Question:
Indiscriminate spying damages trust

Trust is important in international relations. Whenever there is an international agreement each side has to trust that the other side will fulfil its side of the bargain; there is no court to step in and ensure that they do. Trust therefore needs to be built up. A large part of this is simply fulfilling promises that have been made in such treaties but trust can also be about being open with each other. When a country engages in an immense spying operation against another nation it is clearly damaging the trust between those nations. With the United States this is just one in a long line of issues that have undermined trust in the US government; the Iraq war, Guantanamo bay, drone strikes etc. and the continued violations of international law these represent have all undermined trust in the United States internationally. [1]

[1] Dunn, Matthew, ‘PRISM: An International Relations Disaster?’, Huffington Post, 10 July 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-dunn/prism-nsa_b_3563170.html

It is not so much the spying that damages trust as the revelations that do so. As former CIA director Michael Hayden commented “Who on this planet [now] believes the Americans can keep a secret? This really erodes the kind of corporation that our intelligence service has with other intelligence agencies.” [1] Trust comes from working together and this is just as true in the intelligence sphere as elsewhere. Governments already knew the NSA spies on them, that so much information about the how and when has been revealed will be what is the shock.

[1] Coleman, Michael, ‘Besides Bruised Egos, Will NSA Spy Leaks Cause Lasting Pain?’, The Washington Diplomat, 30 July 2012, http://www.washdiplomat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9408:besides-bruised-egos-will-nsa-spy-leaks-cause-lasting-pain&catid=1505&Itemid=428

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:
Damages US commercial interests

The United States is the preponderant power in internet commerce; most of the big internet companies, the big software companies, even many of the hardware companies are companies that are based in the United States. This both enables US use of these systems for spying as occurred with PRISM because it happens that most web traffic passes through the United States, and makes the United States vulnerable when the world’s consumers think these companies have been betraying their trust. If consumers don’t think US companies can guarantee their data and privacy it should be no surprise that they will consider transferring their business. [1] Cloud computing is particularly affected, among the revelations has been that Microsoft helps the NSA with access to its cloud storage service skydrive. [2] According to a survey by the Cloud Security Alliance 10% of non US responders had cancelled a project with US based providers since the leaks about NSA projects and 56% say they would be less likely to use a US based service. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation estimates this could cost the US cloud computing industry between $21.5 and $35bln in revenues over the next three years. [3] And this is just one part of the computing and software industries, other areas are likely to be less affected but may well still lose business.

[1] Naughton, John, ‘Edward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the Internet is’, The Observer, 28 July 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/28/edward-snowden-death-of-internet

[2] Greenwald, Glenn et al., ‘How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages’, The Guardian, 12 July 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

[3] Taylor, Paul, ‘Cloud computing industry could lose up to $35bn on NSA disclosures’, FT.com, 5 August 2013, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9f02b396-fdf0-11e2-a5b1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2bSXVdqSE

There is no reason for foreign companies to be worried about NSA surveillance. The companies involved such as Google have denied involvement “we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.” [1] There should be no concern about companies’ data as the NSA is about protecting national security and is not interested in the commercial work of millions of businesses around the world.

[1] Page, Larry, and Drummond, David, ‘What the …?’, Google Official Blog, 7 June 2013, http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/what.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:
Broad web surveillance prevents terrorist attacks

Over the last ten years, and right up to the present day, the most important national security interest of the United States has been preventing terrorism. A fight against terrorism requires a large amount of resources invested in tracking terrorist networks and in finding those who may turn to terrorism. Intelligence gathering cannot just focus on those we already know to be terrorists as people can easily become radicalised while not meeting any individuals already considered to be terrorists. This means that there needs to be a broad brush intelligence gathering operation that finds those who are on the path to terrorism. This is why operations like PRISM and xkeyscore are so important; they allow the United States to find people who are being radicalised by material online or those who are just working out how to launch an attack themselves. The NSA Director Keith Alexander has stated that the surveillance has helped prevent “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11.”, with PRISM contributing to 90% of the information on these plots. As only 10 were domestic the surveillance is a benefit to other countries as well as the United States. [1]

[1] Nakashima, Ellen, ‘Officials: Surveillance programs foiled more than 50 terrorist plots’, The Washington Post, 18 June 2013, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-18/world/40043402_1_plots-alexander-national-security-agency

Clearly the intelligence efforts on such a scale must provide some return in terms of stopping terrorism or they would not be worth the cost. However it is open to question whether the impact has been nearly as big as had been cited by the intelligence agencies. We clearly don’t know if these terrorists would have been detected through other methods. Additionally in at least one case where the FBI and NSA have stated that electronic surveillance has played a key role it has turned out not to be the case. FBI deputy director Sean Joyce has claimed that an attack on the New York Stock exchange was foiled by electronic surveillance; “We went up on the electronic surveillance and identified his co-conspirators” yet the emails involved were perfectly ordinary – the only information gained from the broad brush surveillance was that the plotter was in contact with al Qaeda leaders in Yemen. Something which surely could have been caught the other way around – by looking at the al Qaeda leaders communications. [1] Other cases such as that of Basaaly Moalin who was convicted of sending $8,500 to support Somali terrorist group al Shabab that have been highlighted by the NSA have similarly not required such broad surveillance. [2]

