This article by John D. Sutter on CNN’s website, explains the status of internet “freedom” with the help of a new Google technology called “Google Transparency”. Google Transparency shows us countries that have banned content on Google from being shown in their country. Explaining the technology, Dorothy Chou, a Google analyst, says that we can not view what items the countries banned specifically, but we can see how many items they requested be banned. While countries like China and Iran have banned much content, some unlikely countries have as well, including Germany, Turkey, Australia, and Thailand. Items banned include Neo-Nazi web pages in Germany, defamation of national heroes in Turkey and Thailand, and websites susceptible to child porn may be banned in Australia.

Chou also brings to light the website herdict.org run by Harvard University. This website asks for users around the world to inform them of what content is blocked in their country. Another group, known as the OpenNet Initiative, have created a world map that pinpoints countries with censored content. An internet lawyer, Stefan Kulk believes that the new Google technology is lesser than the past one, however. Now we can only simply see that there is indeed blocked content, not how much content exactly is banned.

Personally, I believe that these countries, in a way, are justified in their actions. Australia’s battles against child pornography should continue to be fought. Germany, while ashamed of their past, seems right in banning horrific content of Neo-Nazism. Turkey and Thailand seem to be in a fight for nationalistic pride. They are trying to make their heroes and leaders seem noble and avoid the defamation of these people online. While it seems a bit corrupt, it is an understandable effort. If other countries have reasons such as these for censoring or banning certain content, then I believe it not to be a horrible thing.

-John Riopi

Based of of the May 25, 2010 post on the New York Times Blog, Room For Debate:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/should-government-take-on-facebook/?_r=0

Upon a 2010 Facebook upheaval and breech of privacy, and not the first one either, the question is posed: should the Federal Trade Commission get involved to provide privacy guidelines for facebook? twitter? other social media? Or is this online world out of their realm?

This is a blog post, so we get to hear from the public on this issue. We get a plethora of differing opinions…

One user says people who put private details of their life up on facebook know what they’re getting into and the government should only get involved if facebook “violates it’s own privacy policy”.

But isn’t that just what Facebook did?

Another user thinks the complaints over facebook should be broken down into two categories: those that scapegoat facebook for overarching internet privacy complaints and those with legitimate specific-to-facebook complaints. This user feels that facebook is the most popular of social media sites, and therefore, takes the brunt of complaints in the changes of our privacy due to changes in technology in general, though this user does not deny specific privacy complaints to the famous facebook.

Another user complains of the public’s defeatist attitude toward their privacy being broken by facebook. He says that we just accept that “technology moves too fast for the law to handle”, throw up our hands, and submit to privacy, basically, not being a real option. This user notes that other countries have taken a pretty strong hold on privacy, maybe too strong, but that we Americans could learn from the models and adjust government interception as suits us.

Jim Harper says, “If you’re worried, stay offline”. His argument is that facebook is a business, and by signing up you are giving them business. If you are unhappy with the product (aka privacy settings) then you can stop doing business, and disable your account. If enough users signed off facebook, that would be an incentive for facebook to change their privacy setting to the customers preference.

I kind of agree with Jim Harper. I think people forget that facebook is a business, they think it is a way of life and a necessity and that Facebook owes them. I, myself, am not a facebook user. I don’t want a vice to hook me to the internet, but, I also am turned off of the privacy settings on facebook and the corporate aspect of the social tool. I think government involvement is a bit out of place and could get a little too censored and dicey.
But facebook should do better business and quit pushing people around with their mega popularity. Facebook should do what they say they are going to do, and make good on their privacy settings. And then not change them two days later.

Jamie Matson

Working for a food-blog, I was forced to quickly learn the many aspects of WordPress, photoshop, and the basics of Copyright laws. I came to realize that understanding the basics of copyrighting was not at all as difficult as I thought it would be. And after reading the Copyright article in the Digital Media Law Project, I noticed that many people were like me and thought it was much more difficult than it actually is to understand the basics of copyright laws. I always thought they were mere hassles that are responsible for many lawsuits and etc, but from working with authors and becoming an aspiring author I came to realize how beneficial copyright laws are.

