Last week, the federal government shut down the file-sharing website MegaUpload. During this shut down, they arrested several high-ranking executives of the website. There were claims that MegaUpload was illegally sharing copyrighted material, costing the music and film industry about half a billion dollars and profiting $175 million. In retaliation, the hacker group Anonymous responded [...]
As a member of LinkedIn, a professional social networking site, I receive weekly emails with links to interesting and relevant articles in the business and education sectors. This morning, I was interested by one in particular written in The Chronicle. If you follow any news regarding higher education, you’re likely to have heard of MIT’s [...]
Tomorrow, Jan 19th, some sites on the World Wide Web will shut down to protest PIPA, the reincarnation of SOPA. SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261 ) written by Representative Lamar Smith and several other Congressmen. The blackout is meant to both protest the legislation and to simulate the possibility of the U.S. government [...]
Before winter break I wrote a piece about SOPA and the legitimacy online piracy more generally [...] File sharing made the news again last week, but in a more humorous manner…
The Internet is arguably one of the most open and democratic systems on the planet. Art and ideas can be accessed and shared by anyone, with very few limitations, especially in the U.S One big exception is piracy, the sharing of copyrighted material.
In our brave new world we can communicate without effort and reach out to more people than ever before, but have we lost the ability to truly connect to people in the process?
