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  How free should information be? Wikileaks, whistleblowers and da

  How free should information be? Wikileaks, whistleblowers and data gone wild Wikileaks and other whistleblowing/leak sites and entities are increasingly influencing news discourses, and releasing data intended to be confidential or classified into the wild. The debate over the ethics or morality of this kind of practice tends to be centred on balancing opinions on harm vs. good done by the release of such information. ...more »

  How free should information be? Wikileaks, whistleblowers and data gone wild

  Wikileaks and other whistleblowing/leak sites and entities are increasingly influencing news discourses, and releasing data intended to be confidential or classified into the wild. The debate over the ethics or morality of this kind of practice tends to be centred on balancing opinions on harm vs. good done by the release of such information. How can we intelligently judge such actions, and how are they likely to impact opinions on concepts such as necessary secrecy during armed conflicts?

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  Submitted by Tessa Houghton 1 year ago

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  Privacy 3.0: We're here, we're public, get used to it!

  I would like to discuss the idea that our contemporary ideas relating to privacy are a vestige of Print Culture (which I call Privacy 2.0). The Internet (Privacy 3.0) is more akin to Oral Culture (Privacy 1.0). What might we learn if we embrace the public nature of the net and other ‘open source’ media? Can we move our discussions of privacy forward, and in step with, the idea that we now live in Privacy 3.0?

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  Submitted by David Paterno 1 year ago

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  copyright is no longer necessary

  i'd like to have a debate about the core values of copyright, and whether they still belong in our society.

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  Submitted by Erika Pearson 1 year ago

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  Resistance is futile, control is inevitable

  The past 15 years or so of public internet will in time be regarded as the halcyon days as corporate and governmental control inevitably removes (perceived) freedoms now taken for granted.

  Why resist? Isn't it time to get with the programme?

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  Submitted by Andrew Long 1 year ago

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  Building our own cages: The easy allure of information monopoly

  Building our own cages: The easy allure of information monopoly and strategies for resistance "For most of us, avoiding the Internet's dominant firms would be a lot harder than bypassing Starbucks, Wal-Mart or other companies that dominate some corner of what was once called the real world. " Tim Wu, [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635704575604993311538482.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ] In the above ...more »

  Building our own cages: The easy allure of information monopoly and strategies for resistance

  "For most of us, avoiding the Internet's dominant firms would be a lot harder than bypassing Starbucks, Wal-Mart or other companies that dominate some corner of what was once called the real world. " Tim Wu,

  [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635704575604993311538482.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ]

  In the above article, Tim Wu makes a compelling argument that a combination of our tendency to go with flow, and the natural tendency towards monopoly inferred by networked information structures has resulted in the current state of mono/oligopoly in most sectors of the internet, with Google 'owning' search, Facebook 'owning' social networking, and so on.

  What are the consequences of our surrender to online monopolies, and what strategies would be best suited to breaking up these existing areas of consolidation and maintaining openness in still developing sectors?

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  Submitted by Tessa Houghton 1 year ago

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  Are video games the ultimate training camps for resistance?

  Resistance and control are familiar themes in video games. In fact, a great majority of plots and narratives found in games focus on humans battling it out with some form of invader (e.g., aliens, demons, zombies) or fomenting a rebellion against some giant corporation or governmental authority. The notion of control is also central in video games. First and foremost, the player controls the avatar and in many ways ‘plays ...more »

  Resistance and control are familiar themes in video games. In fact, a great majority of plots and narratives found in games focus on humans battling it out with some form of invader (e.g., aliens, demons, zombies) or fomenting a rebellion against some giant corporation or governmental authority. The notion of control is also central in video games. First and foremost, the player controls the avatar and in many ways ‘plays god’ with its life and death. But the game itself also controls the player through the available choices of avatars and their skills, and the parameters of the game and its environment, practically begging players to try to circumvent them.

  I would like to form a multidisciplinary panel to discuss the idea that video games are the ultimate training camps for resistance in the 21st century ‘real’ world?

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  Submitted by davch159 1 year ago

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  Expect Us: Anonymous and Rhizomatic Hacktivism

  "Expect Us": Anonymous as a nomadological hacktivist counterpublic Anonymous, perhaps best known as online mischief makers and anti-Scientologists, have been described as the "first internet-based superconsiousness". They are "a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group... At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another diretion entirely" (Landers, 2008). Their most recent activity ...more »

  "Expect Us": Anonymous as a nomadological hacktivist counterpublic

  Anonymous, perhaps best known as online mischief makers and anti-Scientologists, have been described as the "first internet-based superconsiousness". They are "a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group... At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another diretion entirely" (Landers, 2008). Their most recent activity is the 2010 'Operation Payback', a widespread and ongoing 'anti-anti-piracy' protest which launched successful and well-publicised DDoS attacks against the websites of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and is currently targetting several organisations implicated in the Wikileaks 'cablegate' situation and its censorship. I believe we should theorise Anonymous's Operations as a form of rhizomatic or nomadological counterpublicity (see Deleuze and Guattari 1980), a nonhierarchical and flexible protest strategy that is likely to be increasingly effective in an era where political economic power and influence increasingly "wanders in absence on the electronic pathways" (Critical Arts Ensemble 1994: 23). What does this new form of protest mean for our online environment, and how worried should established political economic interests be?

