EOTO Project II-Repsonses

Response 1: Minjeong's EOTO on Sharing or Stealing?: Copyright, Digital Technology, and the Internet.

Minjeong started with pointing out that 'Digital technology' offers opporuntities, great opportunities. One of the biggest opportunities is the elimination of 'distribution costs'. When one 'cost' is reduced in one place usually there is a corresponding benefit to someone(s) and lost of something to some other someone(s). Even the legal folks recognize that 'works' in the digital world are different.(Legal Protection of Digital Information)

Minjeong utilizes examples that many of us understand and are familiar. Also, Minjeong points out one group of the opportunist, file sharing companies, specifically "Napster". She then highlights the group that will pay both in economic terms, but also in control of product terms, the 'copyright holder(s)', specifically music copyright holders and the companies that distribute their product.

As a musician and a consumer I find myself in a bit of a value and ethical conflict whenever I read about this subject. If you can get something free, should you? Especially if over a period of time it will diminish the quality of the product. Minjeong's piece points that it's not an easy answer ethically, morally, economically, or legally.

Response 2: Sandy's Space Cadet's views on **SPAM**.

Thank you Sandy for sharing and codifying SPAM . So many times I hear peolple, especially journalists and many educators, referring to SPAM basically as any unwanted email. Your specific description of Unsolicited Commercial Email(UCE) and Unsolicited Bulk Email(UBE) was much more direct and clear.

I found the article "The new Face of Spam" very enlightening, as Trudeau cites SPAM as a bigger threat to internet usage than viruses, and even hackers. Your five fears resonated with me. I thought i was the only one that was afraid to hit the 'remove' and reply. The cost to manage SPAM is high, it's like calling for pest control in your house, either you kill the bugs one at a time(hit the delete key), or call the exterminator on a regular basis and get rid of a bunch of them at once.

The resources provided by Sandy were very enlightening and insightful. It was like peeling layers back on an onion.

Response 3: Bill's EOTO on Localism and Wireless Internet: Is there a connection?

Bill is so right about mixing things and interesting results. Remember AZT was actually developed as a cancer drug(it's the only analogy I could think of right now... you get the point). The two issues posed by Bill, targeted audiences and local ownership control, to me actually inspire more questions that answers. These two issues also create a complicated issue.

The definition of 'Local' even comes under question, as the wireless distribution becomes more pervasive. Bill provides resources to inform us of the activity happening in the policy arenas, and the economic impact of these two issues. I think the issue is in it's infancy and Bill has framed the key compnents of the issues well.