Information Storage, Computer Advances and Copyright
Matthew James
Science, Technology, Environment and Resources Group
11 May 1999
Data Handling Policy Issues
The Government is to introduce a Bill proposing to bring Australia's
copyright laws into the digital age. The Copyright Amendment (Digital
Agenda) Bill 1999 will affect authors, publishers, musicians, performers
and others with intellectual property interests. It follows on from the
Copyright Amendment Act 1998 that removed a prohibition on the
parallel import of music CDs amid industry protest.
Movie producers have been very concerned about the possible copying of
their material onto Digital Versatile (or Video) Disks. As a result, most
DVDs incorporate copy protection technology such as Macrovision. This
system has been used for prerecorded videotapes in the past and adds extra
pulses to fool copying equipment. The majority of digital television receivers
now incorporate anti-copy chips, as will most recorders soon.
As well, the DVD system incorporates a regional coding system so that
distributors can control the release of movie products in order to maximise
profits. Australia joins with Central and South America and the Pacific
Ocean in Region 4. DVD players sold in each region may only play DVDs
coded for that same region.
While over 3000 movie titles have appeared in the North American Region
1, only a tenth have emerged elsewhere. Consequently, consumer resistance
has forced manufacturers to release 'code-free' or 'multi-zone' players.
However, with a price of around $1000, it may be sometime before DVD players
are common here. So Australians may buy these and play American titles,
or remain content with CDs and videotapes for now. In any event, we do
not have much choice in DVD titles to select from.
A diverse group of public and private sector interests formed the Australian
Digital Alliance (ADA) in 1999 to represent public interest in the copyright
debate. The ADA believes that any copyright laws must reflect an appropriate
balance between protection of intellectual property rights and reasonable
access to information, ideas and knowledge. For now, such groups are the
only ones examining the new social ethics of the computerised century
lying just ahead. There will be many choices.
Information Storage Technology
Australians travelling overseas may have noticed the widespread availability
of the DVD for movies, games, data and music productions. Our travellers
will have also wondered why DVD isn't as readily available here instead
of existing Compact Disc (CD) items, as the discs cost much the same.
DVDs use improved optical disc recording technology to store long strings
of binary numbers into tiny laser-read pits on the disc tracks. They build
upon the music CD format that developed to include the ROM (Read-Only
Memory) format for use by computers.
A DVD may store up to 4.7 gigabytes (Gb or 1,000,000,000 bytes) of data
compared to only 0.6Gb on a recordable standard CD. Dual-layer technology
allows two recording layers on one side to almost double the information
capacity to 8.5Gb. Flipping discs over may allow 17Gb. Digital compression
permits a full movie to be stored on a DVD.
To gain an idea of information size, the 32 volume Encyclopaedia Britannica
is now on one multimedia CD-ROM. It has 73 000 articles, 45 million words,
well over 23 000 illustrations and 32 000 pages. New 0.6Gb digital cameras
store 100 to 150 pictures of 0.002 to 0.004Gb each in size. The magnetic
floppy disc in personal computers can manage up to only 0.0014Gb.
DVDs were launched in the United States for home entertainment in 1997
and recordable DVDs arrived last year. Most new drives will read current
CD-ROMs and DVD-ROM disks though they are incompatible. Some 7 per cent
of Australian homes with computers have DVDs.
Electronic books are now available. Resembling palm-size computers, they
can hold 4000 pages of text and graphics or some ten novels. Users can
down-load books from on-line booksellers at cost and access them with
search and spell features. But while many classic texts are free on the
Internet, the electronic book users can not down-load them.
Legislation before the Senate, the Copyright Amendment (Computer Programs)
Bill 1999 may allow the de-compilation of computer programs under
certain conditions such as security testing, error correction and making
compatible products. This has implications for the copyright protection
of data.
