Writing Assignment 5: Privacy

So what are the biggest challenges to personal privacy posed by the internet? The first thing that comes to mind would have to be that question of, Do you think that you really have any personal privacy on the internet? To answer this you would have to consider that you do to an extent and even the amount that you do have is quite limited. I think about the fact that I have no idea who monitors my activity on the internet, whether it’s the company the I have my internet service through or the government? Who knows because I sure don’t and I guess that’s the scary part about it. Yes, I worry about the amount of privacy that I have or at least the perception of the amount of privacy that I think I have. Who has the ability to see what I’m doing, especially if I don’t want them to see. It’s creepy.

With the amount of time spent on the internet now buy the general public, we each put of selves out there creating the opportunity to affected negatively through internet use as much of a positive and a convenience as it is to us. According to Danah Boyd of the University of California-Berkeley, School of Information, “Social network sites (SNSes) like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo are ubiquitous and today’s youth are spending a great deal of time using these sites to access public life”. And to add to this, from an article by Bob Sullivan from MSNBC.com, he says, “Psychologists tell us boundaries are healthy, that it’s important to reveal yourself to friends, family and lovers in stages, at appropriate times. But few boundaries remain. The digital bread crumbs you leave everywhere make it easy for strangers to reconstruct who you are, where you are and what you like. In some cases, a simple Google search can reveal what you think. Like it or not, increasingly we live in a world where you simply cannot keep a secret”. I think this is a very true statement. Even now what we consider to be our privacy it feels as though we just be losing as much as we gain and not really even realizing it. But again how is privacy defined by the general population?

Well let’s start with, What’s my definition of privacy? Something along the lines of - The ability to know that I have the choice or the right to expose something about myself to a population or to keep it to myself from that population. Well, according to Wikipedia, privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. I guess that’s an alternative way as to how I stated it. I would assume that most people have different views on the definition of privacy, but when I think of the term and the usage I feel that it relates more to individual or the self or the rights that go along with the word privacy.

A specific scenario involving privacy and the internet with myself actually took place a while ago. I was attempting to purchase a textbook online from the site known as half.com and I found the book that I needed at a fraction of the cost of course compared to the book store, so I decided to carry through with the purchase. When I was prompted to enter my credit card information I followed the guidelines and entered the appropriate information and clicked the pay now selection and within a few seconds I was notified by the site administrator that the seller of the text was a fraudulent setup and even though they were able to terminate the account of the seller they were unable to cancel the transaction that occurred and now this random dude just ran off with my money and credit card information. Now I don’t know who else has experienced something like this before but, I’m sure that I wasn’t the first and at first, your kind of scared because you don’t know what to think. This was something that had never happened to me before, it’s a very uncomfortable feeling that this happened even when you think that your pretty aware of what’s going on with the security of your accounts over the internet. There’s just nothing that can prepare you for the initial blow. After I realized the severity of the event my immediate reaction was to call the credit card company and cancel the card, which I did and then you just end up feeling kind of bad knowing that there are people out there who are intentionally trying to hurt you.

But, to be completely honest, I don’t feel that I am educated enough on the topic of privacy and the internet to make most of the statements in this blog and that is something that causes some discomfort in my mind because this is such a pertinent issue in our society today that it is something that people should be researching these topics more thoroughly (including myself) and raising the level of awareness up a few pegs.

Works Cited

boyd, danah. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?” Knowledge Tree 13,May. http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/?page_id=28

Privacy. (n.d.) WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 26, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy

Sullivan, B. (2006). Privacy Lost: Does anybody care?. It's vanishing, but there's no consensus on what it is or what should be done. Retrieved September 26, 2008, from https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_61661_1%26url%3d

COM 125 Writing assignment 4: Online Economies

I think this one is kind of interesting, considering that it would actually create room for discussion from last week’s assignment on copyrighting and conflict but, how about Limewire. This here is a gift economy, there is an established network between users and there is a lot of information or file sharing that takes place. Or what Kollack would consider generalized exchange. Now, only for the purpose of this assignment, I’m going to disregard the fact that Limewire itself promotes copyright infringement because that’s not the topic for discussion here.

