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NuriCemAlbayrakFirstEssay 3 - 07 Jan 2022 - Main.NuriCemAlbayrak
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| | | -- By NuriCemAlbayrak - 25 Oct 2021 | |
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< | Introduction | >
> | As we learn to adapt to the internet society that captures almost all parts of our existence, the fair distribution of power and control in this new age remains strikingly imbalanced. A handful of mega corporations primarily located in the United States monopolize this new continuum of our existence. Trillions of dollars concentrated in a few companies are spent to solidify the perception that the “internet” itself is Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a few others. People are kept in the dark by these companies and are prohibited from learning about the alternatives. Their data is continuously harvested for various reasons. As such, the most vital question that needs to be resolved as we are further connected to each other by the minute is how we are to democratize the internet. | | | | |
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As we learn to adapt to the internet society that captures almost all parts of our existence, the fair distribution of power and control in this new age remains strikingly imbalanced. Not only a handful of mega corporations in the West monopolize this new continuum of our existence, but they also effectively prohibit billions of people from accessing this unprecedent source of knowledge and intellect. Trillions of dollars concentrated in a few companies are spent to solidify the perception that the “internet” itself is Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a few others. People are constantly kept in the dark by these companies and effectively prohibited from learning about the alternatives. Their data is continuously harvested for reasons unknown. As such, the most vital question that needs to be resolved as we are further connected to each other by the minute is how we are to democratize the internet. | >
> | What I mean by democratizing the internet is that I believe each individual who uses any of these services should be informed on the basic principles of how the internet operates and what the implications of his or her interactions with online services are. After taking this class with you, I realized that I have been a passive, unquestioning user of online platforms all my life. Even though it is now obvious to me, I never thought of actually paying for these services by allowing them to gather all sorts of data on me. And more importantly, it did not even quite cross my mind that my thought process, indicated by my online behavior by the things that I read and interact with on the internet, can be analyzed and perhaps used against me by entities unknown to me. | | | | |
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> | The question whether I can truly be a free individual while being so intimately monitored deeply unsettled me, and since taking the class I have taken some measures to become less trackable. But how about my law school friends who have not taken the course with you? Or my friends from undergrad? Or the many millions who are not educated at the best institutions in the world? | | | | |
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What does "effectively prohibit" mean? I don't understand what prohibition is in force of how it is effective. That appears to be the core idea of the essay, so it would be good to get it clear for the reader from the beginning.
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> | I understand that an exproprietory revolution eliminating property rights is not plausible and imminent. I have come to despise these mega corporations after taking this class and I would very much prefer such a revolution to stop them from further monopolizing the internet society we are living in. However, I also realize that it is currently unlikely as I was completely unbothered by what I had not been thinking about before taking this class along with billions of other internet users. | | | | |
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> | What can be achieved, however, is using the government to promote the safest possible use of the internet. By using the government, I mean that the government can mandate a safety protocol every time an electronic device with the capacity to connect to the internet is sold to a real person. Alternatively, I thought about whether the government could demand a license to connect to the internet, like a driver’s license, but that sounds like too much of an Orwellian measure. | | | | |
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< | Data Colonialism | >
> | However, I do not see a problem with enforcing a compulsory, educational and informational safety protocol to be communicated to an individual upon the sale of an electronic device. If what we learned in this class is true, and they are in fact true, our legislative bodies can demand sellers to inform consumers of the safety issues associated with products with internet connectivity. In formulating this thought, I am inspired by the product warning labels that we see on virtually every product we purchase. While such product labels are exclusively concerned with physical safety issues, it is not set in stone that the Congress cannot demand such warnings based on concerns such as privacy. | | | | |
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Traditional colonialism may be for the most part dead, but the few privileged classes in the West still has an immensely tight grip on the rest of humanity. Christopher Wylie’s “Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America” clearly illustrated how data collected by Facebook in exchange for free access to its platform allowed private companies to carry massive psychological campaigns on entire societies. They first use smaller datasets to test their influence on smaller societies located in one of the former colonies, where their actions can go completely unchecked. And Wylie shows that the immense data that Facebook harvests is then used in the Western societies that allow these companies to safely exist in the first place.
This is not the first time in recent history that a source of power is concentrated in the hands of the few. However, this is certainly the first time in history that a few companies have complete power as to determine how we think and act. | >
> | One issue that needs to be resolved in democratizing the internet is the monopolies such as Facebook in existence. Will they simply wither away if people know that they can use safer alternatives, such as owning our own servers like the Freedom Box? This may be the case for a small number of people that are willing to access more information upon encountering such information. However, merely letting people know that Facebook is a monopoly-like entity may not be enough. This is why I believe the government should mandate each person to at least read and sign a safety protocol at the time of purchase. | | | | |
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What is the basis for the claim of "complete power to determine"? If the correct word in this context was "influence," how is the role of these social actors to be compared with that of , say, the Catholic Church or the British East India Company?
