BEMA Affiliate member Focus: CopyrightPro.net

Visit  http://www.copyrightpro.net/home.php  to answer any questions related to your creative and intellectual property and copyright protection.

Protect your work.

Charles D. Sharp

Chief Executive.  Founder

Black Emergency Managers Association

Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright

What is a copyright?

A copyright is a form of protection provided by the United States via its laws for works in the following categories; audiovisual, literary, sculptural, dramatic, graphic, musical, pictorial, architectural, pantomimic, cartographic and choreographic.  The protection is normally documented by a certificate issued for published and unpublished works of original authorship.

Who can file a copyright?

Anyone (man, woman or child) may file a claim for a copyright.

How long is a copyright good for?

For works created after January 1, 1978, as a general rule, protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.

What is a poor man’s copyright?

Copyright protection does not cover what is commonly known as a poor man’s copyright which is the practice of sending one’s self a copy or one’s work through the mail.  It is thought that the postmark on the unopened mail provides protection but it does not.

How long does it take for the US Copyright Office to process a copyright application?

The processing time depends on the how the application is filed.  If an application is filed electronically it normally takes about 90 days.  If the application is filed by paper processing can take up to a year.

Why should I copyright my intellectual property?

Without a copyright your work may be infringed upon with no legal recourse available.

What is the difference between a copyright and a trademark?

A copyright pertains to works of original authorship in categories noted above.  Trademarks are protected symbols, phrases, words and designs.

What is the difference between a copyright and a patent?

Patents protect discoveries, inventions and the useful utilities.

What sorts of things are eligible for copyright?

The types of things that are eligible for copyrights include architecture, literary work, dramatic work, artistic work, poetry, novels, songs, movies and computer software.

What does the copyright symbol look like?

The copyright symbol can be made on a typical computer keyboard by hitting the keys Ctrl+Alt+C = ©

Is my material protected if I put a copyright symbol on it even though I have not applied and received a copyright certificate for it?

Putting a copyright symbol on your work without registering it affords no legal recourse in cases of infringement.

Where is the copyright office located?

The US Copyright Office is located in Washington, DC about a ½ block from the United States capitol.

Does the Copyright Office have branch offices throughout the country?

No

What is copyright infringement?

The use of someone else’s intellectual property without proper authorization.

How can I protect my material from infringement?

By properly registering your work with the US Copyright Office.

How do I report infringement?

Infringement is generally considered a civil matter and must be pursued in federal court.

How do I copyright my work?

CopyrightPro.net will properly file your work/intellectual property with the United States Copyright Office.

How much does it cost to copyright my work?

When using CopyrightPro.net the entire cost for properly filing a copyright application is $100.00 for a regular registration, $920 for express handling for a regular registration and $180.00 for a preregistration application.

Are there different types of copyrights?

The two different types of applications typically filed are registration and preregistration.

What is a copyright preregistration application?

A preregistration application protects unfinished work temporarily and gives notice to the US Copyright Office of one’s intent to file a regular application upon completion of the work.

What is a copyright registration application?

A registration application is typically filed for finished works along with the submission of the work for examination.

What is the difference between a preregistration application and a registration application?

A preregistration application temporarily protects unfinished works while a regular application is filed to protect completed work.

Is the submission of work required for both registration and preregistration applications?

Preregistration applications do not require the submission of unfinished work.

Registration applications require the submission of work for examination purposes.

How long does it take for the copyright office to process a preregistation?

Preregistration applications require minimal processing since no work is submitted for examination.  Typically, preregistration applications are closed upon receipt by the US Copyright Office.

Why isn’t work required to be submitted for a preregistration application?

Because the work is unfinished when one submits a preregistration application.

If I file a preregistation application am I also required to file a registration application?

Once your work is finished you are required to submit a registration application along with the completed work.

In the world of copyrights what is a deposit?

The word ‘deposit’ is typically used by the US Copyright Office when referring to your work/intellectual property.

Does a US Copyright certificate provide protection beyond the United States?

In some cases, yes.   It is advisable to research this matter to be certain.

Does a US copyright afford reciprocity with any other countries?

Yes.  But once again, it is advisable to research this matte to be certain.

What is WIPO?

WIPO stands for the World Intellectual Property Organization.

What is ASCAP?

ASCAP stands for The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

How can CopyrightPro help me file my copyright?

CopyrightPro will quickly and professionally file you registration or preregistration application with the US Copyright Office for a reasonable fee.

