Question:
Creative commons is not a good option for many government works

It is simply wrong to paint all government funding with one brush decreeing that it should only be spent if the results are going to be made available through creative commons. Governments fund a vast diversity of projects that could be subject to licensing and the pragmatic approach would be for the government to use whatever license is most suitable to the work at hand. For funding for art, or for public facing software creative commons licences may well be the best option. For software with strong commercial possibilities there may be good financial reasons to keep the work in copyright, there have been many successful commercial products that have started life being developed with government money, the internet being the most famous (though of course this is something for which the government never made much money and anyway the patent would run out before it became big). [1] With many military or intelligence related software, or studies, there may want to be a tough layer of secrecy preventing even selling the work in question, we clearly would not want to have creative commons licensing for the software for anything to do with nuclear weapons. [2]

[1] Manjoo, Farhad, ‘Obama Was Right: The Government Invented the Internet’, Slate, 24 July 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/who_invented_the_internet_the_outrageous_conservative_claim_that_every_tech_innovation_came_from_private_enterprise_.html

[2] It should however be noted that many governments do sell hardware and software that might be considered militarily sensitive. See ‘ This House would ban the sale of surveillance technology to non-democratic countries ’

While there will be a few cases where it is undesirable that things that the government pays the funding for to be licensed through creative commons this should not stop creative commons from being the default choice. Creative commons is a good choice for the vast majority of what government does as weapons systems and other security related items are only a small part of government investment. Think of all the IT systems for government departments, it clearly makes sense that they should be creative commons so that they can be improved and adapted when it turns out they don’t work in quite the way they were designed. For example the UK government wasted £2,7billion on an IT project for the NHS, [1] in such a situation it would have made a lot of sense to have what was done open to others to pick up on and build upon if there was any of the software that could be of any use.

[1] Wright, Oliver, ‘NHS pulls the plug on its £11bn IT system’, The Independent, 3 August 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-pulls-the-plug-on-its-11bn-it-system-2330906.html

Mobile phones may help us keep in touch over long distances which is useful. However some doctors are concerned that keeping in touch by mobile phone comes at the cost of less face to face talking. When communicating by text message we are losing many parts of communication such as facial expression

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

These are certainly good things but we don’t need mobile phones for them. For example most people already have access to the internet. It is also not a good reason for why everyone should have one. If it is being used for learning phones can be used by more than one person.

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Government, like everyone else, should be able to profit from its work, that profit benefits its citizens rather than harming them

We generally accept the principle that people who create something deserve to benefit from that act of creation as they should own that work. [1] This is a principle that can be applied as easily to government, whether through works they are funding or works they are directly engaged in, as to anyone else. The owners of the work deserve to have the choice to benefit from their own endeavours through having copyright over that work. Sometimes this will mean the copyright will remain with the person who was paid to do the work but most of the time this will mean government ownership. Public funding does not change this fundamental ownership and the quixotic bargain state funding in exchange for mandatory creative commons licensing is a perversion of that ownership.

The Texas Emerging Technology Fund is an example of the use of state funding in the private sector to produce socially useful technologies without thieving the ownership of new technologies from their creators. [2] Moreover states clearly benefit from being able to use any profit from their funding. It would clearly be in taxpayers interest if the state is able to make a profit out of the investments that taxpayers funding creates as this would mean taxes could be lower.

[1] Greenberg, M. ‘Reason or Madness: A Defense of Copyright’s Growing Pains’. John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law. 2007. http://www.jmripl.com/Publications/Vol7/Issue1/Greenberg.pdf

[2] Office of the Governor. ‘Texas Emerging Technology Fund’. 2012, http://governor.state.tx.us/ecodev/etf/

Government is quite simply not ‘like everyone else’. If government acted like a profit maximising business it would clearly have the ability to turn itself into a monopoly on almost everything. This is why the role of government is not to make a profit but to ensure the welfare and freedoms of its citizens.

Mobile phones may help us keep in touch over long distances which is useful. However some doctors are concerned that keeping in touch by mobile phone comes at the cost of less face to face talking. When communicating by text message we are losing many parts of communication such as facial expression

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

These are certainly good things but we don’t need mobile phones for them. For example most people already have access to the internet. It is also not a good reason for why everyone should have one. If it is being used for learning phones can be used by more than one person.

