Week 7 / The Author vs the Information Society

Topic 13 & 14
Read Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property" of the Brian Martin's book. Write a blog review (especially, comment on his strategies for change).

"Intellectual property is an attempt to create an artificial scarcity in order to give rewards to a few at the expense of the many. Intellectual property aggravates inequality. It fosters competitiveness over information and ideas, whereas cooperation makes much more sense."

I don´t agree with his view on piracy. He is true when he says, that trying to hide it, just underline the acceptation of the legitimacy of the system. But he completely ignore the manifest acting, the public support of the piracy, which straightly subvert this status quo. For example pirate parties play this role, even the names of them are declaring this point of view. It is necessary "change the polarity" of this conduct. Robin Hood is positive character. And it´s just one way how to change the public opinion on piracy and resort value system. Coming out, demonstrative acting and settle this topic in public opinion arenas.

„...illegal copying is not a very good strategy against intellectual property, any more than stealing goods is a way to challenge ownership of physical property. Theft of any sort implicitly accepts the existing system of ownership. By trying to hide the copying and avoiding penalties, the copiers appear to accept the legitimacy of the system."

There is really good presentation "It is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright" on this topic by Lawrence Lessing, author of well known book "Free culture".

Week 6 / Social Engineering in Social Networks

Topice 12
Blog about a good case of social engineering.

I don´t have so many experience with social engineering. But sometimes i receive email with such attempts: "your email address won... click here!" Attempts like this are quite funny, because most of them comes from abroad. They are using google translator and because of it, it´s quite clear. It´s hard to describe the grammar mistakes caused by automatic translation, but most of them are really funny (problems with cases, gender, declination... and other difficulties in Czech language).

may be even more funny are attempts which does not use the translator, like this one:

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So really dangerous could be in Czech republic just attempts originated in Czech republic like fictive gathering... or attempts translated by real interpreter.


Formulate some measures which can reduce the effectiveness of social engineering attempts

One big security hole is warez programs. It is possible to solve it by wide spreading the open source, shareware, freeware...programs. May be even bigger problem and security hole then warez are Windows. So the best way how to reduce danger of malware and spyware are wide spreading Open source OS, ...which are defend by open source community.

And how to reduce social engineering focused on naive people? Just strengthen critical thinking, there is no other way.

Week 6 / From Hacktivism to Cyberwar

Topic 11

Find and blog about an illustrative case of hacktivism.
How would you draw the line between civil disobedience over Internet and hacktivism?

The type of hacktivism which could be seen as a virtual strike against something... really similar to civil disobedience out of keyboard, so it is the line. For example in Czech constitution, there is the right to strike... i find this two phenomenons very similar, therefore i think there should be also right to strike virtually, we can call it right for cyberstrike.

I was really glad this spring to find the pure example of cyberactivism/strike/war. Some students of Tel Aviv university have developed a program that makes it easy for just about anyone to actively support some policy, to join the cyber struggle against cyber symbols (websites) of enemy. It seems to men very similar to make a demonstrations in front of embassies, or similar to any boycott. boycott is also coordinated stop using, buying, or dealing with someone, and the coordinated sending request to some server is not so different. I find problematic/iligal using the computers against will of their owners. But when people download and install the software for DDoS attack alone, and want to participate - it´s clear. More about in wired..

Second example, at this time is in Czech republic next political crisis. So it could be two weeks back, when someone make a webpage, where you can choose the text which you want to send to politicians via mail, you choose also throw some form the politics which you want to contact. fill your email and name and this system send the fill email to your email account with the chosen addresses and text. It makes the protest and process of civil complaint really simple and time free.

There was something similar with sms. In Czech republic have citizens right to make suggestions to some types of law or different strategic plans of development. And the authority have the function, they have to negotiate each suggestion. There was some filthy project of building some new industry and the NGo interesting to it spread the information about the right of each citizen make own suggestion against it. What i find most important in this case for topic of this lesson is the special mechanism of participative sms, which was used by this NGO to keep the process of making suggestions as simple as posible. More about.

Ministry for Regional Development received (because of this application) around 9000 comments by public (citizens, their associations and communities) on the policies, which became a record amount of comments per concept.

I think, that these three examples have common principle. Active citizens/NGo create system, which simplified the process of civil disobedience and strengthen civil society, or pass the complicate process of bureaucratic obstructions of suggestions by automatizing of this process. Therefore it increase the participation of public so it reinforce the democracy. It is also possible call it e-democracy. "E-democracy suggests greater and more active citizen participation enabled by the Internet, mobile communications, and other technologies in today’s representative democracy as well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement in addressing public challenges"

Week 5 / The Hacker Ethic in a Networked World

Topic 9
Browse the Jargon File. Write a small blog entry about a term/definition which was the most intriguing for you.

I am really glad of finding this explanatory dictionary, it cover´s field which is ignored by standard dictionaries. So form me was quite interesting to read and clarify my understanding of some basic terms like the malware/viruses/Trojan horses... or the shareware/freeware/open source... Unix/Linux... etc. i didn´t know the distinctions for example between these terms. So i find it really useful for non geeks.

Write a short blogged analysis about the hacker ethic found in today's world (is it there or not, how much of it etc).

In the wiki for this topic was highlighted the examples of hacker project like Wikipedia, open source, Linux,... so I am pretty sure, that in today´s world there is hacker ethic quite widespread. I think, that there is even good-sized rise of this ethic, rise of this "life approach". There is visible and measurable rise of Ubuntu users (and also other Linux OS), the content of Wikipedia (an also the wiki authors). And last few months, there is also fast growing pirate movement, which make pressure for safe Internet neutrality and which is strong-mindedness to defend our Free culture.



relly good presentation about cc by Lawrence Lessig.

Aktualization 26.11:

Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages

So it sems, that there is some type of degress in participation on wikiproject.

Week 4 / Ubiquitous Computing

Topic 8

"This week's two topics are, in a way, two aspects of the same phenomenon."(1)

It´s another aspect of penetration of IT into the society. According the wiki: "Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) integrates computation into the environment,..." So ubicomp is a process of shift from view on IT as a type of second (unreal) life to the actual distinction real world to "out of keyboard"/"on the keyboard".

if your country had outlined similar scenarios, what could they have been?


There are National strategic plans of development Czech republic, for example special plat for country side. but I don´t find Conception of development of Internet. There is also academic prognosis, but most of them is about social cohesion, economical pro/degrees, safety, government... so nothing special focused on e-society.

For example according the NSP of development countryside for 2007-13, there was just 1,5% of countryside population with access to Internet throw DSL (to the whole population). And the plan is to achieve 30% penetration till the end of 2013. (source-CZ)

How important do you deem the social cohesiveness (or caring) in reaching ubicomp?

In the case, that i understand the concept of ubicomp correctly, the digital divide is not opposition of ubicomp. Therefore the social cohesiveness is not necessary in reaching ubicomp, even its even threaten by ubicomp. It should be possible to have pretty ubicomp society with big part of country covered by wifi broadband, but with huge digital divide between majoritarian population and excluded minority, which would´not have enough money even for own desktop computers (it is possible to solve by available public terminals) or even worse woud´not be able to fully make use of Internet (wold be able just write emails, browse porn sites,...etc.). In this case ubicomp will deepen the existing digital divide. It will give many new opportunities to ubicomp population and magnify the distinctions...between the lucky and unlucky people.

But there is also another more optimistic consequence of ubicomp. The cellphones throw which is possible to connect to the Internet will be cheaper then desktop, and the Internet connection via mobile/satellite system will be more accessible then weired distribution. I read somewhere, that in Africa start this more optimistic process.