Democracy and the Internet

The problems with the internet that we have discussed over the past 9 weeks have all been surrounded with the issue of governance. The Democratic environment has created a way in which the internet can thrive in this country. It allows for people to experiment with many different technologies and figure out new ways to improve old habits. America's love for freedom also breeds many difficulties, problems, and complications in the context of the internet. Many of the things that are Internet based for example spam, and the numerous amounts of information spread out online, some good and some bad, are not restricted because of freedom of speech or other constitutional theories.
The freedom of the internet is not yet governed, however slightly it should or should not be, and that has caused problems for governments around the world. Hand in hand with the issue of freedom and governance on the internet, the issue of privacy comes into play. Spiders, spam, and spyware should be regulated shouldnt they? If people are doing harm on the internet shouldnt we protect ourselves, but how are we going to protect our freedoms that the world wide web so gladly promotes? To americans it seems natural to have some sort of democratic governance, but how to apply it to the internet that is so worldly and wide? :) The legal affects that have been happening throughout the past decade are trying desparately to catch up with the internet fiascos that are ruining people and businesses, but i feel like that there might never be a day when the good guys can outrun the bad guys. On the internet it seems so plausible that newer technology is going to develop faster than we can even think about protecting ourselves. In this fashion, i can not imagine that imposing a government or restrictions or whatever on the internet is going to make a difference, but i guess what really is necessary to consider, is would it be worth it?

When I searched Google for one of my friends here at Princeton, Aly Brady, the first five top hits I found were all about the person I wanted. It gave me a list of her squash tournaments and player bio's for princeton. This gave out the information about where she had gone to school, what year in college she was, what tournaments she had played in and how well she had done in them. I then searched Google images for Aly and when I came up with nothing, tried myself and Libby Denniston another girl who played squash with me in Google images. In these two searches I found pictures of both of us in the first 10 images I saw.
I continued my Google search with that of Jim Stamatis, one of my friend's fathers. I found numerous websites about his intercollegiate and almost olympic soccer career in his youth and how he won the legendary Hermann Award. Using images I even found a picture of a 17 year old Mr. Stamatis playing soccer in Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.
I then searched for our 60 year old assistant squash coach, Richard Hankinson, he is a little younger than my grandparents, but I couldn't find any information on my grandparents, but I found about two applicable websites and two images of Richard.
It is truly amazing to see how much information you can find solely from Google, it is really unbelievable to think that there is so much out there that we don't even know about oursleves. The article about GOogle themselves being googled is definitely an amazing feat that needed to be done so that Google will figure out that even they themselves are vulnerable with the technology created by the internet. Even one of my suitemates had an issue with her privacy because she had won mulltiple academic awards, a person from jail wrote her a very scary letter and mailed it to our dorm room. Privacy on the internet is something that needs to be reassessed and this age of free information might have to be altered in some form.

term paper proposal

Maggie O’Toole
FRS 127 Term Paper Outline

I. General Topic Information
a. Answers the questions:
i. How much privacy are we (as a society and as individuals) willing to give up in order to gain newer, better technology?
ii. To what extent does freedom of speech apply on the internet, and what penalties should be given for crossing a seemingly (or literally) invisible line?
iii. What should the role of government be on the internet? Should there be rules and regulations applied to everyone? Is that justified and fair? What about different countries and different beliefs? How to incorporate a system of regulation to all?
II. Introduction
a. In this unbelievable technological revolution that we are currently living in, how will we deal with the relationship between freedom and privacy that the Internet supplies our society with? I fear that if we are facing a double negative, if we try and secure our freedom we are at a higher risk of getting hurt, information stolen or fooled by this new digital age, and if we restrict ourselves and regulate the net, we are taking away some of our rights as citizens that we were so sure were necessary to live as a human being. What can we do with this two edged sword?
III. The Patriot Act
a. Solely American politics
IV. DCMA
a. Copyrights online and how restricts our freedoms
V. Electronics Frontiers Foundation
a. Encoding what printer and time every time you make a color copy

After a little bit of more research I’m going to pick an unresolved issue, explain it, and make a policy decision. I need to acknowledge that justice privacy and freedom are broader issues, but focus in on one aspect of this whole debate.

Reaction

This week's reading was very interesting and pertinent to many issues that have been circulating throughout my high school and college career. The issues of the copyright laws and the DMCA are very engaging and affect many people around me. As I used to be a downloader of music off of Kazaa it is very interesting to finally read the legislation about the litigations that has been made over the past couple of years. This relates back to code and how it either is or is not fair to impose limitations of the internet, which has been such an important pioneer for freedom. How can we impose a governing system on something that is so universal? These issues are very relevant to my term paper and will most likely be a factor in my argument to decide wether things should be governed on the internet, how we can maintain some privacy, and still be free.