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Creative commons prevents the incentive of profit

The incentive of profit, rather than a creative productive drive, spurs the creation of new work. Without the guarantee of ownership over one’s work, the incentive to invest time and effort in its creation is significantly diminished. When the state is the only body willing to pay for the work and offers support only on these strict terms, there will be less interest in being involved with that work. Within a robust copyright system, individuals feel free to invest time in their pursuits because they have full knowledge that the fruits of their efforts will be theirs to reap. [1] If their work were to immediately leave their control, they would be less inclined to do so.

The current copyright system that is built on profit encourages innovation and finding the best use for technology. Even when government has been the source of innovation those innovations have only become widespread when someone is able to make a profit from it; the internet became big when profit making companies began opening it up. If the government wants partnerships with businesses, or universities that are not directly linked to government then it has to accept that those partners can make a profit. Furthermore, the inability of others to simply duplicate existing works as their own means they too will be galvanized to break ground on new ideas, rather than simply re-tread over current ideas and to cannibalize the fecund ground of creative commons works.

[1] Greenberg, M. ‘Reason or Madness: A Defense of Copyright’s Growing Pains’. John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law. 2007. http://www.jmripl.com/Publications/Vol7/Issue1/Greenberg.pdf

The government should not be interested in the profit motive but what is best for its citizens which will usually mean creative commons licenses rather than the state making a profit. This is even more likely when developments are a joint project with a for profit operation; taxpayers will rightly ask why they should be paying the research costs only for a private business to reap the profit from that investment. The government already provides a leg up to businesses in the form of providing infrastructure, a stable business environment, education etc., it should not be paying for their R&D too.

Mobile phones may help us keep in touch over long distances which is useful. However some doctors are concerned that keeping in touch by mobile phone comes at the cost of less face to face talking. When communicating by text message we are losing many parts of communication such as facial expression

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

These are certainly good things but we don’t need mobile phones for them. For example most people already have access to the internet. It is also not a good reason for why everyone should have one. If it is being used for learning phones can be used by more than one person.

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Mobile phones enable us to keep in touch

Mobile communication is very useful and its main use is not to keep us safe but to make life easier. It is clearly useful that we can phone to ask to be picked up rather than always having to set a meeting time in advance. It is equally useful that a mobile phone can tell us if it is likely to rain, or if the train is late. We don’t need this information, but it certainly is helpful, and it is just as helpful for children as for adults.

Mobile phones may help us keep in touch over long distances which is useful. However some doctors are concerned that keeping in touch by mobile phone comes at the cost of less face to face talking. When communicating by text message we are losing many parts of communication such as facial expression

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

There is a difference between the general public and the government. It is the government that bought the rights to the work not the people even if the people are the ones that originally provided the money to develop the work by paying their taxes. It can be considered to be analogous to a business. Consumers pay for the products they buy and the profits from this enable the business to make the next generation of products. But that the consumers provided the profit that enabled that development does not enable the consumers to either get an upgrade or for the product to be released with a creative commons license

Internet anonymity isn’t necessary to exercise citizen’s right to free speech

Even when we accept the theoretical principle of free speech, the past years have shown that internet anonymity is not necessary for citizens to exercise their right to free speech.

First, look at ‘access to the internet’ as a prime factor, regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not: In the case of the Arab spring, the causes of the unrest were increased oppression and a declining economic climate. [1] Internet access wasn’t that much of an enabling factor in the Arab Spring: the countries that saw the highest mobilization of citizens (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen) actually rank lowest in internet penetration of all Arab countries. [2]

Secondly, let’s look at anonymity on the internet, provided that access is given: Again, the Arab Spring shows that anonymity isn’t a decisive factor at all. In Egypt and Tunisia, Facebook was a main vehicle to organize protests, [3] yet Facebook doesn’t allow anonymity – up to the extent that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks called Facebook ‘the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented’. [4] All this shows that internet anonymity isn’t as crucial a factor in fostering political dissidence as its proponents like to believe.

[1] Foreign Common Wealth Office, ‘The Causes of the Arab Spring’. URL: http://fcohrdreport.readandcomment.com/the-arab-spring/the-causes-of-the-arab-spring/

[2] Yale Global, ‘Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings’, July 24, 2012. URL: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/three-myths-about-arab-uprisings

[3] The National, ‘Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report’, June 6, 2011 URL: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report#ixzz2NWVMS6TQ

[4] Cnet, ‘Assange: Facebook is an appaling spy machine’, May 3, 2011. URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20059247-17.html#ixzz1LNaW3qw2

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Mobile phones help us to learn

Having a mobile phone helps us to learn in a lot of different ways. First we learn about technology; about how to use the mobile phone. Second most phones today have apps (programs) to enable learning using the phone, or else through the internet. Phones can access online courses and lessons which can be provided in fun ways and can in some cases instantly tell you if you have the right answer. It may even sometimes be possible to do homework on a phone and send it to your teacher. Even without the internet phones can be used to provide short assignments, or to provide reminders to study.

