Group items tagged

The use of technology as a form of communication has brought about social and ethical issues around bullying and harassment. In the US many states are starting to instigate laws to deal with cases of bullying (eg Megans Law)  There needs to be more education around the etiquette of digital communication and the repercussions when abuse is transmitted.

How on earth can he guarantee that this will be 100 percent accurate - with no overblocking, and no underblocking!?!?! And in this interview, he advises that this is not a limit on freedom of speech and that the internet should not be considered a special platform.

This article discusses how the Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has dismissed the Internet as a special medium, claiming that it is nothing more than, "just a communication distrbution platform." Which, is quite short sighted, as the notion of open source, crowd sourcing, collective/collecting intelligence, collaborative intelligence is achievable because of the Internet. Conroy also claims that his filter is 100 percent accurate..." which begs to question, according to who? Filtering, content only prevents access, it does not prevent those individuals from crimnimal acts offline, nor does it address how to protect victims from their predators.

BROADCASTERS will be able to air extra advertising on their digital free-to-air channels and erase breaches of the rules governing free-to-air TV if they swiftly correct errors, under significant concessions given by the communications watchdog.

"Australia's biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique of the government's plans to censor the internet." (quoting smh, 23/3/10, 4.40pm)

A tongue in cheek blog post that nevertheless addresses some real issues at stake when it comes to people's behaviour in many online communities.

Interesting data on how and why British politicians are slow in the use of social media for political campaigning. They still trust other more traditional channels. Interesting data: Europeans are lagging behind American policy makers in their use of Twitter and other means of digital communication. Might the higher age average of European citizens have something to do with it?

An article on how the increasing flow of internet traffic could potentially lead to a form of 'gatekeeping' of users by providers. It has always been perceived that there was network neutrality as providers charged a flat rate for unlimited internet access. However, the article argues that this is not the case as there has aways been some form of management of traffic so that an acceptable level of service is maintained. An extreme example is the court case between BitTorrent users and the provider Comcast. Comcast blocked this service as it was effecting service. This was challenged by users who initially won. However in a challenge by Comcast, Washington found in their favour as it found that the Federal Communications Commission could not decide how Comcast should manage its network. Another interesting point made is the potential for service providers to charge content providers who attract a large amount of traffic.This way good service is guarenteed, through essentially sharing the burden of cost. Obviously this is fiercely opposed by businesses. Clearly this all has the potential to change the relationship between users, content providers and service providers.

SeeClickFix is a free mobile phone and web app that enables citizens to take care of their neighborhoods by seeing non-emergency issues in their neighborhoods, clicking to create 'tickets' describing the issue and how to resolve it, and fixing the issue or reporting it to whoever can. This article discusses the technology and tools working to help citizens get involved in their communities and their governments. It also discusses the Gov 2.0 Expo held recently in the US. I found the discussion of mobile citizen governance apps particularly interesting, as it would be something that could be rolled out fairly easily.

Howard Schdmit, The Whitehouse's Cybersecurity coordinator has revealed the US Government's plans for tackling attacks on it's networks. He has promised transparency. The official announcement (this bookmark) is very vague in it's initiatives. It will be interesting to see whether their can really separate US government networks from other parts of the Internet.  Cyber attacks are definitely increasing and play a major part in conflicts between countries. China amongst others is said to have attacked & attempted to hack and launch DoS attacks on US government networks and Russia shut down the Georgian communications infrastructure during the last week between the two countries et. )

The findings of this article definitely portrays an extremist view of the internet. It shows the internet to be extremely dangerous which would add to the already growing nervousness which I think many parents experience in letting their children surf the web. While cybersecurity is an increasingly prominent issue I don't see how producing a bubble of fear around the online world can improve the situation. You generally cannot function without the internet and being fed these alarmist ideas only furthers the notion that people should be fearful and avoid the internet rather than be engaging with it and appreciating it for being an amazing tool to communicate and learn.

Well, Fox News is just unbelievable... guess who they consider their competitor, CNN or Comedy Central.

yayy for fear-mongering....

Whilst not strictly about reputation, this post discusses tracking what your (your being a person or entity) fans are also fans of. This tells us alot about identity and reputation within different communities, and helps to track coalitions of interest and identity.

There is a widening gap in the digital divide, especially in minority communities in the developed world.

The digital divide is being decreased - but there are still widespread inequalities. Within one continent there are countries with radically different percentages of citizens online. There are great benefits from once isolated communities in terms of sharing their heritage online, as well as accessing healthcare.

A BBC article that provides us with international data and figures about the digital divide.

Skype has put the SILK codec, the backbone of its software, freely available to the developers community in order to receive feedback to improve the codec.

In an effort to disrupt communications and head off huge opposition demonstrations planned for Thursday, the Iranian authorities on Wednesday drastically slowed Internet service in Iran and shut down text messaging services, and an official said that Gmail, the Google e-mail service, would be blocked.

Blog which keeps track of, amongst other issues,ICANN and domain name related topics. A good blog roll as well. 

Following customer complaints, CommSec recently fined $55K for not providing customers an Opt out option when sending out e-marketing. As a response, CommSec have appointed an independant auditer to assess their e-marketing activity and provide training. I do question a lot of marketing departments... does it take a fine from ACMA before they get up to speed with how to conduct their communications and campaigns?

Their ad agency should know what they're doing! It's not hard to put an unsubscribe link in an email. Wacky.

Hmmm makes one think whether someone in marketing was too lazy in their job or whether CommSec knowlingly defied spamming laws. Australian spamming laws can be found at http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/spam.html#acts

This articles mentions the major highlights of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Communications Report 2008-2009. Among the differents findings, are available some data about mobile service, mobile network, suscribers, wireless broadband, dowloadings, online advertising , expenditures, revenue, etc. It's all about the digital convergence, the Digital Economy and a demand for flexibility.

A coalition of internet companies are pushing for the US federal regulator responsible for communication industries to reassert control over ISPs by seeking to have internet services re-classified under the same rules as telephone services.

Interesting post about SPAM and keeping it under control in twitter. Particularly pertinent is the point that as a site/community becomes larger the more SPAM there is - ie, the larger the population, the harder the governance.

There is a call for specific cyber bullying laws to be introduced on Australia.  A recent case that led to the suicide of a 17 year old boy led to the sentencing of a man to a community service order. The Government has agreed that more needs to be done to empower and protect victims.