After looking through the material for this week, I have learned much more about the laws effects on blogging and the media than I knew before. It’s so interesting to me that with this new online platform, our laws have needed to update in order to be up to date with the times. The internet and online platforms have really taken over our day to day lives so it is no surprise that laws and policies have started to be put in place to govern this new landscape.
One aspect of online platforms that I feel is most important to be protected by laws is privacy. It is so important the online consumers have their personal information protected. In this week’s “The Four Kinds of Privacy” article, it breaks down the types of privacy that have to be protected. With personal, defensive, human rights, and contextual privacy, there is a lot to be discussed. Privacy in all four of these categories is something that need to be guarded to ensure all people can use the internet without fear that their information or content they create is taken away.
Another really interesting article this week on law was “Bloggers’ Rights“. As I sit here and type on a blog, it was interesting to see the rights that are in place to protect bloggers. One thing that really stood out to me was when the article discussed how blogger’s have the right to free speech. I guess in my mind I had just assumed that bloggers could say or do what they wanted on their own websites or posts, but people have tried to challenge that if it is something they don’t agree with. Another point that this article made was that bloggers could stay anonymous. I think this is probably the most important right because if your blog revolves around controversial topics, then I think it should be at the blogger’s discretion to put their name on their posts and out there for everyone to see.
The final point I want to make on the topics this week is jailbreaking and encryption of devices. I found the article “Law Enforcement has Declared War on Encryption It Can’t Break” really eye opening. Call me naive, but I never thought how hard encryption could be for law enforcement when trying to break into devices for crimes. After reading through this article, I feel like more needs to be done from manufacturers to try to combat this problem. Whether its software that can’t be jailbroken or encrypted or some sort of device that can break these encryptions, I think it is so important to handle this situation so that law enforcement can do their jobs.
Because the internet is so vast and constantly changing, I realize how hard it can be to keep laws accurate and up to date. I believe though that laws are so crucial to ensuring that the media is a place that everyone can use and use without fear of what may happen to the data you create. When people start to get too worried about their privacy and the online footprints they leave, it takes away from how helpful and great that the internet can be.
