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As of 2012, illegal pirating is a huge problem in the technological world.  Everyone has illegally downloaded at least one file in their lifetime.  Under a new law that is active as of October 1, Japanese internet users who illegally download files could face up to 2 years in prison, or a fine of up to 2 million yen($25 700).  Even using applications such as Youtube, which stores video files on your computer, could be considered illegal and could land you a spot in jail.  Downloading copyrighted material was illegal in Japan since 2012, but the penalties were not as serious as they are now.  The law was passed by the Recording Industry Association, which cited a 2010 study, stating that illegal downloads in the country outnumber the legal ones ten to one.  This could be a legal problem, since people are not purchasing the files.  Instead, they are illegally downloading files, which is a form of stealing.  The big question here is should the rest of the world adopt this idea?

A recent survey has proven that the downloading of illegal music has decreased by 26 percent from 2011 to 2012. It seems that fewer people are illegally downloading music for three specific reasons. With the introduction of P2P music sites a few years ago, illegally downloaded music was becoming more and more common. Since, the music industry has responded very negatively trying to shut down these sites.A famous example was the shutting down of the huge P2P site and software, Limewire, after they were found guilty of copyright infringement. Limewire had millions of users that ripped off artists music millions of times and the record companies were not just going to stand there and watch. People are also not downloading illegal music as much because of the new music streaming services, such as Songza.  These sites stream music to many computers and devices free of charge for the listener to enjoy. The last reason that people are downloading illegal music less is because of the malware and spyware risks that downloading this music poses. You may think you are downloading your favourite techno song when really you are downloading a trojan virus that will steal all of your passwords and personal information. I think this is a sign that people are finally realizing that this is an immoral act and they are taking away money from the artists that make the songs. I personally have bought all of the songs I own and I rarely use the music streaming services. Hopefully by 2014, there will be no illegally downloaded music by anybody.

Unlocking an iPhone is now illegal. Any smartphone bought after January 26, 2013 can not be unlocked as it is illegal in the USA at least. Although unlocking an iPhone is illegal jailbreaking is not. At least it is legal to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch but to jailbreak an iPad is illegal. With all this in mind the real winner is the carrier/provider as the consumer cannot jump from company to company with the carriers phone. Only in the states can one go to jail for unlocking a phone but can own an assault rifle!

By now, everyone who is the slightest bit technologically inclined - or just interested in the news - has heard of the 'questionable' activities of the NSA. The National Security Agency, for the uninitiated, is a United States government agency that deals with national security and recently became the object of scrutiny after leaked information showed the massive data collection effort of the agency. This included: recording phone calls, ingoing and outgoing call identities, computer browsing, emails, key-logging and much much more. Needless to say, this was perceived as a tad scandalous and independent panels were brought in to assess the agencies spying program. Recently, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that the metadata collected by the NSA was obtained through illegal means. Before you cheer, however, this sort of conclusion has been reached before and has only resulted in a promise to limit spying. This is bad because its merely a promise; a promise from a government who lied repeatedly, committed perjury, knowingly covered its tracks, and chased a citizen away with the threat of life in prison. Unfortunately, many people have since stopped caring because its no longer new news, but we need to stand up for our right to privacy and demand legal action to prevent such breaches of trust in the future.

With all that's been happening with the Super storm, Hurricane Sandy, social networking may seem far from our mind, but it turns out social network sites, like twitter has become a common source for breaking news about what's going on in different places. At times like these, people often join together and find courage and compassion in one another, while others simply seek to make the problem worse. That's what happened when someone had tweeted false news about the hurricane, like tweeting about the New York Stock Exchange building being flooded and under three feet of water. The rumor had spiralled and even been repeated on CNN and the Weather Channel before being found fake. Normally, false tweets are simply overlooked or scoffed at, but at times like this those kinds of tweets can create mass panic and worry. They are definitely immoral, but what has come into question is whether it should be considered illegal. Some think that this type of tweeting was done to increase fear and endanger, but should his behaviour be considered criminal? After all, he does have freedom of speech and the freedom to lie is included in that, except in "rare occasions". Personally, I think that, normally, silly, fake tweets can be overlooked and just scrolled past, but in times of emergency, tweets like this that can add more fear and panic to an already troubled situation should be considered a criminal action. In times of crisis, everybody should be uniting and helping each other, not creating more danger and trouble. Freedom to lie in the face of disaster like this, about that kind of information is not something that should be tolerated. No matter how big or small the aftermath and reaction to those tweets, they should not be overlooked and in no way should the law consider it okay.

