The way law and media intertwine with each other and affect one another can be not only a confusing concept to grasp, but also an incredibly overwhelming one. Being a very “surface level” internet user myself, the role that the law plays in media is something that I have never given much thought to aside from clicking the “I Agree” box on whatever terms and conditions I need to accept.
I know I am agreeing to something, but is it really going to affect my daily life? Is anything I am doing on the internet so interesting or different from what anyone else is doing that I need to worry about the laws? Why would law and media be at all relevant to my personal life?
While working through module 7’s content, I first and foremost found myself a bit overwhelmed by the amount of gray areas between the media and law. In particular, the article published by The Washington Post pertaining to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act really made my head spiral a bit. It seems to me that the law’s place in media is something that is being defined and redefined quite often, and something that users, creators, and owners alike are all a bit unsure about.
The idea that Terms of Use and Cease-and-Desist letters are practically the same when it comes to legalities, and that it can be considered a crime to visit a public site just when told not to really surprised me – And in my opinion, shed a light on just how new this whole territory is in terms of the law. My biggest concern about law and media is that no one really understands where the lines need to be drawn, and that online platforms in particular have gotten too big for there to still be so much confusion and gray area.
In addition to The Washington Post’s article, the Medium article pertaining to the four kind of privacy also really caught my attention. Beginning with their mention of the 24-hour news cycle, this really brought to my attention just how much content we are trying to police. With the information turnover being practically lightening fast and the potential to reach millions in a matter of seconds being at the fingertips of all, it seems like it is impossible to enforce the law in all aspects and channels of the media.
In addition to this, there is blatantly no such thing as private on the internet. The author pointed out the crucial fact that in the United States, freedom of speech takes priority before the right to privacy does. Therefore, it is so important that individuals take the responsibility upon themselves to protect their own privacy (the law really isn’t going to do it for us).
The concept and issue of privacy really concerns me because of how young many of our internet users are today. Today we have school aged children having access to the internet, and while there are technically legalities protecting them online we still cannot guarantee that posts or content created while underaged will not have the potential to impact a child’s adult life future.
Personally, I plan to modify my media usage by seriously cutting down on the amount of personal information I choose to share online. While I can make changes now and delete some things from the past, I can’t say it doesn’t concern me when I think about some of the things I shared online when I was younger and more naive. While the likelihood is that all of that is buried deep in the depths of the internet where no one would ever find it (or even care to go looking for it), plenty information is still somewhere out there and there is really very little I can do about that.
I think moving forward it’s incredibly important that we teach about just how public (and permanent) our media usage really is and the gray areas that surround how it can be used for us and against us. Media is an incredibly powerful tool that we are still working to get a firm grasp on, and I think our law is definitely in a purgatory of “catch up” when it comes to getting ahold of it.
