The Myth of the Global Internet Flashcards
Commons
A shared space not owned by anyone
Ex. beach, have norms related to beach activities
Intellectual commons: language (alphabet), multiple people can use the same words
Is the internet a commons? Yes, cannot really regulate it
Tragedy of the Commons
Whenever there is a common space some individuals don’t trust other individuals and take advantage
East Coast Hang Out (ECHO)
Stacey Horn, create an east coast version of the WELL
1990
High performance computing act 1991 - allowing for more users
80% people in the hangout would hang out face to face
Embraceable Eve (trans women) wanted to join a women’s group controversy (challenge)
Norm changes: people created different personas online compared to real life
Stacey Horn
Creates ECHO in 1990, a leader
Yahoo Auctions
One of the biggest of web, search engines
In the auctions people were selling Nazi memorabilia
Mark Knobel sues Yahoo for selling Nazi memorabilia, in France where it was illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia
Jerry Yang says Internet is global can’t be confined to French court
Can only do things that are legal based on their IP address was what the French judge said
Jerry Yang
Ceo of Yahoo
Jerry Yang says Internet is global can’t be confined to French court
Took down Nazi memorabilia from Yahoo Auctions
Akamai used to monitor where users are
Jon Postel
Known as God of the Internet
Top level domain admin
DNS root authority Test 1998
Government hired a company to take over the server to control the name and number
Everyone trusted Jon and worried about a company controlling this job for profit
Jon still wanted authority and messaged the company that they should give him control and they listen to him
You’ll never work on the internet again - by the government towards Jon
Sealand
Off the coast of the UK
Was used during WWII by the army
Used by different parties
Used for pirate radio
Claimed by Paddy Roy Bates, independence from UK
Online gambling
Online file sharing
Argued that since the server was in Sealand where they allowed for online gambling it should be able to work but it did not work
Due to the government blocking internet service providers and the banks didn’t let the money to go through
Paddy Roy Bates
Claimed Sealand as nation, independent from UK
Named himself king/prince
Created its own passport, stamp
Great Fire Wall
China
Block IP address
Enabled government inspection
Employs millions of censors on the internet
IP addresses, unresolved
404 error - can’t access the site but you don’t know if something is blocked
Google, FB, NYT, Twitter, Wikipedia censored
Lin Hai
Software engineer
1988- sent 30,000 Chinese email addresses to US pro-democracy magazine
Imprisoned
Criticizing the Chinese government
Falun Gong
1998- used email to organize in-person demonstration (protest)
10,000 follower
Alls imprisoned
State Council Order 292
2000, in China
Required service providers to ensure that info adhered to the law
Opposite of section 230 (websites, server owners are not responsible what people post on their sites)
Public Pledge of Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry
2002, China
Opt in system
Companies agree to censorship
50 Cent Party
2004
Chinese Government enlisted universities to sign up people to post pro government statements on social media
Get paid small amounts, to post
Great Cannon
2015
Army of people post comments that support the Chinese government
2016 Harvard study estimated that the Chinese government fabricates and posts approximately 448m comments on social media annually
Denial of service attacks sends some many error messages that it crashes
TikTok
a social media platform where users create, share, and discover short-form videos, typically between 3 seconds and 60 minutes in length
ByteDance
Chinese internet technology company, best known for developing the global short-form video app TikTok
founded in 2012
