Law in the Internet Society

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JaimeSalasFirstPaper 3 - 05 Nov 2012 - Main.JaimeSalas
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You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
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<		So far most of the discussion in the Law in the Internet Society course has been focused on the effects of relinquishing from our privacy in exchange of “free” mail and storage capacity. However, despite a first reaction of surprise and bewilderment among the students it seems that no one cares that much about it and most of us are willing to let Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page look into our pictures and emails in exchange of having access to a tool that have changed everyone’s life in a variety of aspects. Some people say –with reason- that it’s not just Zuckerberg who is having access to our personal data but also governmental agencies or advertising companies which are watching us for free (free for us because someone else is getting rich at our expense), but still most people won’t be willing to close their Facebook account or start using a different mail provider because the return they get from using such kind of services is much greater that the potential threatens that those services may mean for their own privacy. A good example is Google Street View which has faced opposition in very few countries (e.g Germany citizen’s showed strong reticence about Google’s Street View and 244,000 residents completely opt-out of the service which led Google to abandon Street View in that country) while the wide majority of the world celebrate to be included in such a “first world service”.
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>		So far most of the discussion in the Law in the Internet Society course has been focused on the effects of relinquishing from our privacy in exchange of “free” mail and storage capacity. However, despite a first reaction of surprise and bewilderment among the students it seems that no one cares that much about it and most of us are willing to let Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Page look into our pictures and emails in exchange of having access to a tool that have changed everyone’s life in a variety of aspects. Some people say –with reason- that it’s not just Zuckerberg who is having access to our personal data but also governmental agencies or advertising companies which are watching us for free (free for us because someone else is getting rich at our expense), but still most people won’t be willing to close their Facebook account or start using a different mail provider because the return they get from using such kind of services is much greater that the potential threatens that those services may mean for their own privacy. A good example is Google Street View which has faced opposition in very few countries (e.g Germany citizen’s showed strong reticence about Google’s Street View and 244,000 residents completely opt-out of the service which led Google to abandon Street View in that country) while the wide majority of the world celebrate to be included in such a “first world service”.
 Is that people don’t care about being exploited while being connected (for purpose of this paper exploitation includes among other expensive internet connection fees, lousy softwares, invasive computer cookies, unwanted advertisement and potentially spying by third parties) because of the benefits of it still justify bearing those burdens? I am tempted to answer affirmatively, because as long as there is a marginal (objective or subjective) benefit most of people will keep acting as we have been doing so far for the only reason that Internet has changed our lives in every single aspect and the benefits we receive from being connected are much greater than the costs we bear. Does it mean that governments can do nothing to protect Internet users and that we should be left to be driven exclusively by the forces of demand and supply. Not nothing, but let’s say that as long as Internet keeps improving people’s well-being governments don’t have much to do regarding people’s online behavior.

Revision 3r3 - 05 Nov 2012 - 04:37:54 - JaimeSalas
Revision 2r2 - 29 Oct 2012 - 22:31:09 - JaimeSalas
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