Please outline the process my application goes through once filed with CopyrightPro.

The processing of your application will normally take about 90 days once properly filed with the US Copyright Office.  Once your application is approved you will be sent a copyright certificate via regular mail.   CopyrightPro has experience handling thousands of applications.

Why should I use CopyrightPro versus any of the other services offered on the world wide web?

Because CopyrightPro is probably the only business that is staffed by former workers of the US Copyright Office and  is therefore very familiar with the workings of the process like no other.  Also, unlike some of the other businesses it is located in Washington, DC, where the US Copyright Office is located.  CopyrightPro also offers a reasonable price for its services, unlike most of the businesses offering the same service.

What is an ISBN?

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number.  It is a unique number normally assigned to a book title.  You may want to check with our publisher for additional information.

What is an ISSN?

ISSN stands for International Standard Serial Number.  It is a unique number normally assigned to a print or electronic publication.  Check with your publisher for additional information.

What is an ISRC?

ISRC stands for International Standard Recording Code.  It is the internationally recognized identification tool for sound and music recordings.

What is a Pseudonym and what does it have to do with copyrights?

A pseudonym is a name that a person or group uses as a fake name or pen name.  Some people use their pen names when registering their copyrights.

What is domicile and what does it have to do with copyright?

Domicile is normally considered your place of residence.   This is one of the questions you will be faced with when filling out a copyright application.

What is considered Publication?

To publish is to make available to the public.

Is my work copywritten once it is published?

No.

What is a copyright Claimant?

A copyright claimant is the person or entity claiming the work.

What does ‘limitation of claim’ mean?

This is something you will encounter on a copyright application.  Limitation of claim means that you want to limit your claim to only the work you created.  Example: You wrote lyrics for a song that was previously copyrighted for the melody.  Your work has the same title as the original song but when you file the claim you want to limit your claim to the lyrics only.  Thus, limitation of claim.

Faq category list

What is the difference between a copyright and a trademark?

Why should I copyright my intellectual property?

How long does it take for the US Copyright Office to process a copyright application?

What is a poor man\'s copyright?

What is a copyright?

Who can file a copyright?

How long is a copyright good for?

Haitian-Dominican Friendship Concert. May 16, 2012

Embassy of Haiti Stephane Rosenberg Job Title Embassy of Haiti Stephane Rosenberg Job Title

Embassy of Haiti. Around the World Embassy Tour. May 5, 2012.

Partner: Webinar. Women Building Disaster Resilience April 25, 2012 -- 12:00 Noon Eastern

Note: Our instructions have changed since we have moved to a WebEx Webinar service. Mac users are now able to join us, and we hope to see improvements in access to computer audio.  Please take time to review the new instructions in advance.

 

Women Building Disaster ResilienceNew Resources and Strategies

April 25, 2012 -- 12:00 Noon Eastern
EMForum.org is pleased to host a one hour presentation and interactive discussion Wednesday, April 25, 2012, beginning at 12:00 Noon Eastern time (please convert to your local time). Our topic will be highlights of the new book, Women Confronting Natural Disaster: From Vulnerability to Resilience, together with some practical implications and ideas for extending the analysis to men/gender. Additional resources, including The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster and other policy and practice guides will also be presented.


Our guest will be researcher and author Elaine Enarson, Ph.D. Dr. Enarson describes herself as "an accidental disaster sociologist" whose personal experience in Hurricane Andrew sparked extensive work on gender, vulnerability and community resilience. In addition to her work on these two new books, she previously co-edited The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women's Eyes (1998), as well as Women, Gender and Disaster: Global Issues and Initiatives (2009). Dr. Enarson is a founding member of the global Gender and Disaster Network and initiator of the US-based Gender and Disaster Resilience Alliance.


Please make plans to join us, and see the Background Page for links to related resources and the new Instructions. If this will be your first time to participate, you may set up WebEx in advance . On the day of the program you may use the Webinar Login link or login from our home page not more than 30 minutes before the scheduled time. The password is attend.

As always, please feel free to extend this invitation to your colleagues.

 

EIIP and Jacksonville State University are now partnering to offer CEUs for attending EMForum.org Webinars.  See http://www.emforum.org/CEUs.htm for details.

 

Is your organization interested in becoming an EIIP Partner? Click here to review our Mission, Vision, and Guiding Principles and access the Memorandum of Partnership.

