Blog 5 - Online Education

For my final decree as internet ruler, I would change the way that online education is accessed and presented. Online education has proven time and time again it can be a sufficient supplement to lecture style teaching. Some theories to this phenomenon are that when the information is not just projected impersonally to their faces, the students then must actively engage with the material in order to learn the concepts by reading, watching videos and learning the content themselves. Some even say with the new generation being so overly exposed to today’s technology, that online classes are the way of the future; mostly all classes will be held on the internet in some degree or fashion. The problem, though, with online education is that typically these classes are offered at usually a higher cost than taking a lecture class. This higher rate of cost can be caused by several factors, but this deters many from attempting to try and see how effective online classes could be. This is especially prevalent in the post-secondary level, where online classes are often much more expensive than their lecture counterparts. However, this price difference seems to not only be hurting the general public’s access to knowledge, but also even holds back the University’s revenue. A study showed “…that online education (e-learning) is highly price elastic and traditional education is price inelastic” (https://search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/docview/1768624588?pq-origsite=summon) meaning that it is very possible for these universities to lower the cost of their online classes, while it is much more tantalizing to try and lower the cost of a lecture style class. It was also shown that the “Reduction of online tuition and increases in traditional tuition are required to move universities towards the goal of revenue maximization”(https://search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/docview/1768624588?pq-origsite=summon), so not only would lower online education costs  and increased accessibility help the public, but the school’s as well. So if I ruled the internet, I would enforce extremely low prices of online education. Like stated in a previous post, I believe there is nothing wrong with the collective masses having the ability to educate themselves; those in difficult financial situations should have the right to educate themselves, even if they don’t have much to give. And it is a win-win if the University makes more money, for they can put more money into facilities to help educate and form our youth. 

Blog 4 - Intellectual Property

With the evolution of the internet today, we can now share information faster and more efficiently than ever. With this huge boom of the sharing of knowledge, it began to become apparent that too much sharing of knowledge could be a bad thing. If someone were to get ahold of some information that if harmful to someone else, or even worse, a governmental institution, that knowledge could be used to actually harm that individual, or even a group of people. This is where the ideas of Intellectual Property and the IPL (Intellectual Property Law) come in; their purposes are to define what is classified as Intellectual property, and defines the legal limits of what can or can not be shared, and who with, respectively. However, the fear of the wrong people getting ahold of information that can harm individuals overshadowed many of the positives that the capability of sharing knowledge can possess. We can take the case of the United States vs Swartz as a primary example. The 26 year old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “…reportedly broke into a computer-wiring closet at the campus to access the university network and downloaded thousands of files from JSTOR—an online database of scholarly articles and journals” (http://www.chronicle.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/blogs/wiredcampus/programmer-is-charged-with-hacking-into-journal-database/32316). He was an active internet activist, and all of the files and programs he stole and attempted to share contained no harmful information to anyone; they were all educational, academic sources. Although he was breaking the law by stealing information, he had no bad intentions in mind. He believed that the sharing of knowledge should be accessible by everyone with a computer, not just those who attend a university or pay a monthly fee to a database sight. That is why if I ruled the internet, I would greatly change these laws surrounding Intellectual Property. I see no reason as to why the collective knowledge of all people all around the world should be held back. I would implement laws that any academic source or journal can be freely shared across the internet for all users to be able to access, but keep restrictions on information that could be harmful to others. Obviously the problem with this solution is that the publishers of these sources of information would lose their revenue; therefore, I would explore different implementations of fees that would be required to be paid to access this information, that would go directly to the publishers of the information. 

Blog 3 Topic 1 cont. - Preventing cyber prime

One of the biggest threats we face today in internet crime is the existence of hackers and and phishing gangs. These criminals can wreak all kinds of havoc on the internet; individual non professional hackers may be aiming just to troll others and attack people on an individual personal level, however, most professional hackers are in it for financial gain. They can work independently or in groups, and these people often rely on the fact that many individuals do not understand the concepts of phishing or cyber hacking of their finances. If they are skilled enough, they are also capable of large scale heists, such as the one that made global headlines in 2005 when their was a £220m heist committed against the Sumitomo Bank in London (https://doi.org/10.1016/S1353-4858(05)70291-9) . These occurrences are leading people to mistrust the internet with their personal information and financial resources. If I were to rule the internet, however, I would make it a requirement that before you were granted access to the internet, you would have to take an educational course that would help people identify different tactics of cyber crime such as phishing, malware and and pharming tactics to help prevent these crimes from happening. This education would come about in the form of breaking down these various types of internet attacks. For example, an internet phishing attack would be identified by its 4 stages: the preparation where the criminals obtain domain names & hijack computers, the attack initiation where large amounts of spam are sent in a short amount of time, the discovery of the attack the victim and their report of it (although often times too late), and the takedown of the fraudulent site, often being dragged out to hook more people. There would also be a breakdown of malware and how to identify different way hackers try to get you to download them, as well as how to avoid being pharmed. (https://doi.org/10.1016/S1353-4858(05)70291-9). The unfortunate drawback, though, is that cyber crime is always evolving, and even with proper education and consistent preparation, people can still fall victims to their tactics. To help prevent this, international laws will be put into place to help enforce this implementation of required education on cyber crime, and along with this forced education will be much stricter laws and harsher punishments on cyber hacking to discourage people from attempting it. This idea reflects the proposed Council of Europe Draft Convention on Cyber-crime, which is currently going through its stages towards implementation (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0267-3649(00)05008-1). Hopefully, soon in real life we will be able to implement security measures, both personally and though law, that will allow us to utilize the internet without fear of hackers.