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> | Once a legislative body agrees that devices with internet connectivity must be sold along with a safety protocol, it has to decide what needs to be included in it. This point is hard for me to grapple with, as I will likely miss several technical points that would make such a warning effective. I do believe, however, what we learned in this class is quite sensible and can be communicated to consumers in plain language. It will be then up to the consumer, the individual, to decide what to do with the knowledge that they acquire. For one, I believe such a safety protocol should describe, as plainly as possible, how the internet works. When I took this class with you, I realized that I had absolutely no idea how these systems work. I believe a plain, simple safety protocol can have diagrams explaining the basic structure of the internet. And the it should also describe how platforms such as Facebook operate on the internet, and what the alternatives are for the individual. The government can also provide a free service in helping individuals determine their options. | | | | |
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< | In this regard, the power concentration of today is a lot scarier than the monopoly Standard Oil had in the early 20th Century.
Indicating that this is not probably the correct comparison.
A few companies in the world have a dominion over our minds. And this is simply unacceptable. It is not possible to be free in the age of the internet where the central mechanism of how we are connected to one another is owned and manipulated by a few entities.
Why does it matter whether the entities are companies or governments?
The mission is clear: we need to break these monopolies and intervene in this market failure.
What market failure?
But how can we achieve this mountain of a task? The challenge lies in the fact that we live in broken societies; we are controlled by crooked politicians who worship money and power.
In this case. what societies are not "broken"?
The monopolies of our current age have immense financial resources, and they have certainly enough of it to influence our political agendas. Assuming that “We the People” can define our destiny as a society, we need to take immediate action in how we democratize this next medium of human existence.
If "We the people" can do this, then we already have democracy, don't we? If we don't have democracy, what is the point of announcing that we must democratically solve the problem of democracy's absence? If this is not mere populist rhetoric, isn't the question precisely how to do whatever must be done.
Solution
We cannot simply allow hundreds of years of inequalities to persist in this new age. We have to accept knowledge as a basic human right and provide all tools and basic knowledge necessary to allow people to make the best use of what the web offers to them. This does not mean that we should destroy all differences in wealth and power overnight; however, it means that the next generation of humans must be allowed to have equal opportunities in their access to knowledge and intellectual growth.
Even though it goes against the long-established patent rights, it is in the government’s, and the people’s, best interest to nationalize certain patents and allow free access to the use of them.
What has patent law to do with anything you have so far discussed?
Most groundbreaking scientific patents are a result of billions of dollars of government investment, meaning they were directly funded by the taxpayers.
In which fields is this true, and in which not? Is this about pharmaceuticals, about IT, about some other areas of effort? Is a patent more valid in a country in which there has been no government investment in research than in one which lavishly funds research?
We cannot allow risks to be collectivized while allowing profits to be privatized.
Is that the bargain involved in patent law? Or is it an entitlement to economic rent for a fixed period in return for public disclosure of invention?
It is in the right of the people to seize control of what belongs to them and allow the new generation to truly write their own destinies.
For those who don't believe in revolutionary expropriation, does your essay have nothing to offer?
A seizure and emancipation of patents would allow cheap reproduction of hardware and software around the world.
Hardware around the world is exceedingly cheap: what is the sign that patent rights are significantly increasing the cost of hardware? I have explained why the free software idea effectively achieved the universalization of software knowledge without expropriation of rights, and affected both copyright and patent law in the necessary directions already. Please give an example of an area in which patent law substantially interferes with the spread and development of software knowledge.
This would necessarily mean that hundreds of millions of people may get their hands-on machines that would fully allow them to truly connect with the web. However, such a scenario on its own does not guarantee that people would be truly freed. The bright and able minds of the world have to come together to write user-friendly online manuals and perhaps digital classes to teach ordinary people of all ages how to best utilize the machines they have. Governments are for the most part incredibly inapt in equipping their people with the necessary knowledge to bring about social mobility. As such, even though perhaps we can trust our power as the people to free some patents, we cannot rely solely on the government to educate people in how to use computers for attaining knowledge. I believe this will necessarily be a collective effort of dedicated idealists around the world.