These are certainly good things but we don’t need mobile phones for them. For example most people already have access to the internet. It is also not a good reason for why everyone should have one. If it is being used for learning phones can be used by more than one person.

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

There is a difference between the general public and the government. It is the government that bought the rights to the work not the people even if the people are the ones that originally provided the money to develop the work by paying their taxes. It can be considered to be analogous to a business. Consumers pay for the products they buy and the profits from this enable the business to make the next generation of products. But that the consumers provided the profit that enabled that development does not enable the consumers to either get an upgrade or for the product to be released with a creative commons license

Internet anonymity isn’t necessary to exercise citizen’s right to free speech

Even when we accept the theoretical principle of free speech, the past years have shown that internet anonymity is not necessary for citizens to exercise their right to free speech.

First, look at ‘access to the internet’ as a prime factor, regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not: In the case of the Arab spring, the causes of the unrest were increased oppression and a declining economic climate. [1] Internet access wasn’t that much of an enabling factor in the Arab Spring: the countries that saw the highest mobilization of citizens (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen) actually rank lowest in internet penetration of all Arab countries. [2]

Secondly, let’s look at anonymity on the internet, provided that access is given: Again, the Arab Spring shows that anonymity isn’t a decisive factor at all. In Egypt and Tunisia, Facebook was a main vehicle to organize protests, [3] yet Facebook doesn’t allow anonymity – up to the extent that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks called Facebook ‘the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented’. [4] All this shows that internet anonymity isn’t as crucial a factor in fostering political dissidence as its proponents like to believe.

[1] Foreign Common Wealth Office, ‘The Causes of the Arab Spring’. URL: http://fcohrdreport.readandcomment.com/the-arab-spring/the-causes-of-the-arab-spring/

[2] Yale Global, ‘Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings’, July 24, 2012. URL: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/three-myths-about-arab-uprisings

[3] The National, ‘Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report’, June 6, 2011 URL: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report#ixzz2NWVMS6TQ

[4] Cnet, ‘Assange: Facebook is an appaling spy machine’, May 3, 2011. URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20059247-17.html#ixzz1LNaW3qw2

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Mobile phones make sure that we are safe

Mobile phones mean we are never out of contact with our friends, parents, guardians, or if necessary our school. They provide a way we can quickly contact someone if we are in trouble or are lost. Mobiles are most clearly helpful if caught in a large scale disaster such as a flood or earthquake as we can tell rescuers where we are. But they are also helpful for every day security. With a mobile phone parents know where we are and can be quickly contacted if we feel unsafe somewhere.

Phones are certainly a useful tool in helping to keep in contact so can be useful if you get into trouble. But they don’t always help because they don’t always keep us in contact. There are many reasons why a mobile may be useless. There may be no signal. Or the phone may have been turned off. Or the battery may have run low. If any of these things happen then it adds to parents worries as they can’t get in contact when they expected to be able to.

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

There is a difference between the general public and the government. It is the government that bought the rights to the work not the people even if the people are the ones that originally provided the money to develop the work by paying their taxes. It can be considered to be analogous to a business. Consumers pay for the products they buy and the profits from this enable the business to make the next generation of products. But that the consumers provided the profit that enabled that development does not enable the consumers to either get an upgrade or for the product to be released with a creative commons license

Internet anonymity isn’t necessary to exercise citizen’s right to free speech

Even when we accept the theoretical principle of free speech, the past years have shown that internet anonymity is not necessary for citizens to exercise their right to free speech.

First, look at ‘access to the internet’ as a prime factor, regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not: In the case of the Arab spring, the causes of the unrest were increased oppression and a declining economic climate. [1] Internet access wasn’t that much of an enabling factor in the Arab Spring: the countries that saw the highest mobilization of citizens (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen) actually rank lowest in internet penetration of all Arab countries. [2]

Secondly, let’s look at anonymity on the internet, provided that access is given: Again, the Arab Spring shows that anonymity isn’t a decisive factor at all. In Egypt and Tunisia, Facebook was a main vehicle to organize protests, [3] yet Facebook doesn’t allow anonymity – up to the extent that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks called Facebook ‘the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented’. [4] All this shows that internet anonymity isn’t as crucial a factor in fostering political dissidence as its proponents like to believe.