 

Professionals Debate the Need for Emergency Management Certification

By: Margaret Steen on March 28, 2012

http://www.emergencymgmt.com/training/Professionals-Debate-Emergency-Management-Certification.html

Emergency management’sevolution as a profession has included the development of professional certifications like the Certified Emergency Manager (CEM). But professionals disagree about how useful the certification is to individuals and to the profession.

Some say certification is a needed step toward emergency management becoming a more mature profession. Others say the work required to maintain the certification outweighs any benefits.

The CEM certification came from a sense in the early ’90s that the profession needed to become more sophisticated, said Dean R. Larson, president of Larson Performance Consulting in Munster, Ind., and chair of the USA CEM Commission for the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM).

Emergency management’s “roots came from civil defense,” said Larson. “As civil defense started to become broader than just preparing for a response to enemy attacks, there was a need for a significant upgrade in emergency management.”

The evolution of strategies — such as the all-hazards approach, which used a similar structure for all disasters, whether natural or man-made, accidental or intentional — highlighted the need for more professional managers, Larson said. The IAEM created a standard body of knowledge for emergency managers, then set requirements for them to meet to become certified.

The certifications have evolved, but today both the CEM and the related Associate Emergency Manager (AEM) certifications require 200 training hours, an essay, three reference letters and an exam. CEM certification also requires a four-year college degree, three years’ experience in emergency management and significant professional contributions.

Simply gathering all the documentation for his CEM certification was “a very extensive process,” said Lucien Canton, former director of emergency services for San Francisco and now an independent consultant.

When Diane Newman, a regional planner for the Puget Sound Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program, was first certified in 1999, “it took me at least 40 hours to gather all the information they required,” she said.

As of 9/11, there were 1,106 CEMs and 99 AEMs in 49 states and 13 countries, said Larson, who holds the CEM certification himself.

An Emerging Profession

Some professions, like medicine or law, have clearly defined entry paths. People know when they go to a doctor or hire a lawyer that that person had certain training and passed specific exams to be able to practice.

“Emergency management is not a mature profession,” said Judith Hale, a Chicago-based consultant in performance improvement and certification and author of Performance-Based Certification. “It’s an emerging profession.”

This means there are many paths to becoming an emergency manager. Identifying what people must know to work in the field, and how to learn it, is a critical function of a certification program, Hale said. “That’s what certification does: It’s an attempt to identify the bodies of knowledge that you have to have.”

The inclusion of practical experience as part of the CEM certification exemplifies a trend in certifications today, she said. Employers want to know that a candidate passed an exam and can apply that knowledge. “There’s a greater onus for the certification to have a practicum, hands-on, portfolio or proven proficiency.”

Certification advocates say that because of these issues, certification is crucial to the entire profession.

“Ultimately, if we’re going to be a profession, we have to have a certification,” Canton said. “You look at this as, ‘What am I going to get out of it?’ As you mature, you start looking at, ‘What does this do for the profession?’”

Still, individual benefits are important, particularly since getting the certification requires so much work.

For Canton, the knowledge that his political appointment would eventually end made him consider how best to prepare himself for a career in consulting. “It was important for me to do as a professional,” he said.

Eric Holdeman, an emergency management consultant and blogger who previously worked in emergency management for Washington state and King County, had similar thoughts when he got his certification in the early ’90s. “I saw the future,” he said. “If this is where it’s headed, eventually job announcements will say ‘CEM certification required’ or ‘desirable.’”

Catherine Kane, vice president of Emergency Management Professional Organization for Women’s Enrichment (EMPOWER), an emergency management organization for women, said her members find CEM as a way to assure employers. “It underscores the importance of continuous learning through periodic coursework and contributions to the profession,” Kane said. “And it’s a signal to other emergency management professionals of knowledge, expertise and contribution.”

The credential helps emergency managers early in their careers show their commitment to the profession. “Having an important credential like the CEM signals the ability and willingness to understand the discipline and to commit to a regular cycle of learning, employment and contribution,” Kane said.

EMPOWER offers a virtual study circle program to help members study for the exam and prepare their applications.

Doubting the Value

But not everyone’s a fan of the CEM. Some seasoned professionals have decided not to renew their certifications, saying the hassle outweighs the benefits. One reason is the extensive training requirements — which can be difficult to meet in strict budgetary times.

“Though I’d been working continuously in emergency management, I didn’t have accepted documentation of the required training in the proper categories necessary to maintain my CEM certification,” said Newman, who chose not to renew her CEM certification in 2004.