Another issue that needs to be resolved in democratizing the internet is the monopolies in existence. Will they simply wither away if people know that they can use safe alternatives? I do not believe that it will be the case; human beings are strange creatures after all, and the “sexy” services and hardware provided by the 21st Century monopolies are highly attractive to them. They do not even realize that they are being kept in the dark; their minds are controlled by people unknown to us, and they keep living in an exquisite Truman Show. As such, do we proceed with breaking Facebook and Google into smaller pieces? And even if we can, how are we to deal with the Chinese internet giants? Does the humanity need to live in completely segregated online worlds? Or can we unilaterally breakdown the CCP’s monopoly over the Chinese internet? The problems are relatively easy to identify, but the solutions seem to be a lot more complicated.
Improving the essay means first deciding whether it is about the subject of the initial and concluding paragraphs, or about the issue of patent law, which either distorts the middle part of the essay or fulfills the actual intention. Down either path, the next step is the substitution of specifics for rhetorical generalities. There are no links to sources, no verifiable facts, no actual legal materials here of any kind. Unless we accept that a general exproprietory revolution eliminating property rights is plausible and imminent, we need something in the next draft that replaces that exhortation with actual policy analysis of attainable measures. That leads to a conclusion which provides more than a collection of rhetorical questions and an assertion that democracy is hard to attain.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. | | | \ No newline at end of file | |
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> | I realize that this may not be a revolutionary step. After all, I am not suggesting a highly sophisticated system that can liberate people’s minds and allow for a decentralized web that would allow individuals to explore ideas and express themselves without being intimately monitored by monopoly-like companies and consequently the government intelligence services by extension. However, I also fully realize that suggesting extensive government control may also have its downsides. I believe that the suggestion I am making may be a mild but effective first step. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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NuriCemAlbayrakFirstEssay 2 - 28 Nov 2021 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Democratizing the Internet | | | | |
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What does "effectively prohibit" mean? I don't understand what prohibition is in force of how it is effective. That appears to be the core idea of the essay, so it would be good to get it clear for the reader from the beginning.
| | | Data Colonialism
Traditional colonialism may be for the most part dead, but the few privileged classes in the West still has an immensely tight grip on the rest of humanity. Christopher Wylie’s “Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America” clearly illustrated how data collected by Facebook in exchange for free access to its platform allowed private companies to carry massive psychological campaigns on entire societies. They first use smaller datasets to test their influence on smaller societies located in one of the former colonies, where their actions can go completely unchecked. And Wylie shows that the immense data that Facebook harvests is then used in the Western societies that allow these companies to safely exist in the first place. | |
<
< | This is not the first time in recent history that a source of power is concentrated in the hands of the few. However, this is certainly the first time in history that a few companies have complete power as to determine how we think and act. In this regard, the power concentration of today is a lot scarier than the monopoly Standard Oil had in the early 20th Century. A few companies in the world have a dominion over our minds. And this is simply unacceptable. It is not possible to be free in the age of the internet where the central mechanism of how we are connected to one another is owned and manipulated by a few entities.
The mission is clear: we need to break these monopolies and intervene in this market failure. But how can we achieve this mountain of a task? The challenge lies in the fact that we live in broken societies; we are controlled by crooked politicians who worship money and power. The monopolies of our current age have immense financial resources, and they have certainly enough of it to influence our political agendas. Assuming that “We the People” can define our destiny as a society, we need to take immediate action in how we democratize this next medium of human existence. | >
> | This is not the first time in recent history that a source of power is concentrated in the hands of the few. However, this is certainly the first time in history that a few companies have complete power as to determine how we think and act.
What is the basis for the claim of "complete power to determine"? If the correct word in this context was "influence," how is the role of these social actors to be compared with that of , say, the Catholic Church or the British East India Company?
In this regard, the power concentration of today is a lot scarier than the monopoly Standard Oil had in the early 20th Century.
Indicating that this is not probably the correct comparison.
A few companies in the world have a dominion over our minds. And this is simply unacceptable. It is not possible to be free in the age of the internet where the central mechanism of how we are connected to one another is owned and manipulated by a few entities.
Why does it matter whether the entities are companies or governments?
The mission is clear: we need to break these monopolies and intervene in this market failure.
What market failure?
But how can we achieve this mountain of a task? The challenge lies in the fact that we live in broken societies; we are controlled by crooked politicians who worship money and power.
In this case. what societies are not "broken"?
