Last night when I was reading the article by Goldsmith and Wu I found one topic that stood out to me, the CDA. As we discussed today in class CDA stands for the "Communications Decency Act," this act came about in 1996 and it basically went after inappropriate or indecent sexual internet and videos online. The CDA concentrated on images and videos that contained minors under the age of 18. I decided to do more research on the CDA since I found it to be interesting and figured there would be a lot of information on it. I was right...there were tons of websites on the CDA and blogs with people expressing their opinions on it. However, I was able to find one website that went into different cases that the CDA enforced this rule on. This cyber-rights website goes into detail about certain cases in the US where judges used/did not use the CDA. I was shocked to read about some of these cases and found most of them to be very disturbing. One case talks about the US postal authorities shutting down a porn network that had children as young as 7 years old work for them and being active participants in videos. I honestly can not imagine what parent would ever want their child to be involved in something like that...I am sure that it is a big money maker though. This website also discusses several teachers who were arrested for pretending to be child psychologist in online chat rooms. The case about the teachers reminded me of what we discussed today in class about the solidarity and accountability online. Whenever a person is online they need to be safe, it is so easy for people to make up websites and change their identity. I know even my own Grandmother was fooled by an online stock trade website, she ended up getting about $1000 stolen from her bank account. I realize some people (like my Grandmother) are naive to the way people can act and the fraud that can go on online. I think people just need to think twice before they make any type of online purchase or even chat with a stranger in a chat room.
Hello!
Tonight while studying for my midterm I realized that there is one topic I really wanted to discuss in my blogs but haven't had the chance to address, this topic is the public forum doctrine. When we first read about this in Sunstein's article I thought it was really interesting. The first thing that came to my mind was when my friends, they go to school at a small university in Connecticut, I took them into Chinatown for dinner and they were SHOCKED when they saw all the people walking around holding flyers and chanting religious bible verses. They said they had never seen anything like that before, they were confused about why they were allowed to stand outside the metro saying these things and I really didn't have an answer for them. However, after learning about the public forum doctrine I now realize why people are allowed to stand on the sidewalks of public places and share information with the people around them.
I think that free speech and the public forum doctrine are great inventions. I admit at times I get very frustrated with people on the streets trying to get me to take their packets of information or tell me about their organization. In the end I feel that it is important to listen to what others have to say. I am one of those people who only reads/hears what I want, if they are talking about something on the news that I am not interested in, I would probably turn it off. I think learning about personalization has helped me to realize how much I limit myself. I need to become more open to ideas and news, even if I do not find it interesting. I plan on studying abroad and I think that I need to stop limiting myself if I want to have a good experience abroad. Sunstein brings up many good points in his article about why we should stop personalizing our lives. The one that stuck out to me the most was that it will stop us from being connected to other people because if we feel we have nothing in common with them, we probably will not try to mingle with them. As a Media Studies major, I plan on getting into the Public Relations world and I think I need to become more open to ideas and stay exposed to a wide range of topics so that I am able to communicate with my co-workers and clients.
-Liz