Blog 2 - Internet Accessibility (Topic 1 cont.)

Typically, the internet is seen as a tool for the people of the world to advance themselves mentally. Mostly anyone of any nationality or language is permitted to access this ever expanding source of limitless information that is shared by the globe, but there is a catch; you must have the technology to access to it. This brings me to another major personal problem I have with the internet. The purpose and major function of the worldwide web is to share knowledge and innovations with the rest of the country and world, to give information on how to further themselves mentally and improve situations with solutions they themselves may not of thought of. But, unfortunately, “Some believe that instead of curing poverty, ignorance, and isolation, the Internet perpetuates them. Gaps persist in access for minority, low-income, or rural families (NTIA, 2013). Developing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America have been left further behind in the development of a global information economy (Castells, 2004)” (https://shelf.brytewave.com/#/books/9781305990487). This lack of access to technology holds these marginalized communities back, essentially keeping them in the stone age of information. This problem is not only becoming a domestic one, but an international one as well. On the domestic level, the lack of access of the internet to minorities, rural or low-income families disables them in many ways; for one, it becomes extremely difficult to discover what is relevant in today’s society, to hear about new innovations of technology that could help them, and other updated information that would enlighten these people to the world around them. However, this not only effects their overall education, but bars them from researching specific policies of political agendas to formulate their own opinions about them to make well informed decisions while voting. Hence, those who face digital inequalities are not only deprived of the benefits of the so-called Information Society, they are also deprived of exercising their civic rights. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.23779). To fix this problem of internet accessibility domestically, the national or individual state governments should create a budget for constructing large public amenities in these low-income or rural areas for the people there to use or access for free or at a very low cost. This would be incredibly advantageous to the people of these areas, and would help shorten or completely eliminate the digital gap that has been formed in America. However, I do realize the major problem with this solution is that these public facilities would cost a great deal of money to build and upkeep. They also could end up being a waste of money if the people in these areas do not realize the unlimited potential of having access to a world of information. The foreign lack of access will be a much more difficult problem to tackle; it will take a very creative solution to be able to adjust to the various developing countries lack of technology literacy and interest in the outside world. Hopefully, a very innovative individual will come along some day soon to come up with and propose a solution to this international disparity of access to the internet. 

Blog 1 - Cyberstalking

There are many wonderful ways to use the internet; it connects people all across the globe in many wonderful ways. Unfortunately, the internet is a double edged sword, and it does not come without its negatives. While there is an endless list of horrid things people do on the internet, I feel as if one is the most despicable ways people can use the internet is to cyber stalk. My reasoning for this is that it can be detrimental to someone’s life in a multitude of ways. There is the most well known method of cyber stalking, which is the way child molesters use it in order to get in contact with and deceive children in having sexual intercourse with them. This is particularly disturbing to me that people with this repulsive sexual fetish now have a way to keep it under the radar. However, there are other ways cyberstalking can ruin lives besides causing emotional damage; take the case of Leandra Ramm (http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/22/how-law-standing-cyberstalking-264251.html). She had the opportunity to obtain a promising Opera career, when someone she’d never met…“Pos(ed) as a director of a music festival, Colin Mak Yew Loong first contacted Ramm in the United States in 2005 and promised to help further her music career. Initially, she was grateful, but when she stopped replying to his messages, realising that he was a fraudster, Mak resorted to threatening e-mails and phone calls. He sent her around 5,000 emails. He also created hate groups on Facebook and Twitter about her, created a blog about her and made rape and physical threats against her and her family members, along with bomb threats against opera companies that engaged her. He also stalked her by proxy; unsurprisingly her promising career quickly collapsed.” After all of this, she was diagnosed with PTSD and contemplated suicide. It took 6 long years and a legal team with connects to the secret service in order to build an effective case and get this man, and get him convicted, sentenced to 3 years in prison. I propose several solutions to prevent any of this from ever happening. On the national level, we can follow the EU’s example of passing the Istanbul Convention, which is a significant push in the direction of cyberstalking, making stalking and actions associated with it illegal in the countries that ratified it (http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/22/how-law-standing-cyberstalking-264251.html). On the international level, we as a global community must develop some sort of international system of protection against international cyber crime. There are issues with both of the systems; on the national level, there could be loopholes for cyber crime to get around the standards of physical stalking. On the international, it will be extremely difficult for countries with different values and standards than us to get on board and persecute cyber crime. If my solutions were implemented, than the internet would be a much more safe place for children and woman alike, as both domestic and foreign potential cyber stalkers would be liable to be persecuted for their crimes. The case of Leandra Ramm proves that it is possible to hold these criminals accountable for there actions; we as an international society just need to make this process easier to accomplish.