[1] Foreign Common Wealth Office, ‘The Causes of the Arab Spring’. URL: http://fcohrdreport.readandcomment.com/the-arab-spring/the-causes-of-the-arab-spring/

[2] Yale Global, ‘Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings’, July 24, 2012. URL: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/three-myths-about-arab-uprisings

[3] The National, ‘Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report’, June 6, 2011 URL: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report#ixzz2NWVMS6TQ

[4] Cnet, ‘Assange: Facebook is an appaling spy machine’, May 3, 2011. URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20059247-17.html#ixzz1LNaW3qw2

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Mobile phones lead to increased independence

Mobile phones bring us increased independence. Being able to use a mobile phone is clearly a basic skill to allow children to be independent. It means that they are not dependent on an adult being with them for parents to know where they are. The main reason for parents being unwilling to let children out on their own is fear for their safety. This is a fear that mobiles help prevent. This increased independence has other benefits, such as teaching us to be responsible for ourselves.

Increased independence for children is not always a good thing. Children should be supervised by adults and mobile phones are no substitute for this. Mobiles simply provide us with another means of communication with the outside world over which parents has little control. This is particularly relevant when the phone has internet access which is not restricted.

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

There is a difference between the general public and the government. It is the government that bought the rights to the work not the people even if the people are the ones that originally provided the money to develop the work by paying their taxes. It can be considered to be analogous to a business. Consumers pay for the products they buy and the profits from this enable the business to make the next generation of products. But that the consumers provided the profit that enabled that development does not enable the consumers to either get an upgrade or for the product to be released with a creative commons license

Internet anonymity isn’t necessary to exercise citizen’s right to free speech

Even when we accept the theoretical principle of free speech, the past years have shown that internet anonymity is not necessary for citizens to exercise their right to free speech.

First, look at ‘access to the internet’ as a prime factor, regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not: In the case of the Arab spring, the causes of the unrest were increased oppression and a declining economic climate. [1] Internet access wasn’t that much of an enabling factor in the Arab Spring: the countries that saw the highest mobilization of citizens (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen) actually rank lowest in internet penetration of all Arab countries. [2]

Secondly, let’s look at anonymity on the internet, provided that access is given: Again, the Arab Spring shows that anonymity isn’t a decisive factor at all. In Egypt and Tunisia, Facebook was a main vehicle to organize protests, [3] yet Facebook doesn’t allow anonymity – up to the extent that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks called Facebook ‘the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented’. [4] All this shows that internet anonymity isn’t as crucial a factor in fostering political dissidence as its proponents like to believe.

[1] Foreign Common Wealth Office, ‘The Causes of the Arab Spring’. URL: http://fcohrdreport.readandcomment.com/the-arab-spring/the-causes-of-the-arab-spring/

[2] Yale Global, ‘Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings’, July 24, 2012. URL: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/three-myths-about-arab-uprisings

[3] The National, ‘Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report’, June 6, 2011 URL: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report#ixzz2NWVMS6TQ

[4] Cnet, ‘Assange: Facebook is an appaling spy machine’, May 3, 2011. URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20059247-17.html#ixzz1LNaW3qw2

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
We should not be encouraging interest in material things

Mobile phones are a part of a desire to keep up with fashion and friends. We all want the biggest and the best. Mobile phone companies know this and regularly bring out flashy new models that are immediately the one everyone must have. The more children have mobiles the more are caught up in this fashion. Our compulsion to want new things all the time is not good for us. Mobile phones, as with many other electronics, are damaging to the environment. Since we buy them and often dispose of the phone only a couple of years later they pile up in gigantic rubbish dumps. Mobile phones are clearly a luxury not something that everyone should have, and we certainly should not keep buying new ones.

Something being a luxury does not mean it is not something everyone should have. The effect on the planet is minimal and can be reduced if we recycle any phones that we are going to throw away. It would certainly best for the planet if we did not keep buying upgrades but this is not necessary for every child to have a mobile phone.