Holdeman ran into a similar issue once he’d taken all the courses he could take locally. It was hard to get funding to travel to outside conferences.

Not everyone thinks financial concerns are a good reason to give up the certification.

“I know how tight budgets are, but there comes a point where if you’re a professional, you have to figure out how you’re going to get your certification,” Canton said. Online courses could help meet training requirements. And some people pay for their own professional development when necessary.

As for the renewal process, Canton said it’s “pretty straightforward” for those who are keeping up their skills and contributing to the profession. “It drives you back into your profession more than if you were just doing your day-to-day job,” he said.

Nonetheless, Canton said he knows “quite a few top-notch colleagues who’ve chosen not to get the CEM.”

For Holdeman, it was more than trying to meet the training requirements. “I’d see some people with certifications that I thought, ‘I wouldn’t hire them’” based on what he knew about the quality of their work. “That certification didn’t have a lot of meaning to me when it came to that person, so the value of it went down significantly in my eyes.”

Holdeman didn’t renew his certification. With his experience, he said, “If someone is going to hire me, it’s going to be based on what I produced in the past.”

This concern underscores a common problem with certifications: It’s possible to meet the requirements and still not be a good employee.

“You could have gone to a conference, slept in a session and still have proof that you registered,” Holdeman said. “It’s showing that you’ve had these experiences, but it doesn’t necessarily show your expertise and ability to translate that expertise into products that make a difference in your individual agency.”

As for critics who say requiring certification could limit who could work in the profession, supporters say that’s the point. “You try to weed out people who are dilettantes,” Canton said. 

Lingering Questions

There are still issues about whether the CEM certification upgrades the profession — and how helpful it really is to individuals.

“I think it was helpful,” said Newman, who was assistant director for the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management. She said even if you’re being hired due to personal connections — a common situation — “when they have to justify it to hiring authorities, I think it looks good on paper.”

But it’s difficult to document how much having the certification helps job candidates.

Cheyene Haase, owner of BC Management Inc. in California, recruits for positions in business continuity and disaster recovery. She places candidates primarily in private companies — and she rarely sees jobs that require CEM certification. Still, she said, certifications aren’t a negative.

“Few jobs are advertising ‘CEM only,’” Canton said. “If you’re lucky, you’ll see ‘CEM preferred.’”

Another issue: Is it fair to tell people who lack a four-year degree that they can get the AEM certification but not the CEM?

“Our intent was to continue to upgrade the professionalism of the people with the certification,” Larson said. However, the change wasn’t retroactive: “No one had the CEM taken away because they didn’t have a degree.” 

A broader question is who the CEM is aimed at, Canton said. The experience required is fairly low — but some of the professional contributions suggest they’re aiming at higher-level candidates who’d be likelier to give speeches and correspond with elected officials.

“Where exactly does this certification fall?” Canton asked. “Is this an entry-level certification, with minimum standards, or a journeyman’s certification that means you’re at a certain level in your profession?”
 

---

Certification Requirements
 

The International Association of Emergency Managers offers the Associate Emergency Manager and the Certified Emergency Manager certifications.

Requirements for both AEM and CEM certification include:

• Training: 100 hours of emergency management training plus 100 hours of general management training in the past 10 years.
• Essay: Must demonstrate knowledge, skills and abilities.
• References: Three reference letters, including one from the candidate’s current supervisor.
• Exam. Must score 75 percent on a 100-question multiple choice exam.

Other CEM requirements:

• Experience: Three years, including participation in a full-scale exercise or actual disaster.
• Education: A four-year college degree in any field.
• Professional contributions: Six separate contributions in categories like professional memberships, conference attendance, speaking or teaching.

America’s ‘angriest’ theologian faces lynching tree

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/21/americas-angriest-theologian-faces-lynching-tree/?hpt=hp_c1

By John Blake, CNN


(CNN) - When he was boy growing up in rural Arkansas, James Cone would often stand at his window at night, looking for a sign that his father was still alive.

Cone had reason to worry. He lived in a small, segregated town in the age of Jim Crow. And his father, Charlie Cone, was a marked man.

Charlie Cone wouldn’t answer to any white man who called him “boy.”

A crowd gathers in Marion, Indiana, in 1930 to witness a lynching. This photograph inspired the poem and song “Strange Fruit.” 

He only worked for himself, he told his sons, because a black man couldn’t work for a white man and keep his manhood at the same time.

Once, when he was warned that a lynch mob was coming to run him out of his home, he grabbed a shotgun and waited, saying, “Let them come, because some of them will die with me.”


