Book Summary:
In net.wars, Wendy Grossman accomplishes two things: She dissects and explains today's most controversial Internet issues and she thankfully explodes the myth that there were ever "good old days," when the Net was just one big happy virtual family. Grossman turns a well-tuned reporter's eye to the areas that generate the greatest amount of heat. She doesn't pretend to be a dispassionate observer, making neither bones nor apologies about being an enthusiastic netizen herself. She does, however, carefully examine all sides of each issue and she presents issues clearly before expressing her own opinion. Grossman presents many of the issues you would expect, such as sex on the Net, the proper limitations of information security, hackers as heroes and villains, online sexism, and the dispute on the right to privacy versus the need for law enforcement. However, she also addresses less dramatic but equally fascinating issues, such as the debate between those who view the Net as an all-inclusive level society and those who are intolerant of newcomers and their mistakes. And then there's the world's newest form of bigotry--siteism--in which practitioners discriminate against a poster because they dislike the access provider the poster uses. Rather than simply looking at the philosophical and ethical issues involved, Grossman presents the history of the various controversies, explaining landmark developments and detailing how each issue evolved into the "Net war" we see today. One example is the issue of "copyright terrorists," those who have applied old-technology definitions of intellectual rights in ways that others perceive as inhibiting free speech or as halting the fair use of knowledge. Here, the defining development in the controversy was a battle between the Church of Scientology and its opponents, where the worst casualties were, as in many real-life wars, those caught in between. Grossman traces the evolution of the battle step by step, presenting the views of key players on all sides and showing how laws intended for traditional media can have unexpected consequences when applied to the Internet. Entire volumes have been written about many of the issues discussed here, but this short book is enough to give readers an excellent grounding in all of them. Full text online version at www.nyupress.org/netwars. Who will rule cyberspace? And why should people care? Recently stories have appeared in a variety of news media, from the sensational to the staid, that portray the Internet as full of pornography, pedophilia, recipes for making bombs, lewd and lawless behavior, and copyright violators. And, for politicians eager for votes, or to people who have never strolled the electronic byways, regulating the Net seems as logical and sensible as making your kids wear seat belts. Forget freedom of speech: children can read this stuff. From the point of view of those on the Net, mass-media's representation of pornography on the Internet grossly overestimates the amount that is actually available, and these stories are based on studies that are at best flawed and at worst fraudulent. To netizens, the panic over the electronic availability of bomb-making recipes and other potentially dangerous material is groundless: the same material is readily available in public libraries. Out on the Net, it seems outrageous that people who have never really experienced it are in a position to regulate it. How then, should the lines be drawn in the grey area between cyberspace and the physical world? In net.wars, Wendy Grossman, a journalist who has covered the Net since 1992 for major publications such as Wired, The Guardian, and The Telegraph, assesses the battles that will define the future of this new venue. From the Church of Scientology's raids on Net users to netizens attempts to overthrow both the Communications Decency Act and the restrictions on the export of strong encryption, net.wars explains the issues and the background behind the headlines. Among the issues covered are net scams, class divisions on the net, privacy issues, the Communications Decency Act, women online, pornography, hackers and the computer underground, net criminals and sociopaths, and more. |