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

There is a difference between the general public and the government. It is the government that bought the rights to the work not the people even if the people are the ones that originally provided the money to develop the work by paying their taxes. It can be considered to be analogous to a business. Consumers pay for the products they buy and the profits from this enable the business to make the next generation of products. But that the consumers provided the profit that enabled that development does not enable the consumers to either get an upgrade or for the product to be released with a creative commons license

Internet anonymity isn’t necessary to exercise citizen’s right to free speech

Even when we accept the theoretical principle of free speech, the past years have shown that internet anonymity is not necessary for citizens to exercise their right to free speech.

First, look at ‘access to the internet’ as a prime factor, regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not: In the case of the Arab spring, the causes of the unrest were increased oppression and a declining economic climate. [1] Internet access wasn’t that much of an enabling factor in the Arab Spring: the countries that saw the highest mobilization of citizens (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen) actually rank lowest in internet penetration of all Arab countries. [2]

Secondly, let’s look at anonymity on the internet, provided that access is given: Again, the Arab Spring shows that anonymity isn’t a decisive factor at all. In Egypt and Tunisia, Facebook was a main vehicle to organize protests, [3] yet Facebook doesn’t allow anonymity – up to the extent that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks called Facebook ‘the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented’. [4] All this shows that internet anonymity isn’t as crucial a factor in fostering political dissidence as its proponents like to believe.

[1] Foreign Common Wealth Office, ‘The Causes of the Arab Spring’. URL: http://fcohrdreport.readandcomment.com/the-arab-spring/the-causes-of-the-arab-spring/

[2] Yale Global, ‘Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings’, July 24, 2012. URL: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/three-myths-about-arab-uprisings

[3] The National, ‘Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report’, June 6, 2011 URL: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report#ixzz2NWVMS6TQ

[4] Cnet, ‘Assange: Facebook is an appaling spy machine’, May 3, 2011. URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20059247-17.html#ixzz1LNaW3qw2

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Mobile phones are expensive

Mobile phones are expensive. First there is the cost of buying the phone. Then there are all the charges for using it. Often there are more charges for downloading apps and other extras. Sometimes we go over the limits of our call time or data allowance and are charged extra. Finally there may be extra costs when the phone needs to be replaced or upgraded. The average cell phone bill in the United States is $70 for a month but it can sometimes be much higher. Clearly not every child can afford their own mobile and often parents cant either.

The expense clearly depends on the kind of phone and how much it is used. Parents clearly have control over these costs; they decide on the deal that their child is on. The parents can then make sure there is little chance of their children running up large bills.

Moves illegal activity in harder to monitor areas. Those partaking in planning illegal activity will not continue to do so if hiding their identities is not possible. Instead, they will return to using more private means of communication, such as meeting in person, or using any online services that do guarantee anonymity such as TOR. While this may make planning illegal activity more difficult, it also makes it more difficult for law enforcement officials to monitor this behaviour, and come anywhere near stopping it: at least under the status quo they have some idea of where and how it is happening, and can use that as a starting point. Forcing criminals further underground may not be desirable. The authorities in cooperation with websites are usually able to find out who users are despite the veil of anonymity for example in the UK the police have arrested people for rape threats made against a campaigner for there to be a woman on UK banknotes.1

1 Masters, Sam, 'Twitter threats: Man arrested over rape-threat tweets against campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez', The Independent, 28, July, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-threats-man-arrested-...

Freedom from consequences is not a necessary component of freedom of speech. If someone is free from legal restraints surrounding their ability to speak, they are free to speak. Freedom of speech does not entitle an individual to absolute freedom of consequences of any kind, including social consequences to their speech. While someone should certainly be free to state their opinion, there is no reason why they should be entitled to not be challenged for holding that opinion.

Banning internet anonymity wouldn’t decrease cyberbullying and trolling

Cyberbullying is bad, but internet anonymity isn’t the cause of rising suicides - cyberbullying is a circumstantial factor that triggers deeper, underlying problems in its victims. [1] Actually, banning internet anonymity can increase cyberbullying: when World of Warcraft announced their intentions to ban anonymity, female gamers voiced concerns of being forced to reveal their gender to other players, thus generating unwanted attention. [2]

As to the problem of trolling causing discussions under newspaper-articles and forums to go ‘bad’: this isn’t necessarily the case. A mediating factor could be the exact system in place for placing comments: comment systems like Disqus allow people to comment anonymously but still be judged for the quality of their contribution to the discussion. [3] If organizations care about the quality of their online discussions, they will implement systems like this by themselves and wouldn’t need any government regulation.