Many countries recently blocked access to The Pirate Bay, a torrenting website, in order to prevent the illegal downloading of films, music, programs, and more. However, these efforts were futile, as many users are simply turning to proxy servers to allow them to bypass their countries censorship. Torrenting sites have always been risky territory for users, and as of late, more and more sites have been taking down in order to prevent pirating. The Pirate Bay has an insanely high volume of traffic, and it hasn't slowed down in recent times. It is noted in this article that the only way to rid of TPB is to physically shut down the servers, but even if that were to happen, users are simply going to move to the next site. Whether or not piracy negatively affects the income of the producers of the material being distributed is debatable, however the fact remains true that this process is completely illegal.  As a frequent torrenter, I hope that TPB will continue to thrive at it's current level. My hope is that all these pushes against torrenting will make the industries behind said files realize that users refuse to pay the ridiculous prices and taxes on content. This realization will hopefully lead to cheaper costs on retail products in the media industry, thus removing the need for pirating and torrenting. It will take awhile, but as long as the high price industry standards are in place, torrenting will continue to occur, and no legal matter will be able to stop it. If the internet is to truly be 'free', than laws and limitations should not be placed on content provided. #BarbieJXoXo

This is the greatest article of all time.

I am not the same guy as this poster, but I think he is beautiful

Simply, there are creepers on the internet that will steal whatever image you think yourself to be without hesitation and then commit mysterious, illegal, dangerous, suspicious activity under your name which could unfortunately get you into jail even though you are innocent. This is a fact. And you know what helps them create this problem of identity theft? It is the information people freely and openly decide to share on their social media accounts like Facebook. Just one insignificant status allows bad people to assume your identity - all they even need is a vague birth date and birth place, and you are basically done for. YOU COULD BE FRAMED. This goes beyond security issues and transcends what illegal is defined as. Say goodbye to your privacy laws and hello to a never ending game of pretend. Identity fraud is swarming on this site and people don't even realize the massive extent it goes to. People are oblivious and frankly don't care if someone is unfortunate enough to fall victim to identity theft.

This article is about the top 10 most pirated movies through the use of a program called BitTorrent. BitTorrent makes you download files for no price what so ever. Pirating movies is an illegal thing to do because it makes people download movies for free when people make DVD or Blue Ray copy of it in stores for a decent price. It's unfair to pirate these movies because some of the people who don't torrent movies and buy the real thing pay for it rather than just having to download a copy of the movie for free. In addition, if you use torrents, there's a chance of being caught for downloading things that would originally have a price and get them for free. In my opinion, using torrents can appeal to many of it's users as you can get a variety of things such a movies but it can be claimed as copyright and might be dangerous as you can be caught.

Bitcoin, a wildly popular virtual currency has reached the status of a billion dollar market. For those unaware, Bitcoin in an online currency and market, somewhat like Paypal. What makes it different is that it strives under no rules or government regulations. It works on a peer to peer basis, where a database journals transactions and ensure security among it's users. Created in 2009, Bitcoin hasn't been able to hit the mainstream market, that is, until now. Up until this point, Bitcoin has been seen as a shady form of currency, used mainly to conceal illegal transactions over the internet. However, due to the support it has been given by large networks such as Reddit, Bitcoin has been able to access a mainstream market, where it continues to grow and prosper today. It is clear that virtual currency will have a chunk of market space in the future, but how long until the government tries to shut it down or bare down regulations? And if these regulations are in place, will online markets such as Bitcoin be able to remain popular? Only time will tell.

It's no secret that the countries such as North Korea (obviously), China, and Iran have filtered the internet via censorship to within a couple of breathes of its life. But now there is a new country passing censorship policies: Russia. According to the New York Times, the Russian government has

This article is about a new spy plane that costs $195,000 and fits in the palm of your hand. Now the British soldiers will be a bit safer thanks to this little plane and it flies nearly silently. Prox Dynamics of Norway designed this little plane and it is only 4 inches long and 1 inch tall. This plane can provide videos to the soldiers hand from up to 1000 meters away. It has been used in Afghanistan since August of 2012 and has impressed so far. It is also very hard so see or hear. This article relates to the selected tag because it impacts the lives of both the locals and the military. It affects the locals because they do not have much privacy and security anymore due to this new spy plane. This is unethical and illegal because people want their privacy and if people are spying on them daily they are not secure. Even though it is unethical to do this I think that it would be much safer for most people to use this new plane. The only thing I do not understand is why the plane costs so much and if they will be able to reduce the price.  

There was a lot of hype around the jailbreak community when the evasi0n iOS 6.1 jailbreak was released on Monday. It saw 1.7 million downloads on the first day alone. This jailbreak works by exploiting "bugs" in Apple's iOS code to allow users to write data to the kernel. This article relates to the legal tag because over the past decade, jailbreaking has become a very controversial topic and some people consider jailbreaking unethical or illegal. This article also relates to the economics tag because jailbreakers are pirating App Store apps which digs into Apple's and app developers' profits. I was once a jailbreaker myself, but have recently learned that developers work hard to make their apps and they deserve the credit and money for them. Overall, this article shows that the jailbreak community is still going strong and there are still those people who like pirating apps and taking profit away from developers 

Basically it's about search engines and how they have a long memory and how we don't think before we post. Our immoral and illegal act online, such as the negative tweets towards Obama. Basically saying that whatever you post is hard to take back even if it was something you once did years ago. (Which you probably even know) "The past is hard to escape" I agree. No matter what bad things you do, if you put something out there, someone will remember for long periods. Just like remembering those embarrassing moments in elementary. Although it's a good thing to make it hard to escape. Most youths and victims will eventually find it a huge mistake/regret.

