Legislation questions

A number of laws govern the use of computers. For each of the following scenarios tick one box relating to the law being broken.

Scenario	CMA	CDPA	DPA
A bank accidentally publishes customers' details onto its website			√
Someone downloads a pirated version of a piece of software that users would ordinarily have to pay for		√
Someone writes and distributes a virus	√

Marks: [3 / 3]

A town council stores details of the people who live in the town. These details are stored in a database on a newtork. Some people are worried about the storage of their details.

Describe three methods that can be used to protect the data about people held in the town council's database

Restrict database access, e.g. with a username/password authentication system. This also enables the use of transaction logging to note who accesses/modifies data, and what data they accessed
The database can be backed up to a secure location frequently to ensure that information is never lost; the backups would need to be secured and stored offsite
The database could be encrypted to ensure that even if a security breach occurs, the attacker would be unable to extract any useful information from the retrieved data

Marks: [6 / 6]

A database stores information about songs on a music streaming service. One of the tables, called Song, has the fields:

Title
Artist
Genre
Length

A band called RandomBits revokes their permission for their songs to be streamed.
The company removes all the songs belonging to RandomBits from their service.

Identify the law with which the company are complying
- ~~Data Protection Act~~ Copyright, Design, and Patents Act

Write an SQL statement that will remove all songs by RandomBits from the table Song

DELETE -- specify that I am deleting records
FROM "Song" -- specify the table
WHERE "Artist" LIKE 'RandomBits'; -- use LIKE for case-insensitivity; could use = instead

When the songs have been removed, explain what must happen to the table PlayListEntry if the database is to retain its referential integrity.
- PlayListEntry records which reference songs by RandomBits must be updated to point to a 'Deleted Song' fake record, or deleted entirely, so that no record points to a record which does not exist.
- In SQL, this can be achieved by running the following before deleting the songs:
```
UPDATE "PlayListEntry" -- modify records in PlayListEntry
SET "PlayListEntry"."TrackID" = 'MissingTrack' -- update to point to missing track
FROM "PlayListEntry"
INNER JOIN "Song" ON "PlayListEntry"."TrackID" = "Song"."TrackID" -- link rows where appropriate
WHERE "Song"."Artist" LIKE "RandomBits"; -- select only RandomBits songs
```

Marks: [3 / 4]

A dance group decide they are going to use the Internet to promote their work.

Describe one legal implication the dance group need to consider when adding soundtracks to their videos.

The dance group must consider whether or not the soundtrack they choose to use is free (permissive, not price) before they can add it to their videos; if the soundtrack they choose is not free then they either must negotiate with the copyright holder, or will be in breach of the CDPA (Copyright, Design, and Patents Act)

See And Believe is a company that specialises in computer-generated imagery (CGI) for films. Producing CGI requires lots of processing power and so the company has a large number of high-performance computers.

The company is working on scenes from the latest Stellar Scuffles film. There is strict security around the film, and there are worries about unauthorised people gaining access to the company's network and putting clips from the film on the internet.

Discuss to what extent each of the following laws is intended to address the issue of someone accessing and distributing clips of the film online:

The Computer Misuse Act (CMA)
The Copyright, Design, and Patents Act (CDPA)
The Data Protection Act (DPA)
CMA
- The CMA addresses the issue of someone accessing and distributing clips of the film online without authorisation by making it illegal to access any computer system with intent to commit an offence or crime, and by making it illegal to access computer material in any capacity without authorisation.
CDPA
- The CDPA addresses the issue of someone accessing and distributing clips of the film online by making it illegal to:
  - use anybody's intellectual property without permission
  - make or use una

A number of laws govern the use of computers.

Describe the purpose of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was created with the purpose of allowing law enforcement to inspect online communications at a similar or greater level of ability compared to the physical world.

Police, and certain specified government agencies, may (under certain circumstances) collect mass data on individuals' digital communications, without their knowledge or consent. It also allows the seizure of encryption keys, to decrypt encrypted data.

The Investigatory Powers Act has been nicknamed the 'Snoopers Act'. The legislation itself is quite controversial. Discuss why this is so.

The Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) further enhances the powers of law enforcement from the powers given under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). It added sweeping new powers, such as the bulk collection of data, to the previous powers such as seizure of encryption keys.

Privacy campaigners felt that the new powers were overly intrusive, and the Civil Rights group Liberty issued a legal challenge against the IPA, stipulating that it does not protect human rights (as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights).

Those who support the act, however, suggest that it mainly serves the purpose of bringing digital powers in line with their analogue counterparts.