Group items tagged

In Mexico and other Latin American countries there have been some questions raised on how kidnappers can get precise information of potential victims and their spending power: friends, lifestyle, travels. If social networks like Facebook are a potential tool for criminals, should they be regulated by the government? Is it the media or the government's fault if such a use is being made? I am looking for references in English regarding this problem. 

The Internet is changing every seconds and obviously getting to be worriyng in some aspects. However, free access to information, free expression and participation, and thus free access to the world is now becoming narrowed due to govermental regulations and censorship. And who is going to decide which websites should be banned or not? It seems to be worried that increasingly soficiticated leak could be created by computer geeks to retrieve the freedom of the internet.

A Crikey article on DBCDE's proposal of mandatory filtering and the "Submissions on measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material". The Government's courting of mandatory filtering has drawn widespread criticism from such stakeholders as Google, the Internet Industry Association and highly regarded academics such as Professors Catherine Lumby, Lelia Greean and John Hartley. One of the main concerns is that the scope of the filtering is too wide and will have major implications on what content is available online. This article also helpfully provides links to some of the submissions.

Here is the wikipedia synthesis about the French law Hadopi. After a lot of reboudings and disagreements, the law which tends to bring a better control and regulation on the Internet has been adopted last october. If you are interesting, you can also find some further information on this blog: http://connectedresearch.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/france-approves-hadopi-2-law-on-illegal-downloading/

And as you can see, the effects expected are not immediate... http://connectedresearch.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/hadopi-leads-to-increased-illegal-downloading/

Article sums up the news around Facebook and Google Street View of the last weeks. The sleeping issue of privacy is said to have woken up. The U.S. Congress as well as the Federal Communications Commission and a Federal Trade Commission are asked to take action.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is really into his digital persona. Now he has a blog. Interesting how he has taken social media communications seriously. 

This report typically reflect the western view of China Internet censoship. Even though the regulation is difficult for foreign companies to accept, they have to follow the guideline of Chinese government to ensure the market share in China.

Canada, alongside France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom have issued a warning to Google on the grounds that the company is ignoring privacy and legislation with respect to launching their products (Google Buzz). This is a clear example of when a company, may appear to attempt to protect their users (Google vs. China) while, in the company's own interest, these rules and regulations may be ignored. How much trust should we put into any company that offers services free to the public, and exactly what liberties do we give up when we sign up for that service?

The penetration of political forums and blogs in South Korea has been seen as positive effects of technology on politics and, in some way, democratic development for citizen participation in political issues. A number of politicians and authorities have opened their homepages and promised the public to use them to listen more voices.

The Australian Government under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has released a draft Form of a new copyright protection/regulation which affects the internet providers to be under a more strict copyright laws.

GRI is the organisation that has pioneered the development of a sustainability reporting framework. Its aim is to make the disclosure on economic, environmental and social performance as commonplace and comparable as financial reporting. This seems to be a start towards making an industry standard in digital financial reporting, perhaps towards being compulsory one day. Currently, it's comply or explain, but businesses would be wise to get used to a digital system before it is standardised, and hopefully regulated.

This article show how companies like Google, Facebook, are facing judgments from the public that blame them for the latest cases of Cyber-bulling. They defend themselves arguing that the number of users has grow fast and is impossible to control all the contents. However social networks are using auto regulating mechanism like reporting abuse. The preoccupation raises in how the main idea of free expression that internet provides could be destroyed by the "freedom abuse".

I know this is a piece of fluff, but it raises some questions for me: 1. Was Twitter the only medium through which this event was advertised? Could there not have been other ways to advertise the cancellation of the signing? 2. Is private Twitter usage able to be publically regulated? If so, to what extent? 3. To what extent is the shopping mall responsible? OHS and Fire codes would have mandated the number of people allowed in an area - should they not have made provision for that? 4. Was the failure to tweet reckless endangerment on the part of the manager, or have the law enforcement agencies taken social networking and used it to increase the level of responsibility a person owes to the general public (at least in this instance)? I'm not saying that the manager is in the right, I'm just wary of the level of importance placed on one aspect of this event. Has the way we operate changed to such an extent as to warrant this sort of police interference?

This article discusses how in the state of Ohio lawmakers are looking to have schools discipline cyberbullies. Cyberbully victims have a higher chance of being depressed, and according to this article they are approximately 8 times more likely to bring weapons to school. Though the bill will help a lot of schools monitor children's conduct online, there were no clear outlines as to the means of how to schools will be able to discipline bullies. A lot of information and rules and regulations will have to be in place to inform parents of how the school will extend their boundaries beyond a physical realm, and into the online world. Though there is much work to be done on the specifics of cyberbullyin, setting school boundaries regarding cyberbullying is a good step towards, thwarting possible cases of cyberbullies, as school jurisdiction may no longer necessarily be within bounds of a school yard.