The DCMA was a really interesting set of regulations that can obviously have some arguable interpretations. I can see how mad this could make some people. For example, even when I was reading Sherry's blog I was amazed at how passionate her examples made her seem about protesting the Copyright Laws. Surely the people who are looking out for their companies or creations must protect themselves, but I kindof agree with the ridiculousness of how far they have gone. Copyright laws, at one point or another, are a good thing, even though people feel like they are intruding on innocent people's business. When I think about the time when I was downloading music in high school, I look back and think why was I doing it? Because other people were? Because it was fast and easy and a great way to get free music? I knew that it was illegal, but I think that all of the people who are still downloading realize it is an illegal activity and partially don't really care. It was always a huge debate in my school because no one was profiting from the music, no one sold their cds or songs we just shared. It brought up the point that "sharing" had become a bad thing. That is when I think people realized they had a problem.

Society's norms tell us that sharing is a beneficial thing to all, its promoted everywhere, except the internet. The internet sheds all norms and is truly a different "world" if you could actually call it that where everything can be turned upside -down in an instant. The best example of this from the reading was the movie-pirating article which showed so much inside of the pirating business. There are so many differernt levels and facets to the internet that a person who is obtaining free music and movies from the internet would call it a godsend while the person getting ripped off by all of these levels of sophisticcation would call the creation of the internet the biggest monster yet. The real question is, though, is the internet running wild without rules and governing really going to become that horrendous monster?

technology blog....

9:00 Alarm on my cell phone goes off
9:15 shower radio
9:35 Check Email, Go on Facebook, Put away message on AIM
9:49 Start Writing This List in Word
12:47 Set Alarm for nap
Music on
12:48 Checked Facebook for 5 minutes
while checking email
-1:00 On AIM, away message up
Music Still Playing
1:00 Typing this list
3:00 - On AIM away message off
Music Still ON
Blogged
Checked Email
Went on Facebook
3:45 Three Phone Calls, while
reading
still playing music
still online
still checking email
-4:45 still on facebook
7:00 Check Facebook, Email, Turn Music On, Go on AIM
Do Homework, Read,
-8:00
8:45 Check Facebook, Email, Turn Music On again, AIm again
Homework both online and in books
-12:00

term paper beginnings...

After reading up so much on the internet and its effects on society I think for my term paper I want to write something about the relationship between privacy and freedom on the internet and the role that the government should or should not have in this issue. These are many things that have been bugging me all throughout the course material that we have been discussing and reading about. It worries me that there is so much going on that I don't really know about and I feel that through writing this paper I might be able to mitigate while at the same time verbalizing my fears and to educate myself and others about the policies that are already in action.
Thesis/Introduction-ish Statements:
In this unbelievable technological revolution that we are currently living in, how will we deal with the relationship between freedom and privacy that the internet supplies our society with? I fear that if we are facing a double negative, if we try and secure our freedom we are at a higher risk of getting hurt, information stolen or fooled by this new digital age, and if we restrict ourselves and regulate the net, we are taking away some of our rights as citizens that we were so sure were necessary to live as a human being. What can we do with this two edged sword?
Some questions I will look to try and answer in this paper:
-How much privacy are we (as a society and as individuals) willing to give up in order to gain newer, better technology?
-To what extent does freedom of speech apply on the internet, and what penalties should be given for crossing a seemingly
(or literally) invisible line?
-What should be the role of government on the internet? Should there be rules and regulations applied to everyone? Is that justified and fair?
Other sources I'm going to use:
-Lessig's discussion of privacy and net IDs and certificates
-Issues discussed in this week's lecture/powerpoint
-Patriot Act (http://www.netcaucus.org/events/2005/patriot/)
This is just the beginning of my outline.. I'll be posting more later...

addition to my first post

To come back to my first post, I wanted to say that some of the material I learned from last week's reading was very thought provoking. "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" by Lawrence Lessig was written in a very interesting and different style than I am used to. He discussed many pertinent issues about the internet and its effects on society today. He has clearly been around while this technology was developing and has an entertaining way of presenting material that is up for discussion. What shocked me most is how all of these issues that are around now were around six years ago. This book made me consider the internet a little more closely, and for that matter, most new technology in general. I feel like I need to consider more the question: am I always willing to give up more of my privacy for something newer and better? I know that I at least blow off some of the internet horror stories but with all of the advancement in technology, the more I put myself out there am I putting myself more at risk also?
Lessig talks in response to these questions of some sort of governing ethics or government enforcement on the internet. Although this is worrisome in some effects, it also strikes me as a possible lesser of two evils. He says, the "trade off - between cost and the willingness to regulate - is one we have seen before. It is a theme that recurs in many contexts. Cost for the government is liberty for us. The higher the cost of a regulation, the less likely it will be pursued as a regualtion. Liberty depends on the regulation remaining expensive (56)." The trade off he speaks of is definitely a topic that is pertinent to the time of the internet in 2005, where we need to reassess the way in which we protect ourselves from others because the familiarity of the internet is becoming unbelievable. Security on the internet is of high interest to me, especially as I learn more about the ways in which the government 'could' be using things like worms if they are not already. Lessig once again, spurs these questions of mine on with, "These "basica assumptions" were grounded in liberty and openness. An invisible hand now threatens both. We need to understand how (60)."
I really like Lessig's approach to trying to convey the policy problems with the internet and possible solutions to all of them. He uses multiple stories very well to get the points across and how differently they can be handled. His style of writing can get confusing but I am very interested in learning more from reading his book and discussing more of the issues from his book.