[1] ScienceNew, ‘Cyberbullying Does Not 'Cause' Teen Suicide’, October 20, 2012. URL: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyberbullying_does_not_cause_teen_suicide-95444

[2] The Independent, ‘Rhodri Marsden: Online anonymity lets us behave badly’, July 14, 2010. URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/rhodri-marsden-online-anonymity-lets-us-behave-badly-2025758.html

[3] Silicon Valley Watcher, ‘Disqus: The Importance Of Trolls And Anonymity In Comments’, February 22, 2013. URL: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/02/disqus_the_impo.php

Banning internet anonymity doesn’t decrease illegal activities

Full traceability across the entire internet is difficult to implement: it would require a centralized worldwide agency certifying who has access to the internet – we don’t even have this for physical passports. But even if activities would be traceable to an IP-address, it doesn’t stop online illegal activities: criminals can remain anonymous by setting up anonymity servers, which allows them to rout their information through anonymous servers, even when their IP-addresses are known. [1] Even worse, malicious hackers can even recruit other people’s computers into engaging in illegal activities, for example in recruiting innocent people’s computers for collecting and distributing child pornography. [2]

[1] Bruce Schneier, ‘Schneier on security. Anonymity and the internet’, blogpost February 3, 2010. URL: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html

[2] Huffington Post, ‘Internet Virus Frames Users for Child Porn’, September 11, 2009. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/internet-virus-frames-use_n_350426.html

It is a mistake to think that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit. Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly and without permission?

Self-improvement through an alias or false identity is unlikely to lead to genuine self-improvement. When individuals have multiple identities, they may think of them as distinct from one another, and are thus unlikely to transfer self-improvement from one to another. For example, a recovering addict may only have a renewed attitude in their online identity, and not in real life where it is more important. This is unlikely to be beneficial, and may be actively harmful in terms of limiting the improvement of real life identities.

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch). [1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”. [2]

Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.

[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html

[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...

Regulating the internet doesn’t stop spamming

Restricting internet traffic by blocking ports doesn’t reduce spam at all: spam networks will be able to find another means of sending mass-emails within hours, if not seconds. [1]

But there’s another consequence of regulating internet traffic this way: it makes internet traffic and email slower and more cumbersome, hampering small businesses and companies working mostly through online channels. It thus hinders the smooth functioning of the economy and hampers innovation. [2]

[1] Zdnet, ‘South Korea to block port 25 as anti-spam countermeasure’, November 15, 2011. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/south-korea-to-block-port-25-as-anti-spam-countermeasure/9789

[2] BBC News, ‘Email spam 'Block 25' crackdown readied in South Korea’, 14 november 2011. URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15720599

There is a difference between the general public and the government. It is the government that bought the rights to the work not the people even if the people are the ones that originally provided the money to develop the work by paying their taxes. It can be considered to be analogous to a business. Consumers pay for the products they buy and the profits from this enable the business to make the next generation of products. But that the consumers provided the profit that enabled that development does not enable the consumers to either get an upgrade or for the product to be released with a creative commons license

Internet anonymity isn’t necessary to exercise citizen’s right to free speech

Even when we accept the theoretical principle of free speech, the past years have shown that internet anonymity is not necessary for citizens to exercise their right to free speech.

First, look at ‘access to the internet’ as a prime factor, regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not: In the case of the Arab spring, the causes of the unrest were increased oppression and a declining economic climate. [1] Internet access wasn’t that much of an enabling factor in the Arab Spring: the countries that saw the highest mobilization of citizens (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen) actually rank lowest in internet penetration of all Arab countries. [2]

Secondly, let’s look at anonymity on the internet, provided that access is given: Again, the Arab Spring shows that anonymity isn’t a decisive factor at all. In Egypt and Tunisia, Facebook was a main vehicle to organize protests, [3] yet Facebook doesn’t allow anonymity – up to the extent that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks called Facebook ‘the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented’. [4] All this shows that internet anonymity isn’t as crucial a factor in fostering political dissidence as its proponents like to believe.

[1] Foreign Common Wealth Office, ‘The Causes of the Arab Spring’. URL: http://fcohrdreport.readandcomment.com/the-arab-spring/the-causes-of-the-arab-spring/

[2] Yale Global, ‘Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings’, July 24, 2012. URL: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/three-myths-about-arab-uprisings

[3] The National, ‘Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report’, June 6, 2011 URL: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report#ixzz2NWVMS6TQ

[4] Cnet, ‘Assange: Facebook is an appaling spy machine’, May 3, 2011. URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20059247-17.html#ixzz1LNaW3qw2

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim