1. Internet Miscellany
March 26, 2018

2. Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is responsible for developing and overseeing Internet protocols.
IETF was founded in 1986 as a project of the U.S. government; it has been associated with an international nonprofit organization since 1993.
IETF is organized into working groups and discussion groups (“BOFs”: Birds of a Feather).
IETF consists entirely of volunteers and is open to anyone who wishes to participate.
Much of its work is done through a mailing list.

3. Latency and bandwidth
Recall that latency refers to the time it takes for a packet to arrive at its destination.
Latency is measured in milliseconds.
Bandwidth refers to the transmission capacity of a communications channel.
Bandwidth is measured in bits per second (bps) or a variant thereof (Kbps, Mbps, etc.).

4. Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in 1998, made these changes to U.S. copyright law:
Banned “black box” devices designed to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) and other access-control technologies.
Regardless of whether any copyright infringement occurs, the mere act of circumventing these technologies is illegal under DMCA.
Protected online service providers from copyright liability under a “safe harbor” provision.
E.g., YouTube cannot be liable for copyrighted material uploaded by a user as long as it promptly complies with a request to remove or block access to the material from the copyright holder.

5. Creative Commons License
A Creative Commons (CC) license grants any user permission to freely distribute and modify a copyrighted work.
Any copyrighted work can be licensed under a CC license: books, movies, music, plays, images, etc.
The user is free to share the material in any format and adapt it as (s)he sees fit, as long as it is not used for commercial purposes.
If any changes are made, the revised material must be distributed under the same license as the original.
Proper attribution is required.