When I want to add a picture to my blog post, I can’t necessarily take anyone I see if google, because some belong to specific websites that don’t want others taking their images. When I first started blogging I was annoyed from this, but now that i started photographing a lot of my own photos, I know I would never want them to appear on someone else’s food blog as their own.

The article informs the readers what you can do with copyrighted material. You can use someone else’s work by using quotes and summarizing and putting in the sources. Copyrights also protect your own legal rights in what you create, leaving no room for others to take advantage of what the writer publishes.

Because all copyright laws are federal law it is uniform across the entire country. Congress is always making new copyright laws and amends others. By owning a copyright you have exclusive rights to publish, copy, or reproduces the work. The article enforces how accessible and easy it is to acquire basic knowledge on copyrights. Copyrights encourage people to report the news but will never cover facts.

-Michelle Cohen

This interview with Mark Zuckerberg came shortly after Facebook changed its privacy settings. Mark explained that as the site grew, more and more features and settings publishing info about people had to be added, and that these settings were necessary. One of the points that Mark made that I don’t fully agree with is when he said that certain things on someones Facebook are public by default. Mr. Zuckerberg claims that people get a lot of value from sharing certain things with everyone. This can be true to a certain degree, though. I think that it is not necessary for the ENTIRE world to be able to see up to date statuses and likes. Some people would like to share pieces of their life with their friends, and not the entire world.

Source #2

Jacqueline Tawil

Section 39

This RadioLab show discusses the affects of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast. So many people believed the broadcast to be true, including even army personnel. What made it so believable is the persistence of the message, the use of government officials to speak of it, and audio tapes of a previous unrelated event. In my opinion RadioLab did a great job of explaining the situation, perhaps because I hadn’t heard most of this information before. I don’t believe that any broadcast involving an alien invasion or something similar like a zombie apocalypse could be believable today. Today, people are more informed and educated. But if such a hoax would rise in this age I believe it would take form of a terrorist attack, as that is a believable scenario. If I would have to create a scenario it would involve a terrorist invasion with futuristic weaponry, as there is a strong focus on technology progression in our society today. Learning about the War of the Worlds broadcast did not exactly change my view of news reporting, as I always understood such things as false stories were possibilities. Many news outlets give false information, not usually to create a hoax, but to fill in missing information.

-John Riopi

One month prior to the airing of Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ in 1938, American listeners had been hearing news reports from all over Europe about the entrance of Hitler’s army. Listeners had become accustomed to interruptions to their radio programs for urgent messages from the news — so this ‘joke’ felt very real…a little too real. One of the actors listened to real traumas, like the Hindenburg blimp explosion, over and over to prepare for this parody to make is seem real…and it worked on a lot of listeners, causing some to panic.
It’s hard to imagine this happening now, since we are so over loaded with media of all sorts; gimmicks, advertising, comedy, parodies and the like. In order for this kind of joke to work now, it would have to be on television news, and staged using real news reporters (which sort of seems illegal). Something that could work would be a bomb scare. But that wouldn’t be even kind of funny! If the news were to take on such a ‘joke’ I think the government would swoop down and stop the activity, deeming it ‘terrorist activity’.
I liked the way Radio Lab conducted this segment, with the ‘1938 chair’, and adding little details, like pocket watches and cream soda. The host kept it moving along, with humor and often stopped to question what was just aired, and to ponder what that meant in 1938, and do we believe it?
All in all, Orson Welles did too good a job. It was a strange idea for the time, 1938, with the Nazi’s on the prowl. War of the Worlds, although alien invaders, was a concept a little too real to handle.

-Jamie Matson

I think people might have believed the War of the Worlds show because hysteria was common in 1938, people might have been on edge because of the Great Depression, still feeling a little uneasy.

RadioLab presented this story using creepy sound effects and music, also using a microphone that sounded like it had a little bit of an echo effect?  Also the first speaker was speaking in a quiet and slow tone which added to the mysteriousness a little bit.  I think they did a good job of integrated the clips of the show with their analyses.

When the show was broadcast they made it seem realistic by saying “we interrupt your regularly scheduled dance music programming,” this made it seem more serious.  It was more urgent, they also point out, because of the eyewitness accounts and special bulletins.  This made it sound realistic because people were used to hearing these on real radio shows.  Most people didn’t hear the beginning of the broadcast, also, so they were unaware that the whole show was a hoax.