James Cone knew the risks his father took. So when his father didn’t come home at his usual time in the evenings, he’d stand sentry, looking for the lights from his father’s pickup truck.

“I had heard too much about white people killing black people,” Cone recalled. “When my father would finally make it home safely, I would run and jump into his arms, happy as I could be.”

Cone takes on a theological giant
Cone left his hometown of Bearden, Arkansas, and became one of the world’s most influential theologians. But the memories of his father and lynch mobs never left him. Those memories shaped his controversial theology, and they saturate his recent memoir, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.”

Cone, who once called himself “the angriest theologian in America,” is still angry. His book is not just a memoir of growing up in the Jim Crow era; it’s a blistering takedown of white churches, and one of America’s greatest theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr - a colossal figure often cited by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, Niebuhr’s importance is acknowledged by both liberal and conservative Christian leaders. President Obama once called him one of his favorite philosophers. Niebuhr, the author of classics such as “The Irony of American History,” died in 1971 after a lifetime of political activism.

Cone, however, said neither Niebuhr nor any other famous white pastor at the time spoke out against the most brutal manifestation of white racism in the 20th century America: lynching.

Between 1880 and 1940, Cone says, an estimated 5,000 black men and women were lynched. Their murders were often treated as festive affairs. Women and children cut off the ears of lynching victims as souvenirs. People mailed postcards of lynchings. One postcard of a charred lynching victim read, “This is the barbeque we had last night.”

But Niebuhr said nothing about lynching, little about segregation, and once turned down King’s request to sign a petition calling on the president to protect black children integrating Southern schools, Cone said.
Niebuhr’s decision not to speak out against lynching encouraged other white theologians and ministers to follow suit, Cone said, because Niebuhr was considered the nation’s greatest theologian.

“White theologians didn’t say anything about lynching,” Cone said from his office at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he teaches a course on Niebuhr. “I tried to find a white theologian who addressed it in a sustained way. No one did it.”

Cone’s criticism of Niebuhr baffles at least one well-known Niebuhr scholar. Charles Lemert, author of “Why Niebuhr Matters,” said King often cited Niebuhr as an inspiration. He said he’d never heard that Niebuhr rejected a petition request from King. “It would be so remote from everything the man was.”

Lemert said Niebuhr had established a long record of speaking out against racism, beginning when he became a pastor in Detroit. Niebuhr may not have spoken out against lynching and other forms of racism later on because of another reason, Lemert said.

“He had a debilitating stroke in 1951,” Lemert said. “By the time the civil rights movement was full blown, he was retired and getting ill.”
Why Cone is angry
Cone has spent much of his career condemning the white church for saying little about slavery or racial justice. Yet his pugnacious reputation doesn’t jibe with his appearance. He is a slight man with a boyish face, cinnamon complexion and dimples. He has a high-pitched voice that drips with the Southern inflections of his native Arkansas.

Cone first gained attention in 1969 with the release of “Black Theology and Black Power,” a book he wrote after urban race riots and King’s assassination.

That book took theology out of academia and placed it on the still-smoldering streets. He became known as the father of “black liberation theology.” He said God was black (he meant it figuratively) because God was closest to those who were oppressed and despised - black people in America.

Cone said his passion for justice comes from growing up in the black church.

Cone blended the racial pride of the black power movement with an emphasis on social justice that had been a part of the black church since enslaved Africans first read the Bible. Jesus' primary message, he said, wasn't about getting people to heaven, but liberating people here and now from oppression - racial, economic and spiritual.

Cone said he was tired of white theologians writing about an otherworldly theology while cities burned and blacks were murdered by racists.

“I felt like I was the angriest black theologian in America,” he once wrote in his book “Risks of Faith.” “I had to speak out.”

Cone inspired some and angered others.

Critics say he developed a divisive, racist theology that describes God as black and whites as evil. They say he’s stuck in the '60s and never abandoned the bitterness of growing up in segregation.

Supporters say Cone exposed the hypocrisy of white churches and gave voice to helpless, poor and oppressed Christians in places as far away as China and Latin America.

The Rev. James Ellis III, an author who has been both critical and supportive of Cone, says before Cone, theology was interpreted through a white male perspective.

Cone has inspired not only blacks but also women and other racial minorities to enter seminaries and the pulpit, he says.

