Improper Web links can shock viewers

8/4/08
In this article, it says that yahoo had goofed up on one of their articles by linking the phrase "underage girls" to their photo partner flickr. When this happened, you could surf flickr for images of "underage girls". By clicking the link, you would see x-rated stuff to just children stuff. This error happened because of a bad code on the web page highlighting the wrong word to link to flickr. After yahoo discovered the mess-up, they removed the link and put "under-age" on a banned list for automated links, and some of the photos were also removed from the website flickr.

I think that yahoo did the right things to remove this link and to bann the words that created the big uproar. They can not monitor everything that users put up because it's all done by the public and there would be too much to monitor, but i think they did the right thing. Also, everybody makes mistakes and coding is never 100% finish, there are always going to be kinks within the code.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/08/04/obscene.linking.ap/index.html

Federal Court Once Again Upholds Ban On Unconstitutional Internet Censorship Law

7/22/08
In this article, it talks about how COPA got thrown out of the US Courts again for violating the 1st and 5th amendment. The article says that for years that the government has been trying to censor the internet but it has no right too. Since the US courts shot COPA down, it goes back to the district courts to decide where it goes again. Other website owners say that COPA is overbroad and vague, and that there are other alterntatives to solving children monitoring.

I think that this is good that COPA got shot down and that it is a violation of the 1st and 5th amendment. I also believe that there are other approaches to this problem of child monitoring on the web besides COPA.


http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/internet/36071prs20080722.html

CSC 210 Week 4

Heads Up: Chrome's Omnibox May Record What You Type
9/8/08

This article talks about Google's new web browser "Chrome" having a feature that records everything you search in the address bar or search box. The new feature that records all these logs are called the Omnibox. The Omnibox can also record informatin that you typed into the address or search box even if the enter key is not stroked. Also when the Omnibox logs your searches, it logs your ip address along with the search. Google's defence to this privacy issue was that only 2% of your logs would be kept and that you can also turn off the Chrome feature.

I think that this is an invasion of privacy but people could probably care less about their searches being logged along with their IP. I think as long as the user is happy with the results he/she gets, they'll continue using the web browser.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64387.html

CSC 210 Week 3

YouTube ordered to reveal its viewers
7/3/08

This article talks about a federal judge granting permission for Viacomm Inc and other copyright holders to see youtube video logs on users. Viacomm and the other copyright holders want to know if youtube users are viewing more of their copyrighted material or viewing more of the amateur videos. Viacomm and the other copyright holders say that they would not release the data and that only the "users real name and e-mail address" would be identified. Google, who owns youtube says that it has over 12 terabytes of data it would have to publish to them and it would match roughtly 12 million books, also that it would be a time consuming and invasion of privacy to users. The information that youtube has on the users is how many times they played a video, their IP address and the screen name. Viacom is also seeking 1 billion dollars from youtube because of it's losses from people sharing their copyrighted material on the net. The after math of this case was that youtube had to submit a sample piece of web addresses in it's search indexes, not the actual search terms requested.

I think that this is an invasion of privacy and that Viacomm should not have the rights to see what other youtuber's are looking at. Viacomm should take a different approach at this by just telling youtube to bann all of their videos that are posted or to have investigators look for their videos and submit a request form to youtube to remove a video due to violations.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/03/youtubelawsuit.ap/index.html