Technology is ahead of the law. That's nothing new. Laws arise out of disputes and criminal actions created when people use new technologies.

The computer age has created its own set of disputes and criminals. Now Bermuda is playing catch up by forging new laws that will help protect ownership and copyright of data. The Computer Misuse Act, passed last year, was one step toward updating existing intellectual property legislation.

Bermuda's intellectual property legislation also includes the UK Copyright Act of 1956, the Patents and Designs Act 1930, and the Bermuda Trade Marks Act of 1974.

The Computer Misuse Act makes it an offence for someone to make unauthorised entry or alteration to computer data with the most serious penalty being five years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

The act essentially serves to give legal redress to businesses against hackers or disgruntled employees who may want to view, alter, or destroy data stored on computers. Of course it's only a pyrrhic victory using the courts since valuable data may already have been destroyed and a business seriously disrupted by that loss.

Prevention is better than revenge. So it's best for businesses to exactly lay out in a document to their employees what they can do on their computers, and what files they have access to. Without such an explicit statement an employee can always claim he didn't know he wasn't allowed to access the accounts system. An explicit statement will encourage employees to only do what they are authorised to do.

Other steps towards updating Bermuda's intellectual property laws include a proposed data protection act and an updating of the Copyright Act of 1956.

Island plays catch up While the Computer Misuse Act protects businesses, a proposed data protection act would help protect individuals from infringements of their rights to privacy by a company which gathers such personal information in the course of its business. The proposed legislation would probably follow guidelines set out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says lawyer John Cunningham. He keeps abreast of such issues as part of his job and as a member of the Law Reform Committee.

The proposed legislation would include requiring companies to inform individuals on demand about what information was being kept about them on file. A reciprocity clause would also ensure that if a company were to move from Bermuda to another location where it stored such data, that the new place would also have similar data protection statutes.

With copyright issues, Bermuda was left behind with the UK's old 1956 act when that country updated its copyright laws in 1988. Technology has advanced significantly since 1956. New technology often tempts people to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do, either out of a naive ignorance, or because it's so easy not to get caught. The Internet is a prime example of such ease of access where users may in effect steal photographs and designs posted at a site and use them again.

Here technology has advanced to help the law out. Digimarc Corp.

(www.digimarc.com) has developed a product that imperceptibly embeds information carrying copyright and ownership details on to a computer image.

The mark stays with the image even though it may be edited, converted to another format or even printed on a traditional press.

Playboy Enterprises, Inc. -- yes, that magazine -- this week became the latest company on the Internet to use the new computerised watermarking method on images posted at its websites.

Digimarc's MarcSpider program will then continually search the World Wide Web for signs of Playboy's telltale watermarked images thus allowing the company to find copyright infringements.

Here in Bermuda it has been suggested that updating the copyright law would help to attract data storage type companies to the Island. The need is to balance protecting companies that want to store computerised data in an offshore jurisdiction, with the need to keep out those nefarious types who simply want to avoid scrutiny of that data by local authorities.

Another suggestion going around the computer literate of Bermuda is the setting up of an international registry to protect software copyright, says Mr. Cunningham. Source code, the programing that instructs computers how to run a particular software, can be hacked into by savvy computer techies who can then use pieces of it to create their own software. This is a big issue currently hitting the law courts as programmers squabble over what belongs to whom.

An international register could at least give companies some sort of proof as to when a particular program was created. Such a registry currently doesn't exist and hey, why shouldn't it be set up here in Bermuda? There are other offshore jursidctions attempting to do the same thing Bermuda is trying to do, attract the hi-tech businesses to set up in their locations. So the push is on to get moving, and keep up with the technology.

The big news in the Internet world is the striking down by the US Supreme Court of a law that made it a crime to post sexual and other adult-oriented material on the computer network. The justices said the Internet indecency law was so general that it "effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a consitutional right to receive.'' What's especially significant, other than the upholding of free speech, is the justices rejected arguments that the Internet should be regulated in the same way as television and radio, where government has broad regulatory power.

The Internet has now been given the same constitutional protection as newspapers, at least in the US. The freewheeling Internet remains the Wild West of the communications age. Yee-haw! However while we must rejoice, the problem remains. How does society protect children from the pornography -- some of it in the disgusting slime range -- that pervades the net? The onus is back in the hands of the parents. New technology in the form of programs that block out pornographic sites is their answer. The responsibility also lies with the purveyers of porn who must also not allow sexual material to be easily accessible. By using the blocking software and by not posting sample pictures on their homepages they can help prevent access by minors. Will it be done? Some already do, some don't and won't. There's too much money to be had. Perhaps those who find such open sites can voice their disapproval by sending a critical E-mail or two to the owners.

The National Computer Security Association has sent out a warning to Internet users to beware of opening up unsolicited software sent via E-mail. Hackers are attaching rogue softare programs to E-mails that masquerade as security enhancements. In reality the software, called Trojan Horse programs, secretly work to send information about the user's online accounts and passwords back to the hackers by anonymous remailers.

The Trojan Horse programs are also found compressed as self-extracting files attached to electronic pornographic pictures. They have now evolved into programs that claim to be add-ones to popular software titles.

Tech Tattle is a weekly column which focuses on technological developments and computer industry issues. If you have any ideas for topics or a business you would like to discuss, please call Mr. ElAmin at 295-5881, ext. 248, or at home 238-3854.