Assignment 5: Privacy

I define privacy as the freedom of individuals to relay or keep their personal information when they act according to different situations that they are faced with. I worry about my privacy all the time. I even get nervous when I go to purchase an item online; but I have to face the fact that if a person is trying to infringe on my privacy they are going to do it. It’s unnerving to hear things like Wegman’s selling your purchasing information to vendors and you almost have to assume that the vendor has your contact information as well. You can go on Google Earth type in an address and find your house or someone else’s house. Not to mention people who have phones that takes pictures. At this point in time is there any privacy left?
Some of the biggest challenges of personal privacy posed by the internet are that no one really cares or thinks that their privacy is being invaded. In an article by Bob Sullivan , he states “Someday a stranger will read your e-mail, rummage through your instant messages without your permission or scan the Web sites you’ve visited — maybe even find out that you read this story…Perhaps someone will casually glance through your credit card purchases or cell phone bills, or a political consultant might select you for special attention based on personal data purchased from a vendor. In fact, it’s likely some of these things have already happened to you” (Sullivan, 2006). Who is going to think that purchasing an item from Target.com would be detrimental to your privacy? No on thinks that a hacker will break the system and steal their credit card numbers and social security numbers; many think the likelihood is very slim. In an article by Annalee Newitz she said, “The company claimed it was trying to help researchers by providing "anonymized" search information, but experts and the public were shocked at how easy it was to figure out who had been searching on what. Apparently, AOL's anonymizing process didn't include removing names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Although the company has since apologized and taken the data down, there are at least half-a-dozen mirrors still out there for all to browse” (Newitz, 2006). Another challenge to internet privacy is cookies. Cookies are created on your computer so when you go on the internet, your computer can connect to the website faster. However, there are cookies that are used to “track” where you go and privacy can be violated this way. According to Wikipedia the original creators of cookies designed them to be a fast connection to a website but now a personally-identifiable tag can be placed on them for web profiling and cross scripting can occur to steal users cookies (Wikipedia, 2008).
After reading these articles, it’s hard to think that there is any privacy left out there. A scenario that woke me up thinking my privacy was in trouble was that recently I was going to purchase some picture frames online for my mother because I already had a target account. The problem was that I couldn’t remember my password. So I clicked “forgot password?” and I had to retype my credit card information in and my address and so on. They had kept all of that information stored into their database! I was shocked because I had never really thought about what happened to my information after I am through with purchasing items. It sits there for people to view. My mom ended up setting up her own account because I concluded that if someone is going to steal your information they would most likely steal from a person who has used multiple credit cards for purchasing online under the same name and they may be less likely to find out right away if someone had stolen their information. I don’t think the internet is half as safe as they say it is, and we definitely don’t have to privacy that we used to anymore.


Newitz, Annalee. “Privacy Debacle Hall of Fame.” Wired. 21 Oct. 2006. 26 Sep. 2008.
<http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/08/71622>.

Internet Privacy. 2008. Retrieved September 26, 2008 from STS Wiki:
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

Sullivan, Bob. “Privacy Lost: Does Anybody Care?” MSNBC.com. 17 Oct. 2006. 26 Sep. 2008.
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/>.

