Thoughts

FCC Votes for Net Neutrality

Just in case Jon forgets to put this little story in News of the Week for next week 😉 FCC votes for net neutrality, a ban on paid fast lanes, and Title II Cheers!

The Lenovo and SSL/TLS Nightmare

The Lenovo and SSL/TLS Nightmare

In under a year, two horrible incidents (that I can recall) involving SSL/TLS have made the news (I’ll place a link to the older one in the comments). As a cryptography nerd, that makes me happy. SSL/TLS is a protocol that protects online communication. It ensures that your communications are encrypted end-to-end (e.g., only you and […]

Jon Ronson on public shaming

Jon Ronson on public shaming

Jon Ronson will be coming out with a new book next month entitled So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. As one of my classmates has pointed out in a previous blog post, social media is increasingly being used as a forum for public shaming; a ‘digital mob’, so to speak. Ronson was also interviewed in this […]

The ‘Reddit exodus’

The ‘Reddit exodus’

Currently in the news: “… In a strange twist that perfectly illustrates the current culture-wide debate around online speech, a group of disgruntled users have begun an exodus off the site — claiming, against all odds, that Reddit is censoring them as a matter of corporate policy.” There is also a Gawker news article that expands […]

Utilitarian Justifications at the Grammys

Utilitarian Justifications at the Grammys

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow used the Grammys as an opportunity to highlight the importance of copyright protection, using a argument you might recognize as utilitarian: “What if we’re all watching the Grammys a few years from now and there’s no Best New Artist award because there aren’t enough talented artists and songwriters who are actually able […]

Impact of twitter’s “mass shaming” problem

Impact of twitter’s “mass shaming” problem

This article does a great job of showing the real-life impact of online harassment in the context of “naming and shaming” people on Twitter (it focuses on people who have said unintentionally offensive or stupid things which went viral and usually resulted in them losing their jobs, etc.). It gives some interesting insight into the point […]

A possible solution to toxic internet comments

A possible solution to toxic internet comments

Also on point to today’s online harassment discussion, Tablet Magazine is apparently trying to combat offensive comments by imposing a nominal fee to post comments to its articles. http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2015/2/9/8007483/tablet-magazine-comments Logistically, I doubt this would work in the context of real-time gaming but it’s an interesting approach that essentially regulates “free” speech by not making it […]

Combating online harassment

Combating online harassment

Came across with this piece relevant to our discussion on online harassment today: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/116590-online-harassment-is-a-serious-problem.html Based on this article, it seems that government intervention may not be a good solution to this problem. The author states that many states (in the US) already have laws that apply to some forms of online harassment, however enforcement is […]

Online harassment and “digital rape”

Online harassment and “digital rape”

I came across this article which was cited in one of our assigned readings earlier in the course and found it really interesting. http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/ It’s pretty relevant to what we talked about in class today so I thought I would share it. Basically, the author describes an early version of online trolling/harassment in which a […]

Keurig’s attempt to “DRM” their new coffee maker

Keurig’s attempt to “DRM” their new coffee maker

Here is a link to the article mentioned in class today about Keurig’s attempt to “DRM” their new coffee machine and the general public dissatisfaction with this approach. http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-to-drm-its-coffee-cups-totally-backfired Something I noticed upon re-reading the article is that they are actually being sued by some competitors for anti-trust violations after releasing this new machine (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/22/lawsuits-claim-k-cup-maker-violates-antitrust-laws/8028197/). […]