Internet 'Grey Areas'Written by Daniel Punch
The Internet has opened up whole new avenues of freedom for people: freedom of information, thoughts and ability to achieve anonymity while still being active in a community. This freedom has been latched onto by a large proportion of Internet user base and has fuelled a desire for even more liberties. This in turn has given rise to 'Internet Grey Areas', those little things that 'everyone' does but which aren't quite legally correct. A few examples are Abandonware, MP3 downloads, warez and their kind.Abandonware is label applied to games that have been 'abandoned' by their original developers. The standard rule has become that if games are more than four years old and no longer freely available for purchase, or if developer has closed and hence game is no longer supported, then it can be called Abandonware and distributed freely. Some developers willingly release their older software titles into public domain making them legally Abandonware but a large number of titles labelled as such are not technically free for public access. The licences are still owned by someone and distribution of their software titles could be harming their licence validity. Abandonware justifies itself by preserving gaming history in a 'living' way. It allows people to play games they used to love long after they're available to purchase. In many cases only hope for finding older games is to trawl second hand shops and online stores such as Ebay in slim hopes of coming across a particular title. Sometimes when you finally get hold of old software it simply won't run on your PC leaving you with a pretty box but no closer to actually playing game. Several times I've purchased an old game and then downloaded a copy off Internet so that I can actually play it due to fact that old disks are either damaged or wrong type (I don't have a 5 1/4" floppy drive on my PC any more...). MP3 downloads have a less honourable ideology. Simply put, people want free music so they download it. It is said that activities harm no one and that downloading process doesn't adversely affect artists' profits. Who can say for sure? At time of writing this article RIAA's site is down and I'm not able to find any accurate figures that estimate amount of revenue lost due to music piracy. I believe that it was estimated at around $5 billion in 1997 and that's sure to have increased with advent of broadband. However, these figures are said to be highly inaccurate. A standard argument against them is "I wasn't planning on buying CD anyway so they haven't lost any money out of me downloading it", an argument that is ridiculous at best. The Movie downloading scene is almost identical. I'm not going to swing one way or another here, but I will say that I can think of several films that didn't receive box office takings from a number of associates of mine after they had gotten to experience film before its release date. The quality of films almost justifies stealing, but that's a whole different issue!
| | Avoid Internet Theft, Fraud and PhishingWritten by Daniel Punch
Since its birth, Internet has grown and expanded to unprecedented, unmanageable proportions. Information, software, news, and much more flow freely through its twisted pathways. Online services such as Internet banking save time and money. However, from depths of its vast expanse have come dregs of society intent on preying on new, naïve, and less informed.Phishing is one of main scams in present moment. People set up phoney websites and email addresses. Then they spam Email inboxes with official-looking messages explaining that your account with Company X has encountered a problem and that they need you to login and confirm some details. The email addresses are masked to appear official and links provided in email all seem to check out. If you click on link provided then you will usually be taken to a site that looks for all intents and purposes to be official. When you click 'submit' your details will be sent to a criminal somewhere who will do as they please with your information, such as withdrawing money from a bank account or purchasing things in your name. The scam has been labelled 'Phishing' because criminals engaging in activity behave similarly to a fisherman throwing bait out in hope that they'll receive just one bite from millions of people that receive email. So how do you avoid these online scams? First and foremost, it is important to realise that no legitimate organisation should be sending you a request to fill out your personal details because of some server error or for any other reason. Your bank will never send you an email with content along lines of "We've lost your bank account number and password... please supply them again for our records". You should also know that no bank is going to require your social security number, bank account number, and PIN number just to log in to your account or retrieve your password. Other sites such as Ebay, PayPal, and like will not email you asking for these details either. If you're a little unsure as to whether or not an email is official, scroll down a bit until you find link that they are requesting you to click and simply hold your mouse pointer over link text without clicking. Now take a look at bottom left-hand corner of your browser window. The link text is often address that phisher wants you to think you will be heading to but real address will be revealed in bottom of browser. This address will most likely not have anything whatsoever to do with company that email is attempting to imitate. It could be a dodgy web site or even just a page on someone's personal computer. If address doesn't appear in bottom left-hand corner then you can right-click on link, select 'properties' from pop-up menu and then read address listed in information box.
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