Precis#4

Internet Technologies

March 20, 2008

  Tyrants of Copyright             A group of civic minded students at Swarthmore College received an awaking lesson in the future of political protest.  Approximately 15,000 e-mail messages were leaked and stolen from Diebold Election Systems. Diebold Election Systems were the largest maker of electronic voting machines in the country. The stolen memos contained Diebold employees’’ candid discussion of flaws in the company’s software and warning that the computer network was poorly protected from hackers.              Diebold sent out letters to the students with copyright infringement and they also ordered that the information must be removed from the student’s web pages; these web pages were hosted on a college’s server.  The real question that needed to be answered was whether the students posting the memos was their right.  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has the power to silence their speech without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearing, and judges.            A media scholar named Siva Vaidhyanathan from New York University felt that there has been a rapid growth of situations such as this in the past few years.             A short while ago the internet provided copies of text instantly along with sounds and images.  This freedom has frightened some of the creators, especially those in the recording, publishing, and filming business.  They argue that the ease of copying increases the need for more intellectual property laws.  Certain laws now all these industries to tighten their grasps on their creations by making the copyright terms more detailed.  This law also extended the scope of copyright protection which created what the critics dubbed the “papacopyright”, this does not allow the duplicating protected material but it also even gains access to in the in the first place.                         The future of the Copy Left’s efforts is still open for questioning.  James Boyle has grew fond of the movement’s efforts to establishing a cultural commons to the infancy of the movement.  He argues that industrial production will force the country to address the erosion of the cultural commons.                          I believe that copyright laws should in fact very tight for a few valid reasons.  I think it is totally unfair for someone to take credit for something that is not theirs. There is no excuse for stealing peoples work and using it as your own.  I feel bad for many of the artists who work in the music, film, and publishing industry because they are often scammed and their property is stolen. Stealing people work is just as bad if not worse then stealing an actual item.

Precis#3

Internet Technologies

Tuesday 4PM

            Cyberbullying is a new up and coming practice of using internet technology to bully and harass other users.  These bullies used to be restricted from practices such as physical intimidation, telephone, and postal mail but now there are new developments in the electronic media. This medium offers forums like email, instant messaging, web pages, and photos to add to the depot.

            There are different forms of cyberbullying which can range in severity. For example it can range from acts such as spreading rumors and harassment to actual threats and online stalking. This act can be as simple as continuing to send an e-mail to someone who has said they want no more contact with the sender. Cyberbullying can affect any age group but the most common victims are teenagers and young adults. Cyberbullying is especially growing rapidly in school systems around the world. The intent of these antagonists is to cause emotional distress to their victims. 

            These online bullies feel it is easier to be cruel and vicious to their victims because there is no personal face to face contact. This is becoming a large problem because these predators are making people look bad by posting bad pictures of them or even edited picture in mass emails that reach large audience faster then most other methods. That is their advantage of doing it online is because the limits of the web is absolutely endless. Online bullying has another great advantage which is peoples personal information is often listed online and the bullies are able to access it and also choose their victims.

            There are some precautions that can be taken to protect yourself from this problem. The first way is by limiting the amount of people who can access your personal information and details about your interests, job, and habits. This will reduce your baring to bullies that you don’t know. This would limit your risk of becoming a victim and it would make it easier to find out who is the predator.

            The second way is to avoid escalating the situation. If a victim retorts it will most likely cause the bully to escalate the situation. It is for the victims own good to ignore the situation and let the law handle it. These bullies want to see reactions and feed off of it. It is possible to shake a bully by simply changing your email address but if the messages do continue it would be a stronger case for legal action to take place.

            The third way is to document the activity. It will be to your own advantage if you keep a record of all the online activity which should include all the dates and times of the bullying. Printing copies of these acts would be an advantage also.

            The fourth way is to report the cyberbullying to the appropriate authorities. If you are a victim report this act to the law. Law enforcement agencies have different policies. A good place to start is a local police department of FBI branch.

            Parents and teachers should start teaching children good online habits so they will never become victims. Parents should keep lines of communication open with their children so they don’t feel uncomfortable telling them that they are bullied. Parents can

reduce their risks by setting guidelines and monitoring the use of the internet and other electronic media.

            This act is being researched and people are trying up with ways to stop or harness these bullies. These researchers make fake accounts and address trying to lure in predators so they can see how they act and bring justice to the victims.

            I believe that this is a problem that we should spend a lot of time trying to fix because as of now it is pretty bad with acts like stalking and posting pictures but in the future these bullies can come up with more harsh ways to attack their victims and hopefully it doesn’t get to that. Young children should be concentrated on because they may be exposed things that their young eyes shouldn’t see. The computer can be more dangerous then most people think. Other acts such as online predators and rapists have been known to talk to young kids and try and have sexual relations with them. I hope that this problem will be solved for the good of the children and any of the other victims. I don’t like when innocent peoples reputations get ruined because some bully has nothing better to do.

Tom Maxwell

Precis #2

January 30, 2008

Google as Big Brother

There are basically four main search engines that the majority of people use. There are way more then four search engines but the four most popular have the most data and technology to search for anything you want with ease. Just about anything you search for on these search engines will contain many different sources of information and it can even be overwhelming at times. In July of 2003 Yahoo actually owned Alltheweb, Altavista, Inktomi, and Overture and it dropped Google in February of 2004. All the factors that were needed to transform Yahoo into a main search engine were there. After a year yahoo showed their main index search results are close with Google’s. One of the reasons Yahoo has grown is because Google’s main index through free from paid results has declined since the year 2003.