Alternative Technologies
In the meantime, it has now become possible for music lovers to bypass
record stores and down-load recordings from Internet sites. Equally, previously
disenfranchised would-be recording artists can use the Internet to distribute
their music, to bypass the established recording industry.
However, consumers have been able to record music off radio broadcasts
for many years. Pirate CD and, of course, videotape copies, abound in
some countries. Australians purchased around 50 million CDs last year,
outselling pre-recorded cassettes by 30 to one.
New silicon audio offers the promise of storing music on computer memory
chips rather than on discs. These 'flash' memory units can store 0.048Gb
or 40 minutes of sound at a cost of around $160+. They use the MP3 (Moving
Picture Expert Group audio layer 3) digital standard for audio compression
and memory circuits to store the data.
Polymer-based holograms may enable the storage of up to 200 CD-ROMs on
a CD-sized hologram. These may be accessible at the rate of 1Gb per second
or 100 times faster than a DVD drive. The system enables three-dimensional
(3D) data storage on each disc. Such units may also lead to 3D television.
As well, cinemas may use digital projectors and not movie celluloid reel
projectors, within ten years.
Storage densities of 11.6Gb per square inch have been achieved with an
expected limit of 20 to 40Gb per square inch on magnetic media. This may
allow one disc to carry about 1000Gb. DVDs now use around 3Gb per square
inch. This equates to about 0.5Gb per square centimetre.
Advanced Computing and AI
No discussion on computing advances is complete without a mention of
the dramatic growth in electronic chip processing power. Several American
laboratories have demonstrated computer systems that perform over a trillion
operations per second. Now as the limits of silicon chips appear in sight,
at around 1Gb per chip, alternatives of Gallium Arsenide, carbon nano-tubes,
quantum and molecular computers are under study.
Quantum computing, which involves the use of individual atoms as switches,
has implications for cryptography and other such advanced uses. An Australian
scientist was actually first to demonstrate a possible photon quantum
computer in 1998. There is though no major computer chip design plant
in Australia as yet.
Artificial intelligence (AI) may well become feasible through parallel
inference computer systems or neural nets. These present multiple outputs
for resolution rather than a single series solution to a program. Future
computer systems should become more like biological rather than physical
entities. They will become individually intelligent. Already, computer
chips are able to reproduce, mutate and evolve.
We will soon have computers that vastly exceed human thought capacity.
They may well copy our neural brain structure to almost resemble ourselves.
Whether they will have consciousness or any real intelligence is a matter
for debate. The use of synthesised voices, along with voice recognition
technology, completes the image of a cybernetic organism, robot, or a
cyborg-type automaton, at least to humans. But we may well speculate on
their spirituality, morals, mind and utility.
Robotics and Nano-technology
In fact, bionic technology has yet to develop a material substitute for
bones, having their strength and function, or indeed bodily organs. As
well, feedback mechanisms, to allow precise limb control from the brain,
remain as a major challenge.
The trend to miniaturisation within technology leads to a need for increasing
precision at scales less than one millionth of a metre. The term nano-technology
covers this trend over a wide range of fields.
The manufacture of semiconductor devices involves nano-technology. Foresight
technology assessments have identified nano-technology as the critical
factor underpinning a wide range of future growth markets such as in medicine
and ecology.
Computerised robotic machines at atomic scales could conceivably be put
to almost any use and build bio-chip computers of outstanding capabilities.
Engineers can already manipulate atoms or molecules into ordered patterns
despite nature's efforts. However, there remains an enormous gap between
such ordered patterns and any working nano-machines. They occur only in
natural organic systems at present.
In another technology breakthrough, the new Bio-Optic Organised Knowledge
(BOOK) unit involves no circuits or mechanisms. Unlike an electronic-book
it has paper pages. With a litany of past failures in information storage,
viz: 8-track cartridge audio-tapes, Betamax video tapes, Mini Discs and
digital audio compact cassettes, we can be forgiven for showing some scepticism
to all of these advances.
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