A coalition of U.S. software, music, and movie producers has urged the Bush administration to add Canada to the countries blacklist of intellectual property villains. The list is currently populated with countries such as China, Russia, and Belize. Citing Canada’s so-called chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime, the group contends that Canada has developed into an international hub for bootleg movies, software, and video game piracy.
While on one hand, this may seem like a stern warning from the U.S. to their largest trading partner, in reality it is clearly bulling tactics from a country who already feels its dated copyright laws losing ground around the world. Dr. Michael Geist, Canadian Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce Law, points out that Canadians should not be fooled into thinking their laws are failing in any way to meet some kind of standard. In fact, the U.S. list includes blacklist recommendations for 23 of the world’s 30 most populous countries including Japan, Sweden, Italy, Spain, India, and Switzerland, to name a few. Dr. Geist even points out that this is merely an attempt by the U.S. to enforce a global agenda because it sees it’s own agenda failing both locally and abroad. If the international community is all on the same page, which is not the same one as the U.S., which country really deserves the blacklisting?
Personally, as a Canadian citizen, I am very disappointed in the Globe and Mail article. I expect more from my country and its media resources, and I expect them not to be mere puppets to another countries whims. Their article was very poor, to say the least, failing to mention any of the other large countries also indicated for blacklisting, and instead skewing the article to instill fear in our population. I think they need to step back a bit and look at the country they live in, not the one they apparently wish they did.
[tags]Canada, USA, IIPA, piracy, Michael Geist, bootleg, blacklist, bush[/tags]
Tutorial: improving security with a PHP Captcha
by stark in Programming, Technology, Web Design
February 17, 2007 · 6 Comments
Although you might not know it by the name, a captcha is one of those little boxes you see, more and more lately, that ask you to type in a random code to verify that you are a human being and not a robot. There are many different varieties, but the basic idea is an image that is obscured slightly but readable by a human and used as a passcode for secure entry to a system or task. Something similar to this:
The user is asked to type in the string buried inside the image, and if it matches, they are given access to a specific resource, such as posting a comment or logging into a site.
The 7 step captcha breakdown
The basic idea behind adding a captcha to any website can be summarized by the following 7 steps:
In the next few sections, I’ll step through the code for a very basic example of a captcha script for your own website. Continue Reading
Tags: captcha, commenting, php, programming, robot-blocking, security, spam-blocking, spamming, technology, tutorial, verification, Web-Design