Microsoft just created their own search engine because they felt like they were pickled between the search engine Inktomi and the advertising engine Overture which were both owned by yahoo. There are actually thousands and thousands of engineers that know how to create search engines. The main idea is who can create the search engine with the best qualities.

Google is currently the most popular search engine on the web. Google accommodates about 75 percent of the external referrals for most sites. Google plays hard ball. Google basically has no competition and it is the best search engine by a long shot. There are websites and blogs being uploaded to Google’s servers daily and in 2003 Google bought out blogger.com.

This search engine competition is a struggle for advertising cash flow. Now a day much of the computer screen is filled with all types of paid ads on Google. Google used to be ad-free. Google is making lots of money because of this pixilated real-estate. Every company wants a part of the screen to advertise which in turn vacuums money right into Google.

Since 9/11 there has been a struggle on a different level. Google watch can monitor anything people look up on the web. Privacy issues have been brought up but this surveillance is still underway.

This can be considered a clash of the class’s because it brings up an objection Google Watch has with Google. This problem is the PageRank problem and the fact is Google’s main ranking conclusion has just about nothing to do with the quality of web pages. This approach can be considered anti-democratic in the sense that powerful pages are mathematically granted extra power bless other pages as powerful.

Certain people feel that Google, Inc is an obstacle and that some decisions and actions must be made. Google Watch is attempting to make the situation public and persuade more scrutiny of their battle zone. The reason for this is to maintain the web as an information tool that is more useful to the people then the big businesses.

Over 500 nominated Google for a Big Brother award in 2003. There were nine points that were raised with this nomination which focused on the privacy issues.

The first issue was Google was the first search engine that used a cookie that expires in the year 2038. Anytime anyone lands on a Google page they receive a cookie on their hard disk and they read and record your ID number.

The second issue is how Google records just about everything they possibly can.

The third issued is Google contains no retention policy which means they are able to access all the user information that they collect and save.

The forth issue is Google does not state why exactly they are collecting this data or need it.

The fifth issue is that Google is hiring more people to work security clearances.

The sixth issue is Google’s toolbar is actually spyware.

The seventh issue is many webmasters have deleted material from their sites and later found out the problem pages live in Google’s Cache.

The eight issue that there is no published standards issue made by Google which is un organized and there is no appeal for penalized sites.

The ninth and final issue is that Google is a privacy bomb because with 200 million searchers per day it is a disaster waiting to happen.

I think that Google has taken the privacy issue a little to far but on the other hand I feel that some things should be able to be monitored because some people look up things that they should not be looking up and also you can tell a lot about an individual by what they are looking up all the time. For example if someone looks up home made bomb instructions I think that person should be watched. There are a large number of online predators that could have been prevented if they were more closely watched on the web. I think that it is good to keep an eye out but not good to look at everything you do and when and where you do it from.

Internet Technologies

January 22, 2008

Senator Olympia Snowe and Byron Dorgan joined forces once again to try bringing upon their own version of the bill which is known as the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which actually died in the United States Senate last year. These two senators had strong support from six other democrats. Their bill has a very detailed list of certain engagements for every broadband service provider.

In other words they would not be permitted to tamper or discriminate against access to content or to try and prevent users from attaching certain devices of their authorization to the network. The network operators would also be stripped from making any kind of deals with content providers to ensure fasters delivery. This would require all the internet material to be delivered on an equal ground.

These two Senator’s bill was very admired by many of the Net neutrality advocates, including huge corporations such as Google, eBay, and Amazon.com. These large corporations seem to like innovators like these Senators and will continue to allow things such as this fuel our nation’s economy.

The Net neutrality issue is based on a very simple notion that network operators like AT&T and Verizon should be banned from being in charge of and services that travel along their pipes; for example trying to charge YouTube extra money for being delivered faster then other services. These large company’s main argument is against the need to put these principles into law, saying that they are no into banning services; but they think the deserve to charge these services more money for their more speedy delivery.

This issue caused internet companies and other consumers to go to mount grassroots campaigns asking for regulations. The Snowe-Dorgan legislation would stop the operators from tampering with the access of the Internet content and services therefore preventing consumers from connecting any type of external devices to the actual network. This causes safety and consumer protection expectations. Their bill devises outside Net neutrality, their proposition is that all the broadband companies must offer their clientele the option of purchasing standalone

broadband service. This issue would have to be passed by the Federal Communications Commission to carry out any complaints stemming from the bill’s obligations.

The Senate relies on the FCC’s decision to accept Net neutrality conditions offered by the services involved. Verizon and AT&T reps were very quit to depreciate the Snowe-Dorgan bill’s resurrection.

There is a very good chance that very soon this bill will fall through. Last years Snowe and Dorgan introduced the bill as an amendment to a massive communications bill. It barely failed with and 11-11 vote which involving party lines. The democrats were mostly in favor and republicans not. The majority slightly leaned toward the democrats. The bill’s chances are improving.

In the House of Representatives, Edward Markey is expected to bring upon his own Net neutrality proposal. This has just about the same requirements as the Senate version but was beaten by a Republican-controlled chamber.

In my opinion I think that there should be Net neutrality in some cases but I disagree with all the rules and regulations that they are trying to enforce. I think there should be neutrality to a certain extent. No one would be able to adapt to all their regulation ideas. If this was permitted it would be a rapid change and people would not be used to it, so if I had to vote I would vote against it. I think things should stay the way they are and if the certain things must change then eventually they will but I think a 9 page measure of detailed obligations is way to much for anyone to handle especially with the Net in this day and age.