Table of Contents
First Amendment gives “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Communication Decency Act was an approach made by congress to regulate indecency and obscenity over the Internet and in order to find a correct analogy for this, so that so it can be applied to create new laws and modify the existing ones: Quite a few legislators and judges were involved in litigations and oral arguments related to the free speech issue over the broadcasting and informative agents like Television, Radio, Internet, Library, etc. A consistent opinion leveled at the Internet by CDA defenders was that explicit sexual data is much more unreservedly available to minors on the internet than in a book shop, television or library. This sounds sensible, however is totally untrue.
These comparisons were made because:
The Internet is no different than any communicating and broadcasting mediums like Television, Library, Radio, telephone or public places such as parks, etc. All the comparing objects are platforms for broadcasting one’s thoughts and, where people have the freedom to free speech and freedom to get information. All the communication and broadcasting services comes under the freedom of speech and freedom of press which are main aspects of the first amendment. This confines the government’s capability to compel the speech of the citizens.
In many libraries, their mission is to provide the widest array of information to the widest possible audience -both adults and minors. The content available (Books, Videos) is not restricted to the minors since it is not the librarians or library’s responsibility to monitor or judge one’s maturity that whether the card holder is mature enough to read the content which is meant for the adults, it is the responsibility of their parents to investigate that.
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But When it comes to television, it has limited free speech, as it is easily available to a vast audience of different age, sex and maturity level. Like for example, almost all the A rated shows and news channels are broadcasted after the 8.00 pm slot. Now this does not necessarily mean that a minor is not accessible to the A rated shows, but it’s up to the parents how they keep monitor over their kids.
However, when it comes to the First Amendment protection in public places, The Supreme Court has created a decorum to value the Time, Place and Manner (TPM) limitations. To enjoy the most extensive First Amendment protection, TPM limitations must be neutral with respect to content, narrowly drawn, serve a significant government interest, and leave open alternative channels of communication. Application of this regulation varies with the circumstances of each case, and typically aims towards the limitation of profanity and “fighting words”.
The similarity between library and internet is that, The Internet is a vast library known to humans, containing every type of information but the difference is, Internet can be easily accessed from any given place at any given time unlike the library.
The similarity between Internet and Television is, we can get different types of information through both and that too by just sitting at one place, but the difference is that when it comes to free speech, television has a very limited free speech compared to the Internet.
The similarity between the internet and public place is that both serve as the platform to connect through the masses and have the idiosyncrasies expressed, but the difference is that there is a limitation of TPM (time, place and manner) given by the Supreme Court for the public places, which applies to internet in a very limited way.
No doubt that technology has only made few situations much earlier and simpler, like example is this given scenario where the veterinarians implant chips into pets and far animals to tract them if they get lost, but is this the same when it comes to applying the same in children? Although this gives the parents the relief about their children’s whereabouts and if any difficult situations they are in, but is legal and ethical to take this big step in fostering of the children?
There are many legal and ethical implications involved in such a procedure
-Firstly, this involves legal implication as to the question of to what extent do parents “own” their children? As we must understand that, children have as much rights to their body as we have to ours, hence it calls for basic human rights of the children to consider their consent for such a procedure; besides the child will not have his/her privacy which is against the fourth amendment.
- Secondly, we know this procedure involves inserting a chip underneath the skin of a child, which may be detrimental and harmful to the child’s health.
- Lastly, how safe is the data that is collected from such a chip? there may be chances that the data collected is highly sensitive and may reach into wrong hands who could use it for blackmailing, child abuse, kidnapping or trafficking.
No, the benefits do not outweigh the risks, in fact it’s the opposite. Although the parents may get to track their children’s exact location to prevent them from getting lost out of their sight or being kidnapped, despite this, the parents need to be careful even with the chips implanted because kids can fall into the danger of being under surveillance other than the parents. micro-chipping could also cause devasting impact on child’s health as it involves mutilating their body.
Yes, parents do have some rights over their children but implanting the chips is not ethical. The parents don’t own their children completely especially as children may their own personal choices in such situations. This would violate the children’s fourth amendment right in case where children are grown up enough to give their consent, but parents think that implanting such a chip is a good choice. This simply leads to dictatorship of parents. Besides this, children must compromise with their privacy in this scenario and this again leads to breach of fourth amendment.
