ARIN6902 Internet Cultures and Governance

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.

How YouTube has created porn sites made in it's image e.g. YouPorn, Porntube and its impact on the industry.

A great look at Internet sovereignty and how the physical attributes of the internet, cables, modems, etc exist in real physical bordered spaces.

This article looks at how all eyes are on Australia as the national internet filter is coming to a head. Sensationalist views aside, Getup raise some interesting points and looks at the role of ISP's in this debate.

This article talks about the landslide percentage of support for the introduction of the R18+ classification as being a direct result from a ruthless push by EB games. It sums up the status of the games censorship war in Australia, outlining the key stakeholders' arguments on both sides.

First topic: « Early Adolescents' Use of Social Networking Sites to Maintain Friendship and Explore Identity: Implications for Policy »

This article is actually looking at the question of whether there is even a cybersecurity threat. It demonstrates that even within government bodies in the US there is no consensus about the level of current threat.

This opinion piece raises interesting - and difficult - issues surrounding the NBN, and examines many key questions that involve its delivery. Key governance questions are raised, including political imperatives, taxation, and infrastructure delivery.

WiFi Alliance including Intel and Microsoft backs standard. The two international short-range wireless industry groups announced an agreement to promote faster Wi-Fi in the 60 GHz frequency band, as well as the two bands where Wi-Fi now operates. With the new standard, a user could send a high definition video across a living room wirelessly from an HD player to an HD television, eliminating the need for a cabled connection.

BT is expected to announce this week that it is hugely expanding its super-fast broadband network. But it will also reportedly reveal it has cut 35,000 jobs in the last two years...

According to this article "word of mouth has become word of web." People are using digital technology to communicate important information such as social gatherings and recommendations about things such as new recipes - things that used to be transferred through offline word of mouth. The implication is that people without an online presence miss out, and the response of the Canadian (as well as the Australian) government is to inject millions of dollars into decreasing the 'digital divide' to encourage social participation through increased digital literacy.

After the class last night, I kept having a thoght that maybe our whole society structure is changing bcuase of the internet, the accessibility to the Internet. Money, education, perhaps are the main critaria to structure the society anymore.

Verizon has imposed a version of the controversial graduated response policy which was recently uncovered in the US- in which ISP's basically disconnect repeat copyright infringement offenders from the internet. Verizon is terminating internet service to an undisclosed number of repeat offenders.

ICANN allowed last year the use of characters different from latin for URLs, but only this week the first URL with arabic characters was published.

People who own land and have invested on having properties on Second Life have filed a demand against Linden Lab. An interesting study case that illustrate how online issues can have deep impact on offline matters.

Video conferencing and telecommunications could soon be instantaneous thanks to research being carried out by University of Sydney postgraduate student, Trung Duc Vo.

The conversation first looked at internet censorship from an international perspective covering issues of internet governance from and internet freedom. Unfortunately one or two members of the panel were prone to regurgitating policy rather than engaging in an actual debate. Towards the end inevitably the discussion was drawn to the proposed filtering laws within Australia. The general consensus from the panel members was that education had to be an essential part of policy when addressing online safety. Interestingly the government representative, the Minister for Home Affairs, was a keen supporter of this policy stance.

My latest blog post about censorship in the Netherlands and the fear of the unknown.

This article discusses President Obama's views on the iPad, iPhone, Xboxs etc as sources of entertainment, rather than a tool for empowerment. Though i have to find it somewhat ironic, as these platforms could offer new methods of campaigning for his next election!

This article discusses how cyberbullying is not limited to strictly school children, or students rather teachers are also victims of cyberbullying. As students create social network hate groups, secretly film or photograph their teachers, and post embarassing moments online. identities of the victims are stolen, and then are used for either harassment, or illegal activity online. Though Facebook has mentioned that they will remove any content regarding teachers if reported, it brings to light a new issue. If laws need to address how we conduct ourselves online, should we compromise our freedom of speech (any jurisdiction that has constituted it) because the content is online?