The monopolies of our current age have immense financial resources, and they have certainly enough of it to influence our political agendas. Assuming that “We the People” can define our destiny as a society, we need to take immediate action in how we democratize this next medium of human existence. | | |
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>
> |
If "We the people" can do this, then we already have democracy, don't we? If we don't have democracy, what is the point of announcing that we must democratically solve the problem of democracy's absence? If this is not mere populist rhetoric, isn't the question precisely how to do whatever must be done.
| | | Solution
We cannot simply allow hundreds of years of inequalities to persist in this new age. We have to accept knowledge as a basic human right and provide all tools and basic knowledge necessary to allow people to make the best use of what the web offers to them. This does not mean that we should destroy all differences in wealth and power overnight; however, it means that the next generation of humans must be allowed to have equal opportunities in their access to knowledge and intellectual growth. | |
<
< | Even though it goes against the long-established patent rights, it is in the government’s, and the people’s, best interest to nationalize certain patents and allow free access to the use of them. Most groundbreaking scientific patents are a result of billions of dollars of government investment, meaning they were directly funded by the taxpayers. We cannot allow risks to be collectivized while allowing profits to be privatized. It is in the right of the people to seize control of what belongs to them and allow the new generation to truly write their own destinies.
A seizure and emancipation of patents would allow cheap reproduction of hardware and software around the world. This would necessarily mean that hundreds of millions of people may get their hands-on machines that would fully allow them to truly connect with the web. However, such a scenario on its own does not guarantee that people would be truly freed. The bright and able minds of the world have to come together to write user-friendly online manuals and perhaps digital classes to teach ordinary people of all ages how to best utilize the machines they have. Governments are for the most part incredibly inapt in equipping their people with the necessary knowledge to bring about social mobility. As such, even though perhaps we can trust our power as the people to free some patents, we cannot rely solely on the government to educate people in how to use computers for attaining knowledge. I believe this will necessarily be a collective effort of dedicated idealists around the world. | >
> | Even though it goes against the long-established patent rights, it is in the government’s, and the people’s, best interest to nationalize certain patents and allow free access to the use of them.
What has patent law to do with anything you have so far discussed?
Most groundbreaking scientific patents are a result of billions of dollars of government investment, meaning they were directly funded by the taxpayers.
In which fields is this true, and in which not? Is this about pharmaceuticals, about IT, about some other areas of effort? Is a patent more valid in a country in which there has been no government investment in research than in one which lavishly funds research?
We cannot allow risks to be collectivized while allowing profits to be privatized.
Is that the bargain involved in patent law? Or is it an entitlement to economic rent for a fixed period in return for public disclosure of invention?
It is in the right of the people to seize control of what belongs to them and allow the new generation to truly write their own destinies.
For those who don't believe in revolutionary expropriation, does your essay have nothing to offer?
A seizure and emancipation of patents would allow cheap reproduction of hardware and software around the world.
Hardware around the world is exceedingly cheap: what is the sign that patent rights are significantly increasing the cost of hardware? I have explained why the free software idea effectively achieved the universalization of software knowledge without expropriation of rights, and affected both copyright and patent law in the necessary directions already. Please give an example of an area in which patent law substantially interferes with the spread and development of software knowledge.
This would necessarily mean that hundreds of millions of people may get their hands-on machines that would fully allow them to truly connect with the web. However, such a scenario on its own does not guarantee that people would be truly freed. The bright and able minds of the world have to come together to write user-friendly online manuals and perhaps digital classes to teach ordinary people of all ages how to best utilize the machines they have. Governments are for the most part incredibly inapt in equipping their people with the necessary knowledge to bring about social mobility. As such, even though perhaps we can trust our power as the people to free some patents, we cannot rely solely on the government to educate people in how to use computers for attaining knowledge. I believe this will necessarily be a collective effort of dedicated idealists around the world. | | | Another issue that needs to be resolved in democratizing the internet is the monopolies in existence. Will they simply wither away if people know that they can use safe alternatives? I do not believe that it will be the case; human beings are strange creatures after all, and the “sexy” services and hardware provided by the 21st Century monopolies are highly attractive to them. They do not even realize that they are being kept in the dark; their minds are controlled by people unknown to us, and they keep living in an exquisite Truman Show. As such, do we proceed with breaking Facebook and Google into smaller pieces? And even if we can, how are we to deal with the Chinese internet giants? Does the humanity need to live in completely segregated online worlds? Or can we unilaterally breakdown the CCP’s monopoly over the Chinese internet? The problems are relatively easy to identify, but the solutions seem to be a lot more complicated.
