The Distortion of Sharing

In the physical world, if you wanted to come over and listen to music  with me, you don’t have to buy a copy of the music.In fact, I could even give you the cds and movies that I bought, and you could take them home and use them whenever you want. But then, I wouldn’t have it. And that is where the term sharing has become distorted.  If I give the media to you, but I still have a copy that  moves beyond sharing to piracy. This has a huge impact in economics as well, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, with the music industry losing half of its profits in just one year. The two-chamber or “bicameral” setup of Congress operating on a standard envisioned in 1787,  is currently debating on this topic and how to combat this problem of online piracy and intellectual property theft. They have drafted a bill with  two sections: “Combating Online Piracy” and “Additional Enhancements to Combat Intellectual Property Theft.” The “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA)  is still being debated in the House, with what seems like a large battle ahead of them.  This bill, as currently written, would give the U.S. Attorney General the power of disabling the  DNS (domain name server) records that point to suspect or illegal sites. A large number of security experts believe that the bill could disrupt the underlying architecture of the Internet. The Protect  Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).is SOPA’s Senate companion bill that is still in debate  in the chamber. is intended to combat “rogue” websites operated oversea but offers a wide spread power that will  affect people worldwide. This bill  has drawn so much opposition that most senators have withdrawn support and news sources such as Techspot.com are reporting that PIPPA has collapsed. I am opposed to the bills as written right now due to the ambiguity of the power and its usage. The adverse effects on the backbones of the Internet architecture are also a major concern. I believe the bills need re working and also software developers need to get more innovative when it comes to intellectual property rights and security. Come on application developers and investors, all these apps for whip noises and beer mugs when we need a good way to secure movies music and videos.

Donald Denney
CS 101 Essay 2
3/18/2012

According to research I read at the New York Times, Net Neutrality is a way of classifying Internet access and the  web in its current state. They say that the entire Internet must  available to anyone with the desire to access it, on an equal basis. This is currently a hot topic in the media because of the legal battle between citizens and the large corporations backed by billions of dollars. The government is forced to deal with large corporations  who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get rid of net neutrality. One problem lies with the type of information that is available. There is always a certain age for this movie or that game. Its a way of feeling that we are helping people who can’t use their own judgement about what information to access. With identity theft, child porn and sexual predators rampant, the way the Internet is presented to an end user must be monitored and distributed to the user as seen fit by some kind of standards. Opposition say  to leave it to the family to monitor and secure their families internet access, but much like guns, booze, drugs and porn, there must be some kind of organized prevention continuously looking after the greater good. Perhaps new standards of surfing the web with credentials of some kind to verify age and identity could be a valuable tool for law enforcement, parents and educators. On the other hand, Net Neutrality is essential when it comes to large corporations limiting the flow of data, and access speeds of all sites but their own, for power and profit. An article on Free Press.com can be summarized by saying that reliable and high speed access to  the free internet is the only way for developers all over the world to continue to contribute to new technology , software, and applications .  The consequences of losing Net Neutrality would be devastating.Large corporations would take over, choices would be eliminated and life would be driven by decisions made in a corporate boardroom. We must continue to fight for and support the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 to  safeguard the future of the open Internet and protect Internet users from discrimination online.