Assignment 4: Gift Economy

Receiving something and not having the obligation to return the favor immediately is something that many of us experience in everyday life, but the internet can make this transaction more complicated. Wikipedia defines a gift economy as a type of “social theory where goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future quid pro quo” (Wikipedia, 2008). To get more in-depth with this transaction, the Kollock article uses Carrier’s definition of a gift as “(1) the obligatory transfer, (2) of inalienable objects or services, (3) between related and mutually obligated transactors” (Kollock,1999). What they are saying here is that when the gift is actually exchanged there is no future set time when the repayment exists. A person will feel obligated to return the favor but it’s not set in stone. In the article Gift Economy by Gifford Pinchot, he states Lewis Hyde’s example 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” (Pinchot, 1997, p.49).
Kollock goes on to explain the difference between a gift and commodity. A commodity, he states is that no obligation is felt after the gift if received to return the favor (Kollock, 1999). Another distinction that Kollock notes is made by Bell. In a gift economy, the most important thing is improving the “technology of social relations” (Kollock, 1999). That just means that the goal is to broaden your personal social network. You do this to make friends and to come in contact with as many people as possible. Whereas Kollock also notes that Bell describes commodity economies goal as making improvements in the technology of production that are driven by price (Kollock, 1999). Now, take this and throw the internet into the combo. In a gift economy, if you ask a question on a message board and it’s answered, you feel obligated to return a favor, but seeing as though the message board is anonymous how will you accomplish this? You could answer one of their questions in the future if you remember. Unless there is only one person answering the questions and he or she is qualified in answer medical questions, then it is less likely for you to return the favor at all. If you take the internet and a commodity transaction, it’s easier and more efficient because there is no obligation. You take the information and move on.
Personally, I would prefer being involved in a gift economy over a commodity because I like connecting with others and expanding my social network. Facebook could be a good online gift economy example. It’s a form of communication in many ways. You can send “gifts” to someone or a bumper-sticker, you can post notes, or join groups that related to you. Even if someone posts something on your wall, depending on what it says, you feel obligated to respond back. It was my birthday recently and I felt obligated to respond back to everyone that wished me a happy birthday even if I hadn’t seen that person since high school or if I just hadn’t seen them recently. Subconsciously, I still wanted to keep those old connections open in case I see them in the future and then I am able to have a conversation with them because they will still be in my network. And if you keep the connections open it could lead you to make other connections. Through Facebook you can add a friend or find one in a network and that helps broaden your own network. I find that it helps a lot with group projects and classes.

References:

Gifford Pinchot. 1997. Gift Economy. http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm

Gift Economy. 2008. Retrieved September 19, 2008 from STS Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

Kollock, Peter. 1999. The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in
Cyberspace. Communities in Cyberspace. Retrieved 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

Assignment 3: Infringing On Our Property?

Are copyright laws really that effective? Copyright infringement is happening more and more often in today’s society. It hurts the U.S the most because the U.S provides around 80% of the world’s software and that puts a damper on the digital culture for content creators according to Wikipedia’s article on Copyright Infringement (Wikipedia, 2008). Is it possible for content creators and the public to accommodate each other on copyright? In order to achieve this, adaption will have to be made on both parts; the creator and the public.
Accommodating both the interests of the public and the content creators may provide to be very difficult due to the fact that they both want different ways on how content is accessed and used. In a perfect world we would all just get along but this is far from being a perfect world. Now we are faced with the controversy of physical and intellectual property being of the same nature. Lawrence Lessig views that physical and intellectual properties are not related and claims so with the Mickey Mouse copyright. No one is allowed to use the icon, as it is protected under the copyright law. Lessig (2004) claims it is art and not a “factory” and it is therefore, "historically ... absolutely wrong. They have never been the same. And they should never be the same, because, however counterintuitive this may seem, to make them the same would be to fundamentally weaken the opportunity for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of creativity having less than perfect control (“The Mouse Who”, p. 1).” Then there are others who view that a balance, which may be hard to find now, is needed and that we have to observe debates on media and their effect on the world (Manjoo, p. 1). Everyone is different and when they create intellectual property many feel that need to say or think, “It’s mine and you can’t have it!” but that doesn’t exactly stop people from taking your work and using it illegally. For example, look on YouTube; a bunch of movies are posted that a person can watch for free. There is no need to go to Blockbuster and rent a movie for five dollars when an individual can watch them for free online. Lawsuits must be an everyday occurrence against YouTube, and it’s not necessarily their fault. People tend to feed off of each other; when one person acquires a movie they are able to burn it. Then the person can post it on YouTube and YouTube viewers view the movie and then they decide to post their movies. It only takes one person to create a chain reaction and there is no telling how prepared the world will be when it happens.
At this point it looks like it’s almost impossible to structure copyright infringement in a way that both the creator and the public are in agreement on. From a cultural stand point this is just how people are and as a society a person has to accept the fact that people will infringe. It will be impossible to fix what has already happened in the world with infringement so as a result individuals will have to work with it. Laying some responsibility on creators to claim their intellectual property is not a bad idea and if another person wants to use the same property to make it better, then they should have contact with the creator and they should settle for a fee of some sort. This idea may not happen enough and that could be a minor solution. If we structure the types of intellectual properties into different categories that have different rights or policies, that may put a stop to some infringements. At this point, we as a society have gone so far that it will be hard to go back and start over again. We have to deal with what we have now and work from that.
I feel that we can never really stop it because it is just so out of hand. If we were to completely eliminate copyright on intellectual property there is bound to be some cases involving people’s rights. If we were to completely copyright all intellectual property, many ideas or creations that result from a basis of something that is already copyrighted will come to a halt and fail to exist. I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t get excited when I can get a computer program for free or I can watch a movie online. I think its great but then again I would never post something or take someone’s ideas without contacting the creator first. The last thing I want to do is violate their rights and ideas. There is a difference between intellectual property and physical property and it should be dealt with structurally for both, because both are suffering.


