Blog #9: Social Media and the laws of cyberspace

Ubiquitous computing has played a dominant force in how we access the Internet and popular social media. However, popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs lack the governing tools to prevent online assaults and defamation of character. Moreover, personal representation in the virtual world can be compromised and have long-term implications that transfers over into our physical world/life. Legal issues surrounding privacy protection and domain regulation in online spaces is still in its infancy. Because of this a push for governing laws over the legalities of cyberspace has escalated as more and more cases of copyright infringement, libel or defamation of character and cyberbullying or cyberstalking are finding their way into courtrooms. I intend to argue that although there are a growing number of court cases supporting why laws governing Internet usage and social media sites should be revised and/or enacted, the borderless Internet and absence of transparency makes regulation and enforcement the greatest obstacle to overcome on a global scale.

Annotations and citations:
Azriel, Joshua N. "Social Networking As A Communications Weapon to Harm Victims: Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter Demonstrate A Need to Amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act." The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law 415th ser. 26.J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. (2009): 1-15. Print.

In this article the author discusses how social media sites, specifically Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have the potential to generate content that can be libel or defamatory by private users. Azriel cites that these social media sites use "network neutrality and intermediary liability" as keys to protecting freedom of speech. However, because ISPs and users are still protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, he argues that Congress should amend the law to hold people accountable for libel and defamatory information made on social media sites. Furthermore, as more and more cases find their way into courtrooms, amending the law would hold individuals responsible for comments made and “subject to prosecution." Most sites (ie. Facebook and Twitter) enact Good Samaritan provisions in an effort to protect users from being held accountable for any libel/defamatory remarks they post about other users. I plan to use this article as support why regulation of Internet posting should be enacted.

Bell, David, and Barbara M. Kennedy. "Digital Networks and the State." The Cybercultures Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. 582-93. Print.

This article was part of my inspiration for writing this paper. In this article Sassen raises questions revolving around privately owned digital networks and spaces considered “public” and the possibilities of government regulation of the Internet. I want to specifically focus on the idea of Internet transparency and the fact that there is a growing concern for “a more organized and accountable system” to be in place. Debate about the Internet and government regulation continues to circulate as disagreement about enforcing regulatory measures ensues. Can government regulation be enforced? This portion of Sassen’s article will be useful in exploring the question of Internet regulation on a global scale.

Dardick, Glenn S.; La Roche, Claire R.; and Flanigan, Mary A., "BLOGS: ANTI-FORENSICS and COUNTER ANTI-FORENSICS" (2007). Australian Digital Forensics Conference. Paper 21. .

This article focuses mainly on blogging and its popular use for communication, mainly as a platform for posting personal opinion without regard to the effects their posts can have. Although blogging is considered to be a form of freedom of speech, Glenn Dardick, Claire LaRoche, and Mary Flanigan argue that blogging “is by definition a public activity and as such there should be no reasonable expectation of privacy.” Furthermore, they argue that a user can take measures to hide their identity, but if defamatory or libel remarks are made that can violate other laws in place in meatspace, it becomes necessary to investigate and take measures to uncover identifying information, called counter anti-forensics. Specifically they comment on “stylometrics and author attribution” as a means of uncovering a bloggers identity in cases of cyberbullying or cyberstalking. Although there is limited information in this article, it provides a basis of comparison for questioning why, if at all, certain methods should be used to uncover identity.

Dibbell, Julian. "A Rape in Cyberspace." Julian Dibbell dot com. 1998 Julian Dibbell, Web. 28 Mar. 2010. .

Although Julian Dibbell’s article primarily focuses on Internet MUD/MOO communities and the case of a Mr. Bungle infiltrating this such a community and essentially engaging in a sort of cyberrape of community members. Because something of this nature had never happened before, it led community members to question and debate how a situation like this should be dealt with. What should the implications be? How did this affect members of the community in their offline lives and what could or should be done to prevent this from happening again. Dibbell’s article, although written almost 17 years ago, still stands on solid ground as sexual harassment/predation, cyberbullying/stalking and online identity anonymity continues to be a prevalent issue today. This article is part of the foundation of why I choose to explore online social media sites and the laws or would be laws to protect its users.

Gross, Ralph, Alessandro Acquisiti, and H. John Heinz III. "Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks." Proceedings of the 2005 ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society. Workshop On Privacy In The Electronic Society, Alexandria. ACM: Association for Computing Machinery, Nov. 2005. Web. 28 Mar. 2010. .

Ralph Gross, Alessandro Acquisti and H. John Heinz's article focuses on a study of 4,000 Carnegie Mellon University students, their use of popular social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and LinkedIn, the amount of personal information freely given while using these sites and the privacy implications associated with it. This article proved to be very interesting in that it explores the ambivalent attitude behind why people are comfortable sharing personal information despite privacy risks and the risks associated with it. They also evaluate usage of wide variety of social media sites which will be useful for constructing this paper.

I have many other citations taken from websites as supporting evidence to this paper.