the large internal market.

Of course the growth of the legitimate software market is affected as developers face the real possibility of pirate copies outnumbering legal ones, as turning an otherwise successful product into a financial failure for the company. Prosecution can prove difficult or impossible, as copyright laws differ from country to country. Imagine convincing the Indian police to arrest a Chinese citizen because of (по поручению) a court order emitted by a French tribunal on behalf of a US company!

SPEAKING-DISCUSSION

Exercise 1.Study the figures for software piracy in different regions of the world. Piracy rate is percentage of total software installed.

Region	Piracy rate	Loss
Western Europe	34%	$ 362 million
Eastern Europe	70%	$ 505 million
North America	26%	$ 358 million
Asia/Pacific	47%	$ 279 million
Middle East	63%	$ 284 million
Africa	56%	$ 193 million

Exercise 2. Answer the questions.

1. In Western Europe and North America, the piracy rates are lower, but the losses are higher. Why do you think this is so?

2. How do you think piracy affects the growth of the legitimate software market?

3. How easy do you think it is to prosecute for piracy?

Exercise 3. Discuss your ideas, try to use the following phrases:

I (really don't) think that we should ... In my opinion ...

I’m not so sure about I (don't) agree with your point

That's an interesting idea, ... I suppose we should ...

The advantage of ... The problem with ... You have to remember that ...

Exercise 4.Look through this abstract and express your view point.

Cryptography has become so powerful that messages scrambled with so-called strong cryptography are virtually indecipherable. Like many powerful technologies, this is a double-edged sword. Encryption can keep email and financial transactions over the Internet secure and private, but law enforcement officials worry that criminals and terrorists could use the same tools to conceal incriminating evidence and violent plots. This Point/Counterpoint Sidebar provides an excerpt from a statement by Louis J. Freeh, director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arguing before a congressional committee for government regulation, and a contrasting viewpoint from cryptographer Ronald L. Rivest.

Exercise 5.Choose the topic you want to speak about.

1. Freeware anti-virus software and shareware one.

2. Anti-virus software can protect your computer from any viruses or threats.

3.Threats and benefits of Internet.

LESSON V

Exercise 1.These words you should know.

HQ - headquarters - штаб-квартира diverse - разнообразный

CEO - chief executive officer - главный исполнительный директор

advertising campaign – рекламная кампания to hail - называть

retailer – розничный торговец to converge - сходиться, встречаться

Exercise 2.These terms you should learn.

vendor – поставщик, производитель suite - набор, комплект

turnkey vendor - поставщик комплектных систем

imaging – создание изображений; обработка изображений; запись изображений на носители

embedded – встроенный, встраиваемый

bundled software - ПО, поставляемое в комплекте (с компьютером)

Exercise 3.Don’t mix such words.

find (found, found) - находить found (founded, founded) - основывать

Exercise 4.Check your memory: freeware, shareware, open source software, consumer electronics, flash memory cards.

READ AND TRANSLATE THE TEXT