Positive uses still exist

 "Privacy is no longer a social norm" according to Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg

As in the real life, there are always good and bad ones. But the anonymity offered by the Internet is stronger if it's possible. So, please take care of your privacy and your security. It's not bad use TIC's because they are our present but as with many things, every user has to be careful and responsible of each online info.

Anyway, Internet brings us many good things not to miss. Also this post is here to offer you some of the most famous milestones and try to explain what they really are.

To start, we can mentioned the Peer-to-peer system (P2P) for sharing files among users without the need of a central server. This phenomenon changed the way the world was known until then. And also, the way in that Linux (free software) or Mozilla Firefox, among others, work. They do it with the help of every user to implement details of some systems, what is called "free software" and "open source", even it's argued they are different between them.


Along with these concepts, emerged another called copyleft, the opposite of copyright, that is the movement by which stipulates the designation of "free of author rights" rather than "all rights reserved". The most colloquial way to call those artistic and scientific works free of rights which was born in the '70. One example is: Wikimedia Commons. 
 
This results in licenses "Creative Commons", which means "some rights reserved" and allows authors choose their own kind of rights on their works. This is a true diffusion model created by the homonymous NGO in California and, these kind of licenses called "share-alike".

In order to continue talking about artistic works, we should mentioned the phenomenon: crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is just a kind of financing method that involves funding to project with relatively modest contributions from a large group of individuals, because the entrepreneur's project via Internet platforms has campaigned to publicize its "future" work (if finally it's well funded). Here you have a video about how this works. It is closely linked to the concept of crowdsourcing by which the community (even before the digital age) bound to develop an idea.

 

Finally, it's worth mentioned to the most popular social networks exist nowadays. As Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Though these are no mystery for the reader, they are as an open window to the world to connect people.

To end with this post and if you want to watch a new kind of audiovisual curriculum, check the examples on the page "positives uses still exist" on this blog and you could see a new method to introduce yourself to apply for a job.

Everyone knew, everyone knows

This 15-year-old girl from Canada, Amanda Todd, suffered humiliation 
and jokes from her fellows because 
of a mistake. When she was 12, she used a webcam wrongly and her privacy was shown on FB after she 
had been blackmailed.

  

Finally, she killed herself because of
the cyber and real bullying this last October. But it is not the only one,
because history repeats itself. Becoming more, Internet misuse
grows with this new phenomenon called cyberbullying.

In Holland, Tim Ribberink (20) committed suicide leaving a note to his parents in November last year after have been harassed online.

These are the stories about two young people who have been missed what life is and has, because someone that has no mercy, made them impossible to continue living.

Stories about bullying are even more depressing when are about young people who, meaningless, have lost their lifes. And one of the reasons for that are the misuse of Internet and how strong the power of fear and shame can play with us. 



(The picture above is from the page on Facebook of group's tribute)

Hormigos case

Olvido Hormigos photographed by journalists at the Council town

Olvido Hormigos Carpio, PSOE's councilor in one town hall of Toledo's municipality (Los Yébenes), which is no more than 6500 inhabitants, went from being the talk of her town to national new, this September. A private short video of her masturbating was disclosed through Whatsapp as a virus along her town and its vicinity in almost one month, and then, uploaded on several websites, which led her to resign. 

After the news was known, several politicians from her party supported her in order to not resign, and next to the stir that came from the social networks (also where the hashtag #OlvidoNoDimitas on Twitter was created for the occasion) made her change the decision. Married and with two children, Olvido Hormigos had sent, according to her own declarations to the police, the “pornographic” video to her lover, but the disclosure of this video had had been done through the mayor’s email.

 One frame from a reportage of Antena 3 channel

The transcendence of this fact in September has been a turning point in the way in which the private lives of politicians are perceived. Some of the population is in favor of respecting their privacy, others believe that the politicians’ lives could be private when their lives do not interfere with their public agendas and others who think their privacy must be known by their voters. And although it is unclear if direct consequence, a month after the "Hormigos scandal", article 197 of the Penal Code was modified. 

The draft reform establishes punishment with one year in prison for distributing unauthorized recordings or intimate images obtained with the victim's consent but without permission to broadcast. So, it can be assumed that this gossip, become into news, has managed to change the law, what it's called “Hormigos reform”. 

Information Forensic police say it is "almost impossible" to delete the video track, so that the image and honor of the councilor would be damaged forever. Furthermore, it is characteristic of Spanish sociology phenomenon "gossip", so that in this case there were two unassailable factors. 

Therefore, the discussion would be to determine how much each individual should take care of his/her own image or how to disclose his/her personal details online. To what degree the privacy of a politician is part of its public profile. Here you have a quote of the owner of Microsoft:

Picture from flickr (Batmoo user) changed with a quote of Bill Gates

How safe users are in Internet?

Photo of FB with elements collected from a research reportage of Antena 3 channel

For a while, the computer age has given us tools that could have considered unimaginable to humans. And now, we live in the global village that McLuhan defined already in the 60s as a daily reality, its effects are evident for those who circulate through cyberspace.

It is true that the digital age opens a new window for remote human relationships, supported from the comfort that it gives from an electronic device. This means that we have a certain identity in a social network as Facebook and memory, that of us and our around create, stays forever on-line so that you can always access it.

YouTube video in which the guy expresses his opinion about the memory of Facebook

The discussion, that this post proposes, part of the idea of security in the private life and the concept of privicy of every individual people. How safe are the users in spaces and social networks? How we defend ourselves as individuals and how we make to cover our data in a private setting?

In 2012, the group called Febelin has done a sociological study to measure the strength and memory that Facebook dominates over us, and which use is derived from it. On its website, they report on how to get stronger those fences so that users are not so exposed in the globalized world that the Internet and social networks represent.

YouTube video with the experiment about Facebook by Febelin

In the next several posts, it will present some of the most famous cases of the bad use the Internet has given the users to damage the image of anothers. In this first post, it is just trying to make the reader think about the question asked: security of privacy of users. Feel free to post your comment.