This article is about a music streaming service that Google might release for their Andriod Operating system. A few months ago, Apple was supposedly working on a music streaming service for their iOS and now Google is joining in, increasing the rivalry between them. Because of the on going rivalry between Andriod and Apple, both companies are trying to take all the necessary steps towards buying over their fans. The music streaming service would enable the customer to play music without actually having to download it. You would stream the music from the application with your internet connection, and since Google and Apple are developing these services, all the audio files that will be streamed will be playable on the device in use. This is a good way to get people to listen to music without actually having to download the song illegally and listen to the song they want to buy before purchasing it. This service could boost hardware sales, but they would not make a lot of money from the actual service itself, since its hard to make money with an ad-supported music streaming service.

Many of use know about pirating, and some even do it. So far we thought that it was an easy way to get things with little ways of getting caught; this however is going to change. A knew security system is in development and bound to be out within the next 2 months that will catch those who pirate, and if numerous warnings are ignored; they will be prosecuted. This program watches popular sites such as bittorent and tracks the ip address of those who download illegal content. Then it sends warnings and if those are ignored, you will be tracked and investigated. Overall I believe this software will help stop pirating, but it will be met with huge opposition because most people wont be willing to give up their access to free movies, music, software, etc. Also this raises a privacy issue, but as this security system only tracks your IP, its not much of a problem compared to other tracking systems out there. To conclude, I believe the future of this system is filled with huge debates and maybe even battles.

New "surveillance--proof" app, Silent Circle has been released providing an easy way for people to text and call people without anyone else ever knowing what has been said, including ISPs and governments. This app makes sure no one can eave drop on your personal business by using what's called encryption. Encryption is the process of changing data into a secret code, the secret code can then only be read by the device you are trying to communicate with. The encryption codes are randomly generated each time the app is used so it is almost impossible to crack the code. This app is can be used on iOS and is currently in development for other devices and platforms as well. Some feel that free communication should be a right, but governments must be feeling a little bit nervous about this app. I chose the tag "privacy and security" because this article is about how Silent Circle has given people an easy way to speak in a secure and private environment without any intervention from anyone else other than the communicators. In my opinion I feel that free communication is important, but people will abuse this through using this app to possibly deal drugs, plan terrorist attacks, or other illegal activities. Who knows, maybe even the government controls this network to monitor people who use it, but that is just a theory.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to help protect digital rights, but allowed the Librarian of Congress to make exceptions to the act that would otherwise not follow the act. Today (October 28), four new exemptions to the DMCA were put into effect most notably the legalizing of jailbreaking on iPhones but not iPads. The other exemptions to the DMCA are the requirement of disabled people to own multiple devices in order to access e-books, the illegalizing of unlocking a cell phone purchased after January 2013 at a new carrier without permission from your old carrier, and the legalizing of ripping some content of a DVD only for specific purposes. The new exemptions put into effect could have a serious impact on the technology market. The number of e-book reader sold to disabled customers will decrease drastically since they will have to buy other devices so they can legally read e-books. Apple and app developers would also lose a lot of revenue from the App Store since more users will be motivated to jailbreak their iPhones and get pirated apps instead of actually buying apps since they can do so legally. The new exemptions could cause some providers to lose some money though not a significant amount should the provider refuse to unlock cell phones when consumers go to other countries since in the foreign country, consumers will be paying and using service from a local provider instead of their original provider causing them to miss out on some money. Finally, the DMCA exemptions could cause a decrease in DVD sales not just because they are losing popularity already but also because if someone wants to rip a part of a DVD, they can just borrow it from someone else instead of buying and ripping the needed content. I think these new exemptions are very silly and could end up being more harmful than useful. Making disabled customers buy multiple devices just to access e-books is very discouraging to potential e-book reader customers. I also wonder th

If you send anything to people that could be illegal through cloud email, you might have an encounter with something called cops. Yes, the law enforcement have access to your cloud emails to help them with cases or anything else, beware.

So if your illegally downloading anything and have Skype, watch out because they found a way to fish you out to see if you are using torrents.

Samsung tried to file an injunction with the tokyo district court to stop apple from selling the iphone in japan and Australia. is apple really so threatning to the samsung business that they would try to make it illegal to sell, well, apple is actually that big in the computing environment.

News from the never-ending patent war between Apple and Samsung: the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Samsung filed for preliminary injunctions in the Tokyo District Court and in the New South Wales Registry, Australia. This time, the goal is to block sales of the iPhone 4S, which launched in both countries last Friday.