Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which was enacted by the 105th United States Congress in 1998 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998. The DMCA is a complex law whose general purpose is to criminalize the distribution and use of technology which facilitates the circumvention of of measures designed to prevent copyright violations. The DMCA expands the consequences of violating copyrights through the Internet and by other electronic means. The law also requires the removal of copyright infringing material from users' websites by service providers, while limiting service providers liability for their users' infringements in general. Exceptions of liability are also made for non-profit educational institutions whose students or faculty violate copyright. Some criticism of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act argues that the law is one or more of the following: poorly written, anti-competitive, unfair, a violation of free speech, unnecessarily limiting to legitimate researchers, scientists, etc.

Discussion / Thread

A series of Usenet articles, consisting of an initial post and all of the follow-ups to the post. Different clients may display these conversations differently, but in most cases they are organized to show responses in a nested style with consistent timestamps.

Emoticon

A method of displaying faces and other pictures with standard text characters. :-) is an emoticon for a smiling face. Emoticons were first proposed on Usenet to help convey the tone of a message. For example, a sarcastic comment could be seen as serious and rude, but with an emoticon, the intended meaning is better expressed. Emoticons are now common in every current digital text-based communication medium.

encoding

The general definition of encoding is converting data from one form to another, for various reasons. On Usenet, encoding is the process by which binary files are 'translated' into plain text that can be posted to newsgroups. Each character of encoded text represents a bit of data from the original binary file. Encoded articles can be represented as binaries in real-time by many current newsreader programs. For older systems, there are also utilities available to decode binary articles after they have been downloaded.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions. Documents that attempt to answer the most common questions posted in a newsgroup, either about the subject of the newsgroup or regarding the group itself. For example, the FAQ for a newsgroup such as sci.astronomy may include answers to basic astronomy questions, as well as the accepted netiquette rules of the group.

Flame

Attacking other Usenet participants with derisive comments. A heated discussion that devolves into personal attacks can be considered a ""flame war."" Users who primarily flame other users are often considered trolls.