I don’t know if this type of hoax could happen today.  I think about when celebrities are fake “killed” on twitter (ie people just start tweeting “RIP Taylor Swift” or whoever), but I think it’s way too easy to fact check nowadays.  So if a hoax like this was on TV or the radio, people would probably investigate, using the internet, and would quickly be able to find out what was really going on.  I don’t know if I would want to create a type of hoax like this, I actually think it’s kind of taking it too far to convince a large group of people of something that is not real and also it is potentially dangerous.

This made me feel a little differently about factual new reports because it just seems very easy for the media to create a realistic picture of an event that actually might not even have any plausible qualities.  If it was so easy for them to convince so many people of this outer space showdown, it shows that people are very gullible and will believe sources they trust, without questioning them.

Elizabeth Garrett

What historical factors made this hoax believable?

What made this hoax so believable was the panic people felt in 1938, Germany’s rise to power and threatening approach to its boarder countries made it very believable that some massacre could occur at any moment. The commentators resemblance to the sort of news interruptions already being made about the events occurring in Europe helped to make this hoax seem even more realistic.

How did the actors prepare?

The actors used to describe the tragic events that were supposedly occurring during those very moments studied the way people reacted to tragic events through examining the broadcast recording of the Hindenburg crash. That broadcast offered them a real tragedy to compare their performances to for added realism.

Do you think this kind of media hoax could happen today? If so, what format would you suppose it might take? What story could be believable? If you were creating this hoax, what would it be?

I’m not sure if a media hoax like this could happen today because any believable terrorist attack or situation similar to that being made into a pretend broadcast would be considered waaaay too offensive and simply dangerous. I think there have been situations where the media was tricked into thinking their would be some sort of a computer virus affecting all computers as an april fools joke but I don’t know if the media could possibly get away with intentionally hoaxing the public today.

Does learning the details of the War of the Worlds hoax make you feel differently about factual news reports? Why?

I definitely think that most people today have a greater media literacy than people did during the war of the worlds broadcast, probably just because we’ve been so exposed to different forms of media our whole lives, so I don’t feel much different about factual news reports because I’ve learned to be skeptical and check other sources.

Do you think the RadioLab show did a good job in presenting this story? What tools did they use? What sounds are used on the show other than voice?

RadioLab did a great job of presenting this story, their tone was perfect and other than voice they had dreary music and sound effects to go along with the events they describe occurring. There were sirens, planes crashing, trains, bells, and other sounds that I heard during the broadcast.

Kevin Nash section 39

• What historical factors made this hoax believable?

Historical factors that allowed this hoax to be believable included tensions in Europe around that time period, which included Hitler’s Nazi Germany’s threats to expand their territory beyond German borders.   Additionally, the broadcast was reported in a breaking news format, with updates every now and then with actors to portray events that were supposedly happening.

• How did the actors prepare?

Actors prepared for this radio program by studying crash tapes of the Hindenburg, allowing them to better understand how normal people react in a very tragic situation, and hwo these reports are treated when broadcast.

• Do you think this kind of media hoax could happen today? If so, what format would you suppose it might take? What story could be believable? If you were creating this hoax, what would it be?

I don’t believe that this type of hoax on that type of scale could happen today, as only if a variety of news programs and television channels agreed to coincidentally broadcast the same hoax, which would never happen.  However, a hoax did occur recently with a video of a girl twerking and then falling onto her candlelit table, catching fire, which appeared to be a homemade video which had become viral, as so many do.  However, it was revealed to be a hoax staged by Jimmy Kimmel, so a smaller scale kind of hoax could be plausible today.

• Does learning the details of the War of the Worlds hoax make you feel differently about factual news reports? Why?

I don’t really feel differently about factual news reporting, mainly because I think most of us have learned to be skeptical of what we see or hear being broadcast.

• Do you think the RadioLab show did a good job in presenting this story? What tools did they use? What sounds are used on the show other than voice?

I think the RadioLab show did a good job in presenting the story because they coupled their report with UFO sounds and creepy music, as well as an actor who pretended to be from the 1938 time period, which helped get a feel for the time period, as well as cutting to sounds from the original broadcast.

–Samuel Esclavon