Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Rated G


Australian House and Senate has decide to put rated restrictions on the Internet material. A minor can not view any rated R material, and all citizens can not view rated X material. For example anything that depicts porn, extreme violence, and anything that really "offend against the standards of morality, decency, and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults". The government seems to be pushing for a Jane Austen movie content on the Internet where everything is all manners, and no serious adult situation material can be found.

Now this would be easy if the government was dealing with a small scale group to just review their work on, but this is challenging millions of people. The amount of man power to keep up with this would be great because there will be people finding loopholes to get around this. This can be compared to one country famous for its restrictions is China and how they ban certain martial on the Internet. Now Australians will have to face what Chinese citizens go through when trying to ban certain material to the public when the public itself sees the Internet as an object they pay for so its up to them what they can or can't do.

Not only that, but there are bound to be fines made if an individual was to participate against this law. Now I don't imagine it can be as harsh as execution when Chinese staff to foreign journalists are trailed for "giving country secrets away", but there would be consequence put. The ban towards minors can be seen as a good thing though there are tools of parent control that can be used. This seems that the government is trying to be the parent where citizens should not have need for. The attention on this should be going towards something more productive as getting rid of illegal business done on the Internet. Another last point I would like to make is that this law is completely useless because even if Australian government bans it the crowd will find a store connection to get this. It is like a young child plays adult video games because the older sibling has it so they have access to it. Australian citizens will find loopholes like this to get the material they want. So this law will indeed be just bloated text.


Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Individual Is Better Than The Whole


Garret Hardin wrote
Tragedy of the Commons to make the point that the more people act in their own selfish interest, the quicker it depletes a community's free sources. The point that it is made starts at a gradual pace taken where it begins with everyone getting excited on so much free stuff to obtain. Then there is only monitoring done on the majority of the group where the problem lies in the individual overtaking more than they should. Which over time has the source that was once abundance and free to quickly become a dry well. Hardin stresses there should be more conscious awareness in usage on free sources so that this problem can diminish. This dents on the ability for the community to collect and flourish from using these free sources so that there is a better solution made for the society's well being. A modern example of this can be seen in music piracy.

The Internet has brought many tasks easy and available especially downloading music. Now a days one can just get their music for free without thinking repercussions of it. Because they see it as an endless free source to get unlimited music. Though it is hitting hard on the music labels and the people who make this possible. RIAA reports itself helping to bring this music piracy down due serious income costs.

Example amounts lost provided by RIAA:
  • $12.5 billion of economic losses every year
  • 71,060 U.S. jobs lost,
  • $2.7 billion in workers' earnings,
  • $422 million in tax revenues
  • $291 million in personal income tax
  • $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.
When an individual downloads music they aren't thinking how it effects the artist, or if the provider they got it for free is getting paid for this. This sole act done for one person can slowly add up with others who did the very same so they could get that song to listen to. This damages wealth for the community. Because then anyone can misuse the music product to sell for ones own use, and the artist of the song will never know about it. Music piracy helps to shed light on what Hardin was expressing in his work of Tragedy of the Commons how damaging individual overuse can be.





Wednesday, February 3, 2010

3 Clicks and Back fom Around the World


Duncan Watts expresses in his Six Degrees novel about the network theory, basically having smaller networks connect to make a large network by connection of one person. Now the key part of that explanation I just gave is the connection made doesn't depend on the one person who interacts with networks, but the moment it was made. Because once that connection is made those networks will stay connected because there will be a constant feed set back and forth.

Now lets make this definition more personal like World of Warcraft(WoW). Especially the ability to chat online with individuals all over the world. Now there is a common event on online server games like WoW where a person joins a guild. It is basically a team that players support each other in the game or aid in quests etc. Well this guild can set as our small network.

If a player from this guild decides to branch off to do a quest with another group than another small network is connected. Now we have two different groups connected with one another. Due to that player than other players become interested in the guild players individually. Which has people connecting with another that aren't even in the same state or country. Exactly how Watts explains in network theory, but without all the mathematical formulas.

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GENZOMAN

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