“Whether you agree with Cone or not, he’s definitely someone you need to deal with,” said Ellis, author of “OnThaGrindCuzin: The School Daze of Being ‘Incognegro’ in 1619.”

“He takes the gloves off and gets down to the nitty-gritty.”

Jonathan Walton, an assistant professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard University, said listening to Cone is like “listening to a Hebrew prophet.”

For many people, Walton says, Cone “exposed that the God that they were worshiping was more consistent with the Pharaoh in Egypt than the Hebrew children.”

Cone said people still misunderstand his theology. He said he does not believe that whites are more sinful than others.

“God made us all as brothers and sisters,” he said. “I’m mad when people don’t treat others as brothers and sisters. I’m concerned about the suffering of all people, not just black people. If anybody is being treated unjustly, I’m with them.”

Singing about the ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’
Cone said his passion for justice comes from growing up in the black church. In his recent memoir, he describes how blacks relied on music and faith to deal with the cruelty of segregation.

On Saturday nights, he said, blacks in his hometown would go to juke joints with names like Sam’s Place to hear blues songs like “Hoochie Coochie Man.” On Sunday mornings, some of the same people would go to church to sing spirituals like “Lord, I Want to be a Christian in My Heart.”

Church comforted Cone, but it also made him ask questions.

“My thing was, if the white churches are Christian, how come they segregate us? And if God is God, why is He letting us suffer?”

The cross, he said, helped him find some answers. He said many white Christians “spiritualize” the cross, seeing it as a penalty Jesus had to pay for mankind’s sins.

But black Christians, starting with the slaves who took up the Bible, also viewed the cross as a way to cope with suffering.

Blacks looking at the images of lynching victims took heart from Jesus’ suffering on the cross and his resurrection, Cone said.


He writes:

“Black Christians believed that just knowing that Jesus went through an experience of suffering in a manner similar to theirs gave them faith that God was with them, even in suffering on lynching trees just as God was present with Jesus in suffering on the cross.”

Cone also talked about his personal suffering in his memoir.

He writes about his wife, Sandra, who died of cancer in 1983. He saw her on the night she died. He said they were joking and laughing as she chided him for not leaving her hospital room to get rest.

He finally did leave, but she died at 3 that morning. Thinking about the cross helped him grieve, he said.
“God talked me through that,” he said, his voice softening. “You look suffering right in you eye and say, ‘You may get me, but you’re not going to have the last word.’ ”

Cone also talks about his parents, Charlie and Lucy, who inspired him and his two brothers. Charlie was a woodcutter who encouraged his wife to return to school, where she eventually earned a college degree.

“I didn’t grow up with a lot of fear,” he said. “I just thought my mother and father would protect me.”
One of Cone’s fears today, though, is that the contemporary black church is losing its distinctive theology.

He said there’s less talk about justice and more talk about prosperity.

“You go to almost any black church today, and you don’t hear spirituals anymore,” he said. “What you hear is this happy, ‘I’m prosperous’ kind of stuff. I’m not for that. You don’t come to church to be entertained. You come to wrestle with your spirit.”

Cone may still be angry, but he’s also mellowed. He’s tempered some of the voltage from the language he used in his earlier books. And he’s accepted criticism from some black women theologians who said he didn’t include the perspective of black women in his works.

Yet thoughts of his childhood and his parents never seem far off. In his books and lectures, he returns once again to them, especially when people compliment him for his boldness. In one essay, Cone wrote:

“At most, what I say and do are just dim reflections of what my parents taught and lived.”

CyberSecurity: Hundreds of thousands may lose Internet in July

http://www.delawareonline.com/viewart/20120421/BUSINESS09/120421014

Written by

LOLITA C. BALDOR

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner,http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they're infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect to the Internet.

Most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.

Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an Internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.

"We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because ... if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without Internet service," said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent. "The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get 'page not found' and think the Internet is broken."

On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn't enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.

Now, said Grasso, "the full court press is on to get people to address this problem." And it's up to computer users to check their PCs.

This is what happened:

Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the Internet's domain name system.

The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.

The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their Internet browsing.

When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie's clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000.

The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568,000 unique Internet addresses were using the rogue servers. Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360,000. The U.S. has the most, about 85,000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20,000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.

Vixie said most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.

FBI officials said they organized an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the Internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won't be the last.

"This is the future of what we will be doing," said Eric Strom, a unit chief in the FBI's Cyber Division. "Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, we will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations."

Now, he said, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, "we get to the point where we say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system" without creating a bigger mess than before.