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  Submitted by Tessa Houghton 1 year ago

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  Focus groups vs internet research

  Traditionally, film scholars have used focus groups and surveys to gauge audience and fan reaction to their object of study. Now, more and more people in this discipline are turning to the internet instead, using message boards, social networking sites and blogs to collect this data. Both the aforementioned methods have their own virtues and hazards: however, when it comes to internet research, students are rarely made ...more »

  Traditionally, film scholars have used focus groups and surveys to gauge audience and fan reaction to their object of study. Now, more and more people in this discipline are turning to the internet instead, using message boards, social networking sites and blogs to collect this data.

  Both the aforementioned methods have their own virtues and hazards: however, when it comes to internet research, students are rarely made aware of the ethical and copyright issues involved (something that is, by contrast, constantly brought up when preparing film studies students to run focus groups). This panel will be comprised of graduate students, who will discuss how and why they have chosen to use the internet instead of forming focus groups, some of the issues they have encountered, and how we might combat the misconception that internet research is simply a case of cutting, pasting and citing.

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  Submitted by jo.mary.murphy 1 year ago

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  Enforcement and Convenience

  The recent revamp of the Search & Surveillance Bill was all about making it easier for law enforcement, ignoring the rights of people to be protected from unreasonable government intervention in their lives. The Copyright Bill and now the new laws around suppression try to push tricky legal decisions about infringement to ISPs. ISPs have enough problems running their services well, why would we trust them to make difficult ...more »

  The recent revamp of the Search & Surveillance Bill was all about making it easier for law enforcement, ignoring the rights of people to be protected from unreasonable government intervention in their lives.

  The Copyright Bill and now the new laws around suppression try to push tricky legal decisions about infringement to ISPs. ISPs have enough problems running their services well, why would we trust them to make difficult legal judgements?

  In both cases the system is just trying to make it easier for itself while ignoring principles of justice (i.e. due process) or civil liberties.

  How do we stop this happening?

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  Submitted by thomas 1 year ago

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  Resistance & control: performing the online citizen

  If citizenship signifies participation in a group or community, it is regenerated by ongoing discussions around common rights and obligations. For many citizens, the Internet offers another public forum for this negotiation. Despite controls set by the authorities (e.g., ban of political blogs during 2006 elections [1], mandatory registration of student blogs in 2010 [2]), many Singaporeans have persisted in debating ...more »

  If citizenship signifies participation in a group or community, it is regenerated by ongoing discussions around common rights and obligations. For many citizens, the Internet offers another public forum for this negotiation.

  Despite controls set by the authorities (e.g., ban of political blogs during 2006 elections [1], mandatory registration of student blogs in 2010 [2]), many Singaporeans have persisted in debating political issues online [3] [4], with some succeeding in triggering changes [5]. As such, Singapore presents a fascinating case study to explore the following questions: What is active citizenship (online or otherwise)? If active citizenship is desired, what form of control (if any) should governments exercise on the Internet?

  [1]

  http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/04/digging-deepersingapore-tries-to-squelch-political-blogs-podcasts115.html

  [2] http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1080137/1/.html

  [3] http://theonlinecitizen.com/

  [4] http://www.temasekreview.com/

  [5] http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Sport/Story/STIStory_565714.html

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  Submitted by swee.kin.loke 1 year ago

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  The internet makes education free

  Online information, smart searching, user reviews, and links to related resources make self-directed learning according to our own interests more direct and rewarding than study directed by an institution, and much cheaper.

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  Submitted by benwallace13 1 year ago

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  Does increasing popularity of toasters stifle innovation, or,

  is the Apple app store a threat to freedom? Does the lock in implied in developing for phones and other devices mean that true innovation is being stomped on?

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  Submitted by anton.angelo 1 year ago

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  ACTA - its still needs our attention

  http://www.derechoaleer.org/stop-acta-in-progress

  Derechoaleer (a local blog from Argentina) made a brochure on ACTA a while ago but it has just been translated into English (sort of).

  It could do with a bit of English language energy.

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  Submitted by pamm 1 year ago

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  Individual rights: Giving way to the community.

  Was McLuhan right? does "electric media" (digital culture) favour the community over the individual? Print culture created copyright, promoting the idea that the author's rights are more important than the work created. In digital culture, the original author becomes less and less important over time, as the creation is hacked, remixed, mashed up and disseminated into a giant digital stone soup. How will governments, ...more »

  Was McLuhan right? does "electric media" (digital culture) favour the community over the individual? Print culture created copyright, promoting the idea that the author's rights are more important than the work created. In digital culture, the original author becomes less and less important over time, as the creation is hacked, remixed, mashed up and disseminated into a giant digital stone soup.

  How will governments, business, and individuals respond and adapt to this changing paradigm? (see? I used the word "paradigm"...)

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  Submitted by john.egenes 1 year ago

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  Cloud computing providers and Enterprises

  I wanted to discuss the impact of integrating external service providers like Amazons EC2 into a large companies network. The second part is service orientated architecture using cloud computing providers.

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  Submitted by Community Member 1 year ago

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