[1] Ross, Brian et al., ‘NSA Claim of Thwarted NYSE Plot Contradicted by Court Documents’, ABC News, 19 June 2013, http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=19436557

[2] Nakashima, Ellen, ‘NSA cites case as success of phone data-collection program’, The Washington Post, 8 August 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-cites-case-as-success-of-phone-data-collection-program/2013/08/08/fc915e5a-feda-11e2-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html?hpid=z1

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:
Surveillance is necessary to protect national security

The primary concern of the state is the protection of its people from foreign powers. This usually means physical protection but this physical protection relies upon knowing what others are doing; where the threats are coming from. That means surveillance. There needs to be monitoring of groups that potentially pose a threat to the state or to its citizens. In a world where terrorism is as much a threat as other states there is a clear need to be watching as many people as possible around the world. Threats such as that to western interests in Yemen at the start of August 2013 demonstrate the need to be watching out for threats as intelligence picked up high level threats to western interests so allowing the United States and others to take pre-emptive action by closing embassies and evacuating personnel. [1]

[1] Hicks, Josh, ‘Chambliss: Threats ‘very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11’, The Washington Post, 4 August 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/08/04/chambliss-threats-very-reminiscent-of-what-we-saw-pre-911/

No one disputes that some surveillance is necessary, the question is how much. Is the use of bulk catch all surveillance useful? In the case cited it seems not – this was the monitoring of specific individuals who were already known to US intelligence services; Ayaman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s leader and Nasser al Wahishi the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. [1] Normal intelligence methods without the broad based surveillance would have caught the same messages. Monitoring the communications of known terrorist leaders was done long before the internet was on the scene.

[1] Associated Press, ‘AP sources: Al-Qaida chief’s intercepted m,essage to deputy in Yemen caused embassy closures’, The Washington Post, 5 August 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/state-dept-says-us-diplomatic-posts-in-19-countries-will-stay-closed-through-saturday/2013/08/05/d58fbbdc-fda2-11e2-8294-0ee5075b840d_story.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:
Allows monitoring of foreign governments

Governments expect to be monitored by other governments and do so themselves as well. Monitoring other governments provides major advantages even when those governments are ostensibly friendly as no government is going to tell even its allies everything there need to be other ways to learn such information. Surveillance can provide advantages in negotiations; it can let you know how far the other side is willing to go. GCHQ for example engaged in intercepting communications by monitoring phones and even setting up fake internet cafes during the G20 meetings in London in 2008. [1]

[1] MacAskill, Ewen et al., ‘GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians’ communications at G20 summits’, The Guardian, 17 June 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/16/gchq-intercepted-communications-g20-summits

While this is clearly a benefit of spying it is not so much of a benefit of the kind of indiscriminate spying such as the PRISM program. Tapping diplomats mobile phones and setting up fake internet cafes is clearly not indiscriminate, far from it this is targeted surveillance.

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:
A legal transaction is the only way to achieve free exchange of value

Because the artist made the music, it is their property, in this case “intellectual property”. Property means that the owner/artist has the right to ask something from you in exchange for you gaining access to the music. This may be money. It may also be the requirement that you clearly recognize the artist’s moral right to always be mentioned as the creator of that music. This is called the “free exchange of value”, and this is the most fundamental relationship in our free market economy.

Whatever the artist chooses as payment through a legal transaction, it is his/her basic right to ask this of you. The only way to make sure that he/she can actually exercise that right is by making sure you only take music from the artist through a legal transaction, i.e. with their permission. Only then can we be sure that the desired free exchange of value has taken place

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/...

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

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.

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

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.

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

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


Question:
Musicians have to eat

Apart from the moral reason, there is also a simple societal reason why it is wrong to download music without permission. The reason is that musicians have to eat, too. Suppose you are an up-and-coming young musician thinking about what to do with your future. You can either become a full time musician or take up a job. If you become a fulltime musician, you’ll be doing what you love. But at the same time, everyone will be downloading all your music for free, simply because they can. This means that music won’t be a good, stable source of income for you, and this means you’d rather take up a job. Since you’re not working on your music every day, your talent will be underdeveloped, and the little pieces of music you do write, for example in the weekend, are not as good as they could have been. So, downloading music without permission will lead to fewer good musicians. That’s not only bad for the musicians, but also for us: we’ll have less good music to listen to.

