Legal and ethical issues

The article I found regarding copyright was on spin.com and was titled "Downloaders beware: Copyright alert system rises as torrents enter the cloud". This short article discusses the new "tiered alert system" that is going to be put into place for people that download illegal torrents. What I gathered from reading it is the big torrent sites found a way to use cloud storage to their advantage. By having the users store and access the cloud directly through their own randomly generated decryption key it allows the blame to fall into the downloaders hands and not the sites hands in regards to illegal distribution of copyright materials. With this new cloud storage in place the big internet providers (comcast, AT&T, Time Warner) are now going to use a warning system that consists of various levels. Basically it will start with a friendly warning and escalate to internet throttling to make your connection speed slower as a punishment for not heeding previous warnings.

In my opinion this solution to online copyright infringement is both good and bad. Good in the sense that the potential downloader is given plenty of opportunity to cease his illegal activities before possible judicial intervention, but also bad in that how do they know its really YOU that is downloading illegal movies, etc. I know plenty of people that leave their wireless internet unsecured and there is a good possibility someone with a laptop could take advantage of this and use the IP address of this unsecured connection to download whatever they please without a trace. Hopefully in the future a better system will be developed to help determine who is truly violating copyrights, and who is just too trusting with their wireless internet.

Privacy and Security

In my opinion privacy and the internet are mutually exclusive. I feel any and all information that I put into any website be it Amazon, or Facebook, could possibly be leaked by someone adamantly trying to get to that information. However, there are certain aspects of the internet I feel are safer than others. I feel that my email account and Facebook info is something even a novice hacker could retrieve. THe article involving metadata and David Petraeus shows how any information email related is basically up for grabs if someone wants that info bad enough.This is why I would never use those services for any truly sensitive information (i.e social security #). But I do expect tightened internet privacy/security on information about myself that could make an impact on my life. I would never want to run into a situation where my identity was stolen via the internet, or someone somehow got ahold of my credit card information and was using it for their own personal gain. I feel every time I put this information into a website I am knowingly taking a risk, which in this day and age, is a necessary risk.