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>
> |
Improving the essay means first deciding whether it is about the subject of the initial and concluding paragraphs, or about the issue of patent law, which either distorts the middle part of the essay or fulfills the actual intention. Down either path, the next step is the substitution of specifics for rhetorical generalities. There are no links to sources, no verifiable facts, no actual legal materials here of any kind. Unless we accept that a general exproprietory revolution eliminating property rights is plausible and imminent, we need something in the next draft that replaces that exhortation with actual policy analysis of attainable measures. That leads to a conclusion which provides more than a collection of rhetorical questions and an assertion that democracy is hard to attain.
| | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines: |
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NuriCemAlbayrakFirstEssay 1 - 25 Oct 2021 - Main.NuriCemAlbayrak
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Democratizing the Internet
-- By NuriCemAlbayrak - 25 Oct 2021
Introduction
As we learn to adapt to the internet society that captures almost all parts of our existence, the fair distribution of power and control in this new age remains strikingly imbalanced. Not only a handful of mega corporations in the West monopolize this new continuum of our existence, but they also effectively prohibit billions of people from accessing this unprecedent source of knowledge and intellect. Trillions of dollars concentrated in a few companies are spent to solidify the perception that the “internet” itself is Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a few others. People are constantly kept in the dark by these companies and effectively prohibited from learning about the alternatives. Their data is continuously harvested for reasons unknown. As such, the most vital question that needs to be resolved as we are further connected to each other by the minute is how we are to democratize the internet.
Data Colonialism
Traditional colonialism may be for the most part dead, but the few privileged classes in the West still has an immensely tight grip on the rest of humanity. Christopher Wylie’s “Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America” clearly illustrated how data collected by Facebook in exchange for free access to its platform allowed private companies to carry massive psychological campaigns on entire societies. They first use smaller datasets to test their influence on smaller societies located in one of the former colonies, where their actions can go completely unchecked. And Wylie shows that the immense data that Facebook harvests is then used in the Western societies that allow these companies to safely exist in the first place.
This is not the first time in recent history that a source of power is concentrated in the hands of the few. However, this is certainly the first time in history that a few companies have complete power as to determine how we think and act. In this regard, the power concentration of today is a lot scarier than the monopoly Standard Oil had in the early 20th Century. A few companies in the world have a dominion over our minds. And this is simply unacceptable. It is not possible to be free in the age of the internet where the central mechanism of how we are connected to one another is owned and manipulated by a few entities.
The mission is clear: we need to break these monopolies and intervene in this market failure. But how can we achieve this mountain of a task? The challenge lies in the fact that we live in broken societies; we are controlled by crooked politicians who worship money and power. The monopolies of our current age have immense financial resources, and they have certainly enough of it to influence our political agendas. Assuming that “We the People” can define our destiny as a society, we need to take immediate action in how we democratize this next medium of human existence.
Solution
We cannot simply allow hundreds of years of inequalities to persist in this new age. We have to accept knowledge as a basic human right and provide all tools and basic knowledge necessary to allow people to make the best use of what the web offers to them. This does not mean that we should destroy all differences in wealth and power overnight; however, it means that the next generation of humans must be allowed to have equal opportunities in their access to knowledge and intellectual growth.
Even though it goes against the long-established patent rights, it is in the government’s, and the people’s, best interest to nationalize certain patents and allow free access to the use of them. Most groundbreaking scientific patents are a result of billions of dollars of government investment, meaning they were directly funded by the taxpayers. We cannot allow risks to be collectivized while allowing profits to be privatized. It is in the right of the people to seize control of what belongs to them and allow the new generation to truly write their own destinies.
A seizure and emancipation of patents would allow cheap reproduction of hardware and software around the world. This would necessarily mean that hundreds of millions of people may get their hands-on machines that would fully allow them to truly connect with the web. However, such a scenario on its own does not guarantee that people would be truly freed. The bright and able minds of the world have to come together to write user-friendly online manuals and perhaps digital classes to teach ordinary people of all ages how to best utilize the machines they have. Governments are for the most part incredibly inapt in equipping their people with the necessary knowledge to bring about social mobility. As such, even though perhaps we can trust our power as the people to free some patents, we cannot rely solely on the government to educate people in how to use computers for attaining knowledge. I believe this will necessarily be a collective effort of dedicated idealists around the world.
Another issue that needs to be resolved in democratizing the internet is the monopolies in existence. Will they simply wither away if people know that they can use safe alternatives? I do not believe that it will be the case; human beings are strange creatures after all, and the “sexy” services and hardware provided by the 21st Century monopolies are highly attractive to them. They do not even realize that they are being kept in the dark; their minds are controlled by people unknown to us, and they keep living in an exquisite Truman Show. As such, do we proceed with breaking Facebook and Google into smaller pieces? And even if we can, how are we to deal with the Chinese internet giants? Does the humanity need to live in completely segregated online worlds? Or can we unilaterally breakdown the CCP’s monopoly over the Chinese internet? The problems are relatively easy to identify, but the solutions seem to be a lot more complicated.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
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