David H. Rothman has been writing about the issues inherent in publisher control of e-books and e-readers and the impact of digital rights management for many years. Whether you use personal devices or institutional devices, the issues Rothman raises here will impact you.
Christine Park, Adjunct Professsor of Law, Fordham Law Library highlights risks of and legal restrictions related to digital rights management. LLRX welcomes further discussion of efforts to implement solutions, “before it’s too late.” See also David H. Rothman’s article Will Amazon’s new ePub capability help the anti-DRM movement?
Professors Dam Hee Kim, Anjana Susarla and Scott Shackelford are experts on social media. They were asked to grade how ready Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube are to handle the task of misinformation and disinformation in the upcoming election cycles. Social media companies have announced plans to deal with misinformation in the 2022 midterm elections, but the companies vary in their approaches and effectiveness and the result promises to be another jarring challenge to democracy in America.
Robert W. Gehl, Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice, York University, Canada raises an important issue about a recent Pew report on current state of digital media, news and right-wing propaganda. Gehl states the report misses a large number of alternative social media sites that actively and effectively oppose the right-wing propaganda. This distracts us from real-world solutions to the problems of online hate speech, disinformation and surveillance capitalism.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Google Only Tweaks Location History Description After Lawsuit; Your Router Is Collecting Data. Here’s What to Know, and How to Protect Your Privacy; Does Biometric Verification Violate Workers Rights?; and Russians dodging mobilization behind flourishing scam market.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Google Rolls out ‘Results About You’ for Personal Info Removal; I Said No to Online Cookies. Websites Tracked Me Anyway; Bosses spying on you? Here’s the most disastrous truth about surveillance software; How does identity crime affect victims?; and Say Goodbye to VPNs.
The Internet Archive (IA) “is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 624 billion archived web pages.” The IA offers users unrestricted access to its expansive ecosystem of knowledge and educational resources from the public domain. Andy Oram, prolific author, editor, publisher, and technical expert on all aspects of computing, undertook an extensive examination of a game changing case, Hachette v. Internet Archive, that may dismantle this unique, invaluable digital library. In this article Oram examines what the publishers are trying to protect and why they have to wield a large and heavy cudgel to protect it. His inquiry leads to a look at how culture has been privatized as it has become digitized—an effect quite opposed to the hopes of most public advocates who maintain the view that the Internet and the World Wide Web should remain focused on public access, not private sector monetization.
Prof. Scott Ruoti briefs us on yet another new component in Digital Ledger Technology. Proof-of-stake is a mechanism for achieving consensus on a blockchain. Blockchain is a technology that records transactions that can’t be deleted or altered. It’s a decentralized database, or ledger, that is under no one person or organization’s control. Since no one controls the database, consensus mechanisms, such as proof-of-stake, are needed to coordinate the operation of blockchain-based systems.
Prof. Cindy Guyer, Senior Law Librarian and Adjunct Assistant Professor Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, has been experimenting with incorporating infographics in her teaching to present information and knowledge visually, using graphs, flowcharts, timelines, and diagrams, which are components of instructional design.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Lens reflections may betray your secrets in Zoom video calls; Multi-factor authentication (MFA) fatigue; How Pig Butchering Scams Work; and Crypto giveaway scams continue to escalate.