It’s true that musicians have to eat, too, but it’s not true that downloading cuts their income. Most of the money spent on music goes to record companies, not to artists, from each retail CD sold the artist only gets between 3 and 10%. [1] Those record companies have been keeping musicians on a leash for decades, paying them less than they could. They paid them enough to make sure they would remain fulltime musicians, but not so much that they didn’t bother to create new albums. So if downloading music files means record companies miss out on some income, we shouldn’t feel bad about it.

[1] Information is Beautiful, ‘How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online?’, 13 April 2010, http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-ear...

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

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.

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

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.

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

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


Question:
Theft is an assumption of property rights

Theft is taking something from someone who is the rightful owner without their permission. It doesn’t matter if the rightful owner keeps an original version or not. If you are downloading music from an unofficial source, you are stealing it: you can start listening to that song, without the permission of the original owner. The only way you can get the right to listen to that song is via a legal transaction from which the rights owner can make a profit

Theft always involves a thief taking something away for themselves with the result that the original owner can’t use it anymore. For example, if I steal your bike, you can’t use it anymore. And this is exactly why theft is wrong: you had something which you wanted to use, and now you can’t anymore, simply because I took it.

That’s why downloading music is not theft because it is a form of copying. You download a copy from an original, but the first owner still has the original on his or her computer, and can still enjoy it. In more complicated terms: music files are “non-rival” goods, meaning that my use of the good does not diminish your future use of it. [1]

[1] Investopedia, ‘Rival Good’, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rival_good.asp#axzz1eWJ4ImSp

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

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.

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

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.

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

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


Question:
Downloading is morally right

Even when downloading is illegal, it still is right from a moral viewpoint. The reason is that by downloading, you’re not hurting the artists, but the record companies. And these record companies have engaged in unfair practices towards consumers for decades. They asked €20 euros for a CD, when a blank CD only costs about 5 cents. They still engage in unfair practices, for example via DRM. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and it means that companies limit how and when you can listen to a song. For example, you can buy a song and listen to it on your MP-3 player, but if you want to play it on your laptop, you have to buy the same song again. Moreover, record companies have sued individual consumers for huge fines for downloading just a few songs. Most recently one ordinary woman was fined $1.92 million dollars, which just doesn’t add up to the “damage” these individuals are supposed to have done. [1] That’s unfair, and because it’s unfair, we are justified in download without permission.

[1] Kravets, David, ‘Feds Support $1.92 Million RIAA File Sharing Verdict’, Wired.com, 14 August 2009, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/feds-support-192-million-file-sharing-verdict/

Record companies have been blamed for unfair practices, like DRM, “milking” artists (see opposition argument 3), or suing individual downloaders for unfair damages. But record companies also have a very positive role to play: they scout every day for new talent, and offer training and production studios for up-and-coming musicians. Moreover, they provide valuable marketing services, making sure that new artists get heard instead of drowning in the vast sea of information that is the internet. Consider this, how do you even know which song to download? A large part of that is because record companies get the music out there, on to radio stations, all over MySpace, on MTV, so that you get to hear it for the first time. Those are things a musician is not trained to do and very often does not want to do, which is why it is good to have record companies [1] .

[1] Hole, Max, ‘The future for record companies’, ifpi, June 2007, http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20070607.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

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.

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

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.

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

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


Question:
There is a private copy exception

Downloading music without permission is allowed under the “private copy exception”. Practically, the exception meant that you were allowed to copy, but not distribute any music. Downloading music from a torrentsite or newsgroup is essentially the same. People who download music do it purely for their own enjoyment and use. They have no intention to resell the songs and make a profit from it. So, if it was legal to make a copy for personal use before the internet was invented, why then should it suddenly be different afterwards? Indeed while the private copy exception is not universal it is allowed under the Information Society Directive within the EU. [1] And when it comes to peer-to-peer software, you can turn off the option to upload automatically. This allows you to only download, but at a slower speed.

[1] European Parliament, Article 6/4, ‘Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society’, Official Journal, L 167 , 22 June 2001, pp. 10 – 19, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML

Downloading does not fall under the so-called “private copy exception”. The private copy exception only covered those rare cases when you took the effort to make a copy from a lawful source (perhaps putting a song you owned on CD on to a cassette so you could listen to it in your car). With the internet, the situation changed hugely. Firstly, copying became a lot easier. Secondly, the home copy-exception applies to when you borrow an album from a friend - someone you know. Online, you’re downloading from anyone, anywhere who happens to have the song you want. Thirdly, when you start downloading using peer-to-peer software, you will usually also start uploading at the same time. It’s the nature of p2p-technology that you both distribute and consume. So, you’re not just making a copy for yourself, you will also be distributing the same song, and that distribution is in any case wrong. These changes together mean that the three step-test is not met, so downloading does not fall under the private copy exception and is therefore illegal.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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