GLOSSARY

Copyright
the legal right of ownership to the work produced in books, music, plays, movies, graphics/pictures and computer software. A copyrighted work cannot be copied without the permission from the owner of the copyright (author, writer or publisher). Originally, copyright meant simply “the right to make copies of a given work.” Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed. 2004)

Download
to copy a file or program to your computer.

Hacker
someone who breaks into computers to read private e-mails and other files. Hackers delete or alter files.

Hard Drive
a device inside a computer which writes and reads information stored inside either a computer or a disk.

Infringement
act of violating a copyright by copying or otherwise distributing a copyrighted work without permission or authorization.

Infringer
a person or company who copies copyrighted material without permission or authorization.

Intellectual Property
the physical expression of ideas contained in books, music, plays, movies, and computer software.

Piracy
(computer piracy) is the act of stealing valuable property by copying software, music, graphics/pictures, movies and books (all available on the Internet).

Pirates
computer pirates steal valuable property when they copy software, music, graphics/pictures, movies, books (all available on the Internet).

Plagiarism
copying someone else’s work and pretending that you wrote it .

Software
a set of (programmed) instructions that tell a computer what to do.

Tamper
to interfere in a harmful way or to alter or change improperly.

Upload
to copy a file or files from your computer to another computer or computer storage system.

Virus
a computer program created to cause damage to other computers. A virus can erase files or change a computer’s hard disk drive causing damage.

Virus Scan (Program)
a computer program installed in a computer to recognize the types of changes a virus has made to the computer’s program files. If a virus is detected in a system, the virus scan program can be used to remove the virus.

Worm
a virus program which eventually takes over all of a computer’s resources until the computer does nothing else but run the virus program. Worms are very dangerous because they travel from system to system.