Part 2 examines the technological and enforcement end of the copyright wars, and on the way that using the internet makes you a copier, and how copying puts you in legal jeopardy. It discusses Mark Getty’s assertion that ‘intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century’ and draws parallels between the impact of the printing press and the internet in terms of making information accessible beyond a privileged group or “controllers”.
The argument is made that the decentralised nature of the internet makes the enforcement of conventional copyright impossible. Adding to this, the internet turns consumers into producers, by way of user generated content, leading to the sharing, mashup and creation of content not motivated by financial gains. This has fundamental implications for market-based media companies. The documentary asks “How will society change” and states “This is the Future – And it has nothing to do with your bank balance”.
Thomas Dixon delves into the BBC’s archive to explore the troubled relationship between religion and science, from the creationists of America to the physicists of the Large Hadron Collider.
Around the world, computer hackers are being portrayed as the newest brand of terrorists. This is a story of a hacker named Kevin Mitnick, imprisoned without bail for nearly five years. Freedom Downtime tries to uncover the reasons why the authorities are so scared of Mitnick as well as define what exactly he did.
Surprisingly, no real evidence is ever presented by the authorities to back up the sensationalist claims in mass media. But when a Hollywood studio decides to make a movie about Mitnick’s life through the eyes of one of his accusers, hackers turn to activism to get their message out.
The Money Programme’s Fiona Bruce gains exclusive access to Bill Gates as he prepares to step down from full-time involvement with Microsoft, the company he helped found. Gates’s company has changed the world, but he’s a controversial figure, with his ruthless business leadership contributing to Microsoft being sued by the US government.
The BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop was set up in 1958, born out of a desire to create ‘new kinds of sounds’. Alchemists of Sound looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.
Imagine a world where disease could be eradicated by an injection of tiny robots the size of molecules. That is the hope offered by nanotechnology – the science of microscopically small machines. But others fear nanotechnology could lead to a non-biological cancer – where swarms of tiny nanobots come together and literally devour human flesh.
Sounds like science fiction? It certainly did until a brilliant young scientist called Hendrik Schön seemed to bring it a step closer. What happened next would destroy reputations and shatter lives – because there was more to Hendrik Schön’s discovery than anyone knew.
In seconds, a supertwister can leave immense swaths of death and destruction. But what if technology could help us tame nature’s most violent tornadoes?
This is the story of the thousands of people who design, build and test engines at Rolls-Royce’s manufacturing plants in Derby and across the UK, making Rolls-Royce a central part of life for the people of places like Derby.
In two mind-blowing hours, Hawking reveals the wonders of the cosmos to a new generation. Delve into the mind of the world’s most famous living scientist and reveal the splendor and majesty of the universe as never seen before. See how the universe began, how it creates stars, black holes and life — and how everything will end.
The promise of time travel has long been one of the world’s favorite scientific “what-ifs?” Hawking explores all the possibilities, warping the very fabric of time and space as he goes. From killing your grandfather to riding a black hole, we learn the pitfalls and the prospects for a technology that could quite literally, change everything.
Millions remember the countdowns, launchings, splashdowns and parades as the U.S. raced the USSR to the Moon in the 1960s, but few know that both superpowers also ran parallel covert space programs to launch military astronauts on spying missions.