References:

Copyright Infringement. 2008. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from the STS Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. In Farhad Manjoo (Ed.), The Mouse Who Would Be King (p 1-
2). Retrieved from http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/
index.html

Manjoo, Farhad. 2008. The Mouse Who Would Be King. Retrieved from
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/index.html

COM 125 Assignment 2: E-mail Era

How did e-mail become so revolutionary? E-mail is more than just a type of internet application; it’s a form of communication as well. In fact e-mail was invented in 1965, before the internet itself, and is known as a “crucial tool” leading up to its invention (Wikipedia, 2008). Wikipedia simply defines e-mail as “a store-and-forward method of writing, sending, receiving and saving messages over electronic communication systems” (Wikipedia, 2008). When thinking back, without e-mail where would we be as a culture? Life would be very different, and to many of us, it would be viewed as inconvenient. As a society I believe that we take our time that we have very seriously, and will create a mental time table that we follow to get things done efficiently every day. E-mail allows us to accomplish those tasks.

E-mail started out as a way for many users or a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate (Wikipedia, 2008). Think of this as a place to hold notes of any kind for others to read. We have to note that at this time people were not actually writing things and sending them to other people just yet. Ray Tomlinson created the standard address format, the @ sign, in 1971 (Wikipedia, 2008). After that a transmission was chosen so the e-mail could be passed a long. Such transmissions used at the time were ARPANET, BITNET and NSFNet as well as other hosts (Wikipedia, 2008). With e-mail being provided in a place of business, a person could discover that a lot less running around is done and people were able to work more efficiently if they didn’t have a list of errands to do. More could be accomplished in the time that was given to workers and this was also a new form of non-verbal communication between workers. In many instances it could have been more beneficial to non-verbally communicate with someone else rather than seeing the person face to face. An example would be a worker on the second floor of a building needed to contact another worker but didn’t have the time to phone or transport themselves because they were pressed for time. Well they could simply leave an e-mail for them, go to lunch or a meeting and come back and there could be a response there or maybe a phone call. Another example could be that the boss has a new list of employment benefits so he or she needs to contact every employee that works for them. So he or she could send out an e-mail to all employees and notify them of the change instead of mailing them the new information.
In our society today, we rely a lot more on e-mail than regular mail. E-mail allows us to think about what we want to write, rather than if you are taking to someone such as your boss, you have to think up a response right then and there. E-mail also prevents us from mailing actual letters. When you mail an actual letter you have to put it in an envelope and put a stamp on it with the address and then go out to the mailbox lift up the flag and it’s mailed whenever the mailman/woman comes to get it. With e-mail you type in the address and click send, and it’s sent instantly with no waiting around. Also with e-mail if mess up you don't have to start all over again thanks to the computer. A video on YouTube provides a comical outlook on e-mail in the 15th century. A conclusion that a person may come to after viewing the video would be that because of e-mail we found a new way to make more time available to us when we are being "hounded."

Time can be the essence of our life, and we go by it and use it everyday. E-mail that had once benefitted us in the workplace can benefit us in regular life too. Staying in contact with old friends can be just as important as a memo from your boss and they can be both accessed through the same way, e-mail. Yes e-mail can be defined as the sending and receiving of messages but to us as a society it is much more than that.