If there was to be any such bill to be passed or exist, I personally wouldn’t agree to it. Crimes have always existed in this world, how sure can we be that such inventions would reduce the existing crimes? Besides such inventions would only open more ways for technological and cyber-related crimes. There are not less crimes currently and I would not want it to have a new face which would only cause more severity of such cases. Moreover, though the ideology behind the chips and other technology be good but it’s not necessary that everyone is going to use it for a good purpose. Moreover, the court must prepare itself (if so ever such a technology is put to practice) with how to deal with cases where the data is misused and who is entitled to be blamed? It is going to be the parents who decided to incur such a procedure in the first place, or the accused? Hence this would be a topic of discussion from research and lawful point of view. This would only complicate the scenario more rather than alleviate it.
The free market view and the consumer protection view are the two routines generally utilized for the protection of individual data in today’s corporate world. In free market approach, the organization records all the protection terms and conditions to the client and let the client take a choice on it. In consumer protection view, the organization must consider greater part of the regulations and lawful protections laid by the government. Moreover, in free market view, Organizations collecting personal data about their clients should provide the information if they will not keep it confidential or how they will use it. This gives the consumers their own privilege to decide how safe can their personal data be treated. But in consumer protection view, the consumers cannot reject few agreements(terms and conditions) as per their wish such as the loan agreement terms which are guarded by legal rules and regulations.
Credit Bureau is an organization that gathers information through different channels and gives the consumer credit data to consumer reporting agencies.
In free market approach, if the individual or the client makes a mistake while giving his/her personal data to the organization which is serving him/her at the time of agreement then, the organization is not in charge of such discrepancies in data. whereas, in consumer protection approach, the organization is in charge of whatever error that have happened even if it’s combined impact of the mistake done by the people or by credit bureau. In other words, the consumer protection view protects the consumers against abuses and carelessness by businesses keeping in point the consumer’s lack of knowledge, judgement and interest.
An opt-in approach is a technique generally utilized by immediate marketing firms, which request authorization from different consumers to permit the advertiser to send information, stock or any administration messages. Only after the client signs up to agree for opt in technique, the advertiser continues sending the messages, information until the beneficiary picks an opt-out strategy. It is, in other words, ordinarily known as authorization-based marketing.
Whereas In opt-out is a technique adopted by commercial marketing firms where the clients are notified with information, about upgrades or advertisements based on their past records or marketing interests with an organization. This is done so without providing express authorization from the client/individual with that firm. But, the client is given an option of opting-out of extra correspondence anytime of time.
In the given example where I’m filling out a survey for online magazine that I have read, if there is option to tick or untick the boxes that says ‘Please send me newsletters and other information’ , then this gives the reader opt-in option where he/she can make his preferences, on the other hand, if the reader is sent newsletters without being asked for ,then that would be an opt-out scenario where the customers has to unsubscribe to such newsletters by himself in order to discontinue to receive such frequent updates/information.
Negative rights are inaction rights of an individual obtained without interference of any other individual or government, whereas positives rights of an individual require action of another person or group to exercise them.
Examples for negative rights are the civil and political such as right to live, freedom of speech, private property, freedom from violent crime or so. Positives rights means freedom to something, thus positive rights place positive duty on others to comply with them like example rights to free schooling, free healthcare or a minimum wage.
DMCA is United States copyright law that protects access to copyrighted works and prevent any actual infringement to copyright itself. The congress passed this Act on October 12, 1998 which made major changes to initial U.S. copyright law in order to address the digitally networked environment.
The two main provisions of this act are: The DMCA prohibits unauthorized access to a copyright work owned by a person, by “circumventing” (evading) a technological protection measure which protects access to his/her work. Another main provision of this Act was to limit an online service provider (“OSP”) from copyright infringement over the internet by their users. Basically, the act creates certain “Safe harbor” for any specified OSP activity to protect the lawsuits of copyright infringement across the internet world.
c) Both Napster and Grokster services provided platform for copying and sharing of several music or songs in MP3 files across wide range of its users. Both encouraged copyright infringement by allowing its user to copy and distribute these files of music without authorization. This violated the copyright protection of songs owned by the artist, recorders or creators.
However, these cases differ in way because Napster provided a central service web from where the users could download songs in MP3 files from list of song choices and also enabled them to share these files easily with other users from their hard disks. Whereas, Grokster allowed copying of files among users on the internet but without any such central service which offered list of songs or so, instead they just provided software for sharing the music files.
Deontological ethics is an ethics system that judges whether an action is right or wrong based on a moral code, abiding by the rules of book without considering the consequences of any actions, so as to promote fairness and equality among every individual. On the other hand, the utilitarian ethics seeks to provide action considering the most positive outcome which doesn’t focus to be justice-oriented or by any rule.
