For quite some time now, individual online companies are increasing the usability of the person to access and "personalize" the internet. We’ve looked at this to a large extent in one of my previous column article, The Internet Age Generation "You": Raising the Ego?. The normal user has more power on the internet to do more and be loudly heard. You can now dance to a Norwegian Song and be featured on the television network’s evening news. You can announce your consideration to run for the Office of the President of the United States. There are many great and creative uses of the instant medium, the internet. With this tremendous amount of clearance and voice of the individual, there are also those who use it with mal-intentions. Those with a great amount of power (basically anyone with internet access) inherit an even greater amount of responsibility to be accountable for their actions. So this is true for the internet today.
Prominent blogger and noted author Kathy Sierra experienced a rude awakening from mal-intent users when she was met with a barrage of death threats. It started four weeks ago in when threats started appearing in her blog, "Creating Passionate Users". The threats continued to escalate in nature and scale as eventually, the threats became so graphic and overwhelming that it convinced her that her livelihood was in danger. The threats included a post by other prominent bloggers on a now-defunct site, meankids.com, leaving very explicit and explanative threats. With the addition of very specific graphic threats, it became clear to Sierra, at least, that the threats should certainly be taken seriously even if the person making the threat did it "for fun." The exact reason these threats were made is slightly unclear, though Sierra points to her female presence in a male-dominated internet world. Since then, she has posted once on her blog to convey this as the reason she is missing numerous engagements which included a keynote speech for O’Riley. According to sources, that is understandably her last blog post.
I won’t go into much detail as it is not the point of this article — for further detail, visit Kathy Sierra’s blog. A kind warning: especially in dealing with the threats, the blogger has posted graphical threats that may be disturbing to some.
In reality, this is only one of many threats that exist in today’s "anonymous" internet. Because you express yourself through the keyboard and mouse and not through an eye-to-eye interaction, users have adopted a false sense of security behind the screen. The founding members of the internet community identified this as a problem and made internet users more trackable. Now, while surfing the internet, you can be tracked individually by your Internet Protocol Address (IP). The Internet Service Provider can, if legally and properly subpoenaed, release even the physical street address of the IP Address. Further more, given proper networking equipment, the source can narrowed down further to a specific computer using a distinct Media Access Control (MAC) Address, traced to your Network card. You get the drift — you are never truly anonymous, even with proxies, even if you’ve made a conscious effort to remain under the radar.
With so many people blogging and an even larger number pool of users reading these blogs, what responsibility do these bloggers have? More specifically, what are the limits of expressionism in the age of "you"? This has been widely questioned for quite some time, and to many, the golden standard lies in the 1996 Community Decency Act passed by the United States Federal Government. Essentially, this provides a layer of immunity to physical and software mediums that provide services in which indecent acts can be committed. For example, any sort of forum has its own right to its own set of rules within a certain bound. Neither the host, nor the owner, nor the administrator of the forum can be held accountable for the content posted by the public. Given the volatile nature of internet and changing technology, the law has been occasionally scrutinized throughout the years. But with bloggers all questioning the act again after the Sierra incident, perhaps it is a good time to revise an outdated legislation.
How should it be? My Take:
The internet has undoubtedly created completely new set of challenges that do not have proper rules of precedents set. Every single user who cruises has internet access has the potential to speak out to every other person who is connected. Unlike the era of exclusively printed media, there is no finite number of venues to control. There are a plethora of sites that simply express their views. Anyone could start a blog or a news site and run it with minimal risk right now. Quite simply, it’s a universal medium and it’s growing larger every day.
The law is in place, albeit completely outdated considering the level at which change happens in the digital age. To fully understand what rules and regulations should be put into place, it requires you to step back and ask yourself the simple question: if there were no bounds or restrictions, what would the internet be like? Of course, without federal law and such limiting at least a part of internet information exchange, there would be total chaos. Now, from total chaos, what exactly is wrong with it? What is the "basic and proper decorum" that needs to be followed? To me, a right to a sense of security ranks highly in that regard.
Certainly, there is a regard to neutrality and freedom of expression. However, a violation of basic rights worldwide does not fit under the umbrella of free expression. Expressionism is, should, and always has been conditional — it is not a universally true concept. In the case of the threats that Kathy Sierra received, it clearly violated her sense of security that a free person should, without question, posses. Racist, violent, or otherwise ill-willed slurs and attacks are not acceptable in a normal conversation or for print, and are therefore not at all acceptable for the internet. Should fear stop a user from using the internet to convey her thoughts? Nope. Should it prevent her from living her life as a normal human being? Certainly not.
From my viewpoint, the internet is simply a different manifestation of our everyday conversations and printed media. Because of the capabilities it brings, there are many more far-reaching amenities that make the internet truly an instant phenomenon. While a lot can be done on the internet, it is critical to stay within common sense and treat it as you would treat anything else in life.
The PCMech.com weekly newsletter has been running strong for over 8 years. Sign up to get tech news, updates and exclusive content - right in your inbox. Also get (several) free gifts.
