Com125 Assignment12: Net Neutrality: The matter of choice on the web

Network Neutrality was the term which I was not familiar with before this week’s assignment, but as I kept searching on the net, the debate for or against Network Neutrality has already been growing. As above, the video clip explains explains why network neutrality is an important issue for internet users through a comparisons to traditional utilities.

What is Network Neutrality?

Put simply, Network Neutrality means no discrimination. Network Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its online source, ownership or destination (http://www.savetheinternet.com/). If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level. According to Public Knowledge, Network Neutrality is about the choice (http://www.publicknowledge.org/). Who chooses to see and uses the contents on the internet? That is us who use the internet everyday. Anytime, we can connect to the internet and get online contents that we want. What makes this possible is ‘network neutrality’. This is because NN prevents the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) blocking access to the websites that you chooses to see.

Now, anytime and anywhere with an acess of the internet, you can go onto Google search engine to get online resources. But, imagine, one day, you can have a problem to access to Google website which possibly means you are restricted to access Google, or getting a really slow access on it. In that case, you will choose to go Yahoo or some other search engines to get the resource. This scenario is possible due to network companies’ financial interest. If Google signed an exclusive agreement with another search engine company for example, Yahoo. It would then be Google’s best interest to converge you to use Yahoo search engine website. Here is the thing. The founder of World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee said that the free market does have certain rules and restrictions, which in itself creates a dialectical relationship. I only hope that the interests of business do not out weight the interest of our "free" society.

Not only in an economical aspect, but also in social and political aspects, Network Neutrality plays an important role. The internet contents are generally open sources to people who want to get them. In the democratic society which we are in, has freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. A huge open source like the internet should not be able to control the users due to economical purposes of network companies. Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Without Network Neutrality, the internet will be more like TV or Radio stations that broadcasting contents are decided by the network owners. If the internet is controlled by the certain regulations of private media corporations, the internet is no longer regarded as an innovative and revolutionary medium for us. Therefore, Network Neutrality should sustain on the web to parallel opportunity for freedon of choice of us.

Com125 Assignment 11: Online Economies in Virtual Communities

Pros of Second Life Economy

We are now living in a community which puts us into various ranges of social networks. Traditionally, offline communities have been defined as cohesive units that provide a gathering place for sharing common interests. Whereas, now in information society, the role of offline communities move onto online so called ‘virtual community’. Though we are belonging to our social network physically, we can create and broaden our social ties on the web. A popular online community website called, ‘Second Life’ offers us a public form of visibility. Second Life does not have physical boundaries within interactions between the users, so that makes possible to widen social network through online activities. Also, Second life use to maintain and existing social capital, together with other forms of communicative contact through chat rooms. It also helps increase existing patterns of social contract and civic involvement. Thus, Second Life can boost your existing ties. Not only providing a place for virtual interactions with each other, but also Second Life has an amazing function for virtual economy. Also, the user can explore the virtual world, meet other users, socialize, participate in economic activities such as creating items and trading those items like virtual property from one another.

Cons of Second Life economy

This trading process is exchanged with the online currency called ‘Linden dollar’. Here is the matter. Let’s say you have Linden US$ 10,000. Can you trust the money that you have? Can you consider the Linden dollars as the real US dollars? Even Linden dollar is an exchange tool for buying and selling things on Second Life community, it could be hard to consider the money as a verified trading tool in terms of a real currency. This is due to the lack of safety of online trades. In real life, banks are intermediates between buyers and sellers and also they keep and manage your money. As long as your money is in bank accounts, we believe that we can get the money when we need. However, who plays the role of the bank in virtual community? Does Second Life organization as safe as real banks which we can invest our money online? Online community where the problem of hacking have become a global issue, I doubt the creditability of the 3D virtual economy.

Among numerous happenings of online communities, I remember one which was broadcasted on news few years ago in South Korea. A 14 year-old boy who was addicted to play an online game called Lineage kept spending US$30 for buying game items for his avatar and every month using his mom’s bank account details. Also, a Lineage player’s ID, password and the information of the game server got hacked and his items which was worth more than US$1,000 was sold by a hacker. Even more, according to Korea Information Security Agency (www.kisa.or.kr), approximately 1.2million crimes happened during trading game items and ID/Password hacking. Even though, an online security section called ‘Item Bay’ on Lineage, but the crimes within virtual economy is easily looked down upon in comparison to real life crimes. The online market in virtual community is now more than 100million us dollars. Significantly, this is not only the problem of the US, but is a growing global issue of 3D virtual community. Online open communities like Second Life do not have any boundaries and also it can be spread rapidly online brining economic issues.

Conclusion

All in all, currently what we need to consider is that users of online community such as Second Life should be aware of the possibility of threatening personal identification. In one way, the impact of Second Life has brought us a new meaning of community and built a new public form of global community. But more importantly, the limitations of issues of contact and privacy of Metaverse 3D world still can occur economic and social problems. The appropriate control of the online market, and producing new security program for protecting personal information, and indicating the cautious problem of online market for people in online community. Therefore, all these solutions for the safer virtual community is embedded by not only the network agencies, but also, government and individual’s efforts.

Online: A better place for new articles

When 9/11 was happened, what we could see on TV was a repeated coverage of the World Trade Center being collapsed by the terrorists’ attack. The certain coverage was going on every TV channel over and over again. However, that is the certain image of what the media broadcast system chose for broadcasting. More sources such as updated images, videos and articles about the 9/11 event was available online. In September 11, 2001, as soon as you went online such as Google, Yahoo or CNN website, you could see all different sorts of information about why 9/11 was happened, who Osama Bin Laden was and where it was happened. Such global news like 9/11, the impact of online news articles and the online images have stronger diffusion effect than print newspapers.

Online newspapers: A variety free source

Online news articles are available online 24/7 free. People can just connect the internet and read the article by a mouse click. Unlike news articles, major print newspapers are not free to get them, and also they contain quite a number of articles and information. Print newspaper readers might find their interests on the first page head line, but what they can know about the specific article is limited. For example, The New York Times published the article about the California wildfire happened Oct. 23 as a main article with an image of a brush fire burning on the first page, but there is nothing more than that. However, The CNN website published the article on the web and noticeably, what I can get from the website is not online the article and the image, but also a lot of links and videos which are related to the ‘wildfire’ event in California.

Presentation of Online and Print newspapers

The way they present the articles are different. I read the article titled ‘Victims in Wildfire’s Fickle Path Say, Why ME?’ published on The New York Times on Oct. 24. As soon as I got the newspaper, the main picture on the first page caught my attention straight away. The image was a helicopter prepared to drop water on a brush fire burning yesterday in Escondido, California. Compared to the big strong image, the article of the wildfire was not written much which was totally a little article on the main page and continually half page of the page A13. While it was happened, that was the main event which I wanted to more about, but I could not find various and interesting sources about the event. On CNN website, I could click a link to a video clip showing where it was happened, and the situation of the wildfire moment. Whereas, the print newspapers can possibly be biased on a certain view, the internet newspapers are mostly likely fair. This is because you can link to other websites quickly, so the online article reader can look up the article in various points of view.

Reference:

http://search.cnn.com/search.jsp?query=wildfire,

Wednesday, October 24 2007, The New York Times 'Victims in Wildfire's Fickle Path say, why me?'