Now, I have viewed the site before (Limewire) and have seen how it works and you have to admit it’s quite impressive. It’s impressive when you think about it the way Kollack states, “Yet the wonder of the Internet is not that there is so much noise, but that there is any significant cooperation at all. Given that online interaction is relatively anonymous, that there is no central authority, and that it is difficult or impossible to impose monetary or physical sanctions on someone, it is striking that the Internet is not literally a war of all against all. For a student of social order, what needs to be explained is not the amount of conflict but the great amount of sharing and cooperation that does occur in online communities”.

When using Limewire its always for personal/individual gain or growth. You never see who you are sharing a file with or obtaining it from, and you don’t feel an obligation to reciprocate the transaction to the immediate individual that you receive the file from however, you know that someone else will be interested in what you have and that other users can gain from you now also.

When you think about what Limewire provides, it be viewed as what Kollack considers, “Public goods”. And to be honest I couldn’t explain this any better than Kollack does, so Kollack says, “In particular, many of the benefits provided in cyberspace have the quality that they are public goods, which are goods that anyone might benefit from, regardless of whether they have helped contribute to their production. A public good is defined by two characteristics. First, it is to some degree indivisible in that one person's consumption of the good does not reduce the amount available to another. One person's viewing of a fireworks display, for example, does not reduce what can be seen by another person. Second, a public good is to some degree non-excludable in that it is difficult or impossible to exclude individuals from benefiting from the good – one receives the benefits of a national defense system regardless of whether one pays taxes. In most cases a public good will exhibit these two qualities to some degree only; pure public goods are the exception”. And to just kind of tie all of this together Kollack also states, “Everyone in a group may be made better off by the provision of a public good, but that in no way guarantees that it will be produced”.

Lewis Hyde expresses the spirit of a gift economy (and its contrast to a market economy) as follows: The opposite of "Indian giver" would be something like "white man keeper"… Whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away not kept. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move in its stead… The gift may be given back to its original donor, but this is not essential… The only essential is this: the gift must always move.^[19]

To provide another example of this, according to Gifford Pinchot, who also refers to Lewis Hyde, he states, “In a commodity (or exchange) economy, status is accorded to those who have the most. In a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others. Lest we think that the principles of a gift economy will only work for simple, primitive or small enterprises, Hyde points out that the community of scientists follows the rules of a gift economy. The scientists with highest status are not those who possesses the most knowledge; they are the ones who have contributed the most to their fields. A scientist of great knowledge, but only minor contributions is almost pitied - his or her career is seen as a waste of talent”.

Kollack offers great insight to this topic providing vivid analogies to explain the material. So I want to end this with what I think really puts it all into perspective by Kollack, “This is not to say that online cooperation is inevitable or expanding. Nor is it to say that online cooperation and collective action is always a benefit to the larger society. However, the changing economies of online interaction have shifted the costs of providing public goods – sometimes radically – and thus changed the kinds of groups, communities, and institutions that are viable in this new social landscape”.

Works cited

Gift Economy. (n.d.) In WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 19, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

Pinchot, G. (1995). The Gift Economy. Business on a Small Planet (Summer 1995 page 49). Retrieved September 19, 2008, from http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm

Writing Assignment 3: Copyright and Conflict

Today, one can easily subscribe to a newspaper, order a magazine, listen to a radio broadcast over the Internet or purchase a video from a retail store. However, when asked which law would govern those transactions, most people would have a very difficult time answering this question. When discussing copyrighting and conflict, viewed individually have distinct definitions that make the two completely different things, however there are traits that connect them together when raising certain questions. Like, even though exclusive rights show ownership over something to the creator, “Is there conflict in the sense that although the work is offered to the public for use of obtaining knowledge and for use of reference, is it okay to use the piece without giving proper credit to the initial creator?” otherwise known as copyright infringement.
According to Wikipedia, Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time, after which the work enters the public domain. Conflict is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests. A conflict can be internal (within oneself) or external (between two or more individuals). Conflict as a concept can help explain many aspects of social life such as social disagreement, conflicts of interests, and fights between individuals, groups, or organizations. Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.
So the conflict occurs in copyrighting when there is copyright infringement and the question posed is, is it okay to use something that’s not mine and say that it is because of the fact that it’s not a physically bound text? In an attempt to accommodate both the interests of content creators and the public good, laws created by governments to protect everyone alike should be made well known, so that everyone can abide by them and in turn give everyone what they want and need. Maybe the laws created need to be more explicit and clearly defined or at least more well-known to regulate any violations made by the public. However this may be somewhat of an international conflict as well, considering that one country’s laws governing copyright infringement may be different from another and dependent on the violation that took place as well. For example, from Wikipedia there is worldwide collaboration to fight copyright infringement, “Servers enabling internet-based copyright infringement are often based in countries with less strict copyright laws or enforcement history.^[9][10][11] BPI spokesman Matt Phillips has said the lax copyright laws in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries made it hard to crack down on copyright infringement there.^[12] Copyright holders are collaborating to fight this activity, through lobbying governments and other means.”
The technical structure needed to carry through with regulation are our modern advancements in technology that allow us to govern online activity. The technical structure is already available it just needs to utilized. Maybe this means hiring more employees to monitor appropriately and accordingly. The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act known as DMCA 512 or the DMCA takedown provisions, is a 1998 United States federal law that provides a safe harbor to online service providers (OSPs, including Internet service providers) that promptly take down content if someone alleges it infringes their copyrights. Social structures may require something along the lines of educating the public for its own good on the laws and rules and the governing bodies that monitor activity to ensure that violations made are caught and punished. So, I agree with the steps that have already been conducted and that will be taken to regulate laws created and that governing bodies can eventually produce a tight regime to ensure that the work of others is not exploited in a way that would withhold credit from the rightful creator.

Works Cited

· Copyright Infringement. (n.d.). WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 12, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.org/

· Copyrights. (n.d.). WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 12, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.org/

· Conflict. (n.d.). WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 12, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.org/

· Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act. (n.d.). WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 12, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.org/

· Yu, P. K. (April 2001). Conflict of Laws Issues in International Copyright Cases. Retrieved September 12, 2008, from http://www.peteryu.com/gigalaww0401.pdf

COM125 Assignment 2: In the Beginning

Found in an article by Karen Coyle pertaining to privacy rights, prior to the year 1994, commercial activity of the internet was not allowed; this means prior to the year 1994, the internet was a basic tool used solely for the exchange of technical information between users. Websites were unable to advertise on their sites in anyway to users to in the network. Even when this changed after 1994 under more privately run networks, like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, most sites were still strongly limited as to what material they could and could not display to users on their sites.
According to Karen Coyle, since that time, Internet software has been modified to provide more information about the interaction, techniques have been developed to deliver information about "customers" to web sites. What this allows for is the sites are able to see how the customers are using their sites. Information is sent back to the sites administrators and this way the site can decide what types of information, other than the information being searched by the user, what material can be sent to the individual user, like advertisements and other non-technical information. The sites can also see what sites the user had previously visited to their own and if a search engine was used, that it linked the site properly from the initial search engine.
Prior to 1994, other than exchanging technical information, usage of the internet in alternative ways was considered a privacy risk; unlike now Facebook and Myspace although still have may have some security risks involved, are two of the most frequently used sites of the World Wide Web and are used for no other reason than to market and advertise ourselves to others. In attempts to lower security risks and privacy issues, the creation of "cookies" was introduced. A cookie is a small text file that the web site writes to your hard drive (according to Wikipedia's definition), assigning a unique ID written to the cookie file and each time you visit the site it tells the site that you've returned.
Obviously at this point, many things have changed with internet use and availability of information; ways of using the internet and we are able to do or find information on just about anything conceivable quickly, saving users time in our high-speed life styles. However, the abilities and capabilities of internet usage may not be the same if it had never been boundaries to venture beyond.