Greg's CS 10 Webpage
January 9, 2008
The articles in today's reading start where last class's QOS article left off by describing the issues with net neutrality. As Christopher Stern's article in the Washington Post outlines, the big name internet companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth are lobbying against net neutrality, claiming that since they physically own the hardware of the internet that they "need to find new ways to pay for the expense of building faster, better communication networks." Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, and other public interests argue in favor of net neutrality, fearing the consequences of corporate control. Alan Davidson, the washington policy counsel for Google, is quoted as saying "If carriers are able to control what consumers do on the Internet, that threatens teh model of Internet communications that has been widely successful." And as Lawrence Lessig and Robert McChesney put it in their article, without net neutrality, the internet would begin to "look a lot like cable tv," with a lot of big corporations controlling who has access to what and how much certain things cost.
January 10, 2008
Today's reading deals with the question of who governs the internet. Since the creation of the internet, American parties have been in control of the administration of the DNS servers, making decisions over domain names and such. Since the Clinton administration, an American governmental body listed under the department of commerce, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), has been put in place to do the job. The question that has been raised more recently then, is whether or not the United States should have control of the domain names of the internet. With the internet becoming increasingly globalized, some nations feel that one country, the United States in this case, should not have unilateral control over such an important aspect of the internet; however, this outcry is unwarranted. "Nearly everything ICANN does involves technical management of the domain name system, and there's no compelling reason for any government to interfere" said David McGuire, a spokesman for the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. Thus all this question is really, is a "power grab." As the article in the Boston Globe also points out, it is hard to see the U.N. being in control of the internet, as having an international bureaucracy handling internet issues would only hamper the internet's progress, as well as leave it open to influence from more restrictive nations, such as China.
January 16, 2008
Today’s readings primarily deal with the workings of BitTorrent and whether or not it is in fact legal. The first article, “Give and Ye Shall Receive,” outlines the technical workings of Bittorrent. In a nutshell, BitTorrent allows users to upload and download various fragments of whatever files they are torrenting with multiple other people. By spreading out the file sharing, rather than having a one to one peer to peer connection, BitTorrent is a much faster service than Limewire or Kazaa. The article then dives a bit into the technical legal details, which in short, reveal that BitTorrent does not have much protection from the law. The second article then discusses the legality of P2P at greater length. It first explains some of the terminology of P2P law before detailing certain run ins between P2P sites and the law. Napster, the first and most famous case perhaps, was in violation of the law and would have lost (had they not gone bankrupt) due to their awareness of copyright violations. The article then touches on Aimster and Grokster, two lesser known p2p services, which had less significant rulings; more specifically, the Grokster case outlined “[O]ne who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.” Then the article makes clear that the only ways P2P sites stand to survive are if they fall under “safe harbor,” or if its users are using the service completely legally.
January 17, 2008
Today's readings deal with the privacy and security issues involved with Facebook and online security. The first article details several campus security run-ins with facebook, discussing the various ways college campuses have reacted to facebook. At Penn State, in the aftermath of a bit of a riot following its football game against OSU, Facebook was used to identify several perpetrators, and led to near 50 students facing punishment. The article then goes on to discuss the case of Taylor Behl, who by using various websites such as livejournal and myspace put a lot of her life on the internet. Though the website ended up having no relevance to her death, it was certainly used in the investigation of her case. The article then goes on to discuss various other privacy issues with other universities, even the fact that the University of New Mexico blocks of facebook period. The other two articles continue on this discussion, touching on the news feed aspect of Facebook, describing the social privacy that is lost in that process; and another article discussing facebook monitoring, similar to the campus security aspects of the first article.
January 21, 2008
Today’s readings deal with the problem of Spyware on the internet and internet security. The first article, “It’s the Economy Stupid,” deals with the problem of misplaced incentives and the developments of internet security. For example, according to the article, hospital records are advanced in their billing systems, but have very poor privacy options for patients. In the UK, meanwhile, ATM security was mediocre because banks could get away with simply passing on fraud costs to their customers; there was no incentive for them to improve security. The author then goes on to mention that many security problems are simply left unmentioned in order to maintain the image of certain companies.
The next article then goes on to discuss people who do not see spyware as an issue, mainly by discussing Marketscore. Marketscore is an adware program packaged into a freeware program called IMesh. Marketscore, in essence, tracks almost everything you do on your computer and sends it through their servers; common people however, do not see this as a problem, and are willing to give up their security for free software.
The final article then describes the actual threat of spyware on business and government. Spyware, in its various ways of getting onto computers, can, according to the article,
• “Phone home” information about an individual, their computer, and their surfing habits to a third party to use to spam a computer user or push popup ads to their screen;
• Open a computer to a remote attacker using a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) to remotely control a computer;
• Capture every keystroke a user types—private or confidential email, passwords, bank account information— and report it back to a thief or blackmailer;
• Allow a computer to be hijacked and used to attack a third party’s computers in a denial-of-service attack that can cost enterprises millions and expose them to legal liability; and
• Probe a system for vulnerabilities that can enable a hacker to steal files or otherwise exploit a computer system.
These various abilities are no doubt a problem, but even beyond that, spyware can slow both computer performance and the speed of the internet. The author then, proposes three ways of countering these threats. Through education, legislation, and aggressive prosecution, the author believes that the presence of spyware will be much more visible to consumers, and easily removable when installed.
January 23, 2008
Today’s article deals with the future of the internet, mainly the important issues and various factors involved. The internet was created in much simpler settings, with the goal of simple networks in mind; however, as the internet has expanded, controversy inevitably arises. Internet service providers, users, private network providers, governments, content providers, and rights holders all eventually have ended up or will end up competing for their own various interests. These “tussles” as the authors call them, occur all over the place. One example, the net neutrality dispute, has consumers in favor of freedom on the internet going against the commercial internet service providers who wish to have more control. Another example of a potential “tussle” would be trust implementation; more specifically, the question of whether users should be informed of the people they are dealing with, i.e. who they are, and what their intentions are. The paper then goes on to touch on the idea of fear and greed in the economics of the internet, the incentives of profits and competition that will drive development on; and also discusses the end-to-end concept.