The illustrative case of hacktivism

Hacktivism is the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends.

Lets say that there is a group of people who find nuclear weapons very unsympathetic and who have bigger knowledges about computers and digital world than general user. Lets say they discover that some countries are making some tests to improve the power of the nuclear weapon and they start to fight for it. They are hacking into the system and deleting some data or start to use emails which contain information hackers like. They add some content into organization website and according to this they may ruin some relations.

For example: Three teenagers broke into computer systems at India's Bhabha Atomic Research center in Bombay for a reason to protest against two nations recent series of nuclear weapons tests. They deleted some data, send emails and changed web page.

CHapter 18 - The business of science

Our lives are moving more and more into the Internet: chatting with friends, keeping diaries (blogs), learning (e-learning), watching videos, listening music, doing business and also making science. Countries who are using and owning better technical equipment in any arbitrary area have advantages over the people who have less.
Let's say that scientists discover some sort of new technique how to cure specific cancer and they invent special tool for it which also assume that you have some other parts before you can start using new invention. IF poorer countries/areas/hospitals can't afford these expected parts, then they do not have the opportunity to help people.
There are systems in the hospitals, where are listed illnesses one person have had in one database. Whoever doctor one is visiting, then the data is always accessible. But if poorer countries/areas/hospitals can't afford the databases and everything that comes with it (management, service providers.. ) then again the quality (in this case the doctor's awareness of illnesses) is not so good.

Link portfolio for ethics and law

Ethics in Turbulent Times

• Four videos about Global Dignity. It is an an autonomous non-profit, non-criticism and non-partisan initiative, which mission is to implement every human being's universal right. (Global Digniy Co-Founders, Crown Prince Haakon, John Hope Bryant, Professor Pekka Himanen)
• Handy's iterview
  

Towards th Information Society

• Towards the Information Society in the Central and Eastern European Countries: Twentyseven ideas for European initiatives - It was written 2001 and there can be seen how Europe tried to go towards the information society.
  

The Networked World

• Yochai Benkler is giving an interview - The download of the invisible hand broadcast which talks about management and strategy
  

Censors vs Cyberspace

• What is cyberspace?
• "The Many Forms of Internet Censorship" by Tino Bruno
• "PPC Censorship Propaganda and Free Speech" by Brian Hack
  

Rid the fools of their money: the online world of crime and fraud

• This article is written by David MacGregor: Scams, Gambling & Investments: How to spot the difference? This article is talking about some scam schemes and also some tips how to recognize the difference between the real thing and fraud.
• Tips how to find the honest broker while trading.
• This article is talking about one online fraud parts: phishing.
  

Digital divide

• This article is talking about digital divide and the fact that it contains tree main stages: economic divide, usability divide and empowerment divide.
• In January the Inderscience's International Journal of Knowledge and Learning published new report about digital divide. And according to this sub-Saharan Africa will miss technical opportunities if the digital divide between developed world and Africa is not closed soon.
• Doris Lessing: “How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc.”

Ubiquitous computing and networked world

• There is a video about ubiquitous computing. It defines it and makes some good examples and explanations: For example in year 2017 you are unconscious and leading to the hospital, nobody know who you are, but you have a cheap which tells all the necessary information..
• Google is building an ubiquitous web.
  
• Ubiquitous computing: An interesting new paradigm by Marcia Riley
  

The Hacker ethic in a networked world

• This wikipage was created during one school project and I find it good for the introduction.
  
• This aricle is written by Nicholas Tan: Computer Security Ethics and Privacy. Article is talking about ethical and privacy matters with specific examples.
  

Different people in digital world

• Hear the lecture by Dr Genevieve Bell who is an anthropologist and ethnographer with an academic and industry background. She is talking about future of digital world and digital lives.

From Hacktivism to Cyberwar: Global Politics in the global networks

• This article is talking about hacktivism in Lithuania.
• Cyberwar between India and Pakistan
  

Social networking, social engineering

• What is social engineering ? It gives a short review about social engineering.
• Social Engineering Fundamentals, Part I: Hacker Tactics by Sarah Granger
  

The history and development of copyright

• Description of copyright
  

The hacker approach: the development of free licenses

• This article is explaining the difference between hackers and crackers and also talking about how to keep passwords safe.
  

The digital enforcement

• There are higher demands to the road users due to increased mobility. Their safety is endangered. Solution is the Innovative Digital Enforcement Environment, which is a system which can measure speed, both on location and over sections, and red light infringements.
  

The uneasy alliance: free software vs open source

• Why Free software is better than open software? Find out.
  

Hybrid approaches

• Dual Licenses and open source: Best of both worlds?
• Homepage for the artists and creators who would like to spread their work without strict copyright laws.
  
• Guick and easy guide to creative commons licenses

Miscellaneous

• "The Secret of Google juice?" - see the slideshow about Google strategy and business model.
  
• Perfect example which shows that music can be sold via Internet: Leona Lewis song was downloaded for money approximately 69 244 units with first two days.
  

Picture for DC wikipage

Chapter 20 - Copying resrtictions

I think it's good that there are copy restrictions, otherwise we would end up in the world of lies. Many people would tell or write something which is not their idea, as their idea by not referencing to any source. IF sources are mentioned then everything is normal and this kind of situation also gives some credit to the source owner, has his/her work has been highly evaluated and worth to refer.
Referring and mentioning the source in the Internet also gives us more connected links. If one is looking something and clicks the referred link, one can find again some other links and in this way find the original source or many other interesting information about the same subjects.

So I think restrictions are good if there are as much and as less of them as possible. Too much restrictions is not good, too much freedom is not good as well - so there has to be the golden middle ground!

Chapter 17 - GNU GPL

I start with the title of the first part of the chapter: "Information wants to be free". This is really strong argument. As Matthew Lesko is saying in his article that information is the currency in the world today and those who owns it are the richest; What will happen if something so powerful would be totally free?

We have the Copyright law which protects the owner of an original work of authorship. We also have trademarks, patents, industrial design rights, trade secrets and etc. Contrary to this we have Copyleft which gives bigger opportunities and freedom to the users to spread and change the piece of work by removing restrictions on distributing copies and works witch are modified for others and requires the same rights to the works which are done after the original.
The first Copyleft license is called GNU GPL - General Public License and its goal is to protect the freedom of the user, not to limit it. It is developed by Richard Stallman and his colleagues in 1989 an according to this user have rights to:

• use, copy and distribute the work for any purpose (including business)
  
• study the work - for software, demands inclusion of the source code
  
• modify the work and develop new works based on it
  
• distribute the derived works under the same conditions

It seems that user will have some kind of power to somebody else's work by just taking the original piece of work as basic and start creating something new out of this.
If huge amount of information would free, then we would live in more developed world than we do now.
I like the idea of GPL, because it gives the freedom where all the good things can start.

Review of '3some' wiki page

The main page of the wiki is very clear and nice. Picture have a create effect and also say a lot about the subject, which is “Hacker Ethics in Web 2.0 and 21st Century Content development”.
The '3some' team had four members and from main page is possible to view who has done which part of the work.
The upper links in the right corner doesn't contain any links, but actually it doesn't bother much because all the needed links are provided in the left column and also before every member name in the main page.
I started with hitting the link in front page and assume that this is the introduction page. It was. From introduction page I was able to read about the influence of web 2.0 on society, hacker culture and how hacker ethics are applied. I was also able to see many variants of hackers definitions and a bit of advance information about hackers. Interesting to know that word 'hacker' was nothing to do with computers at first, and this word could be applied to anybody who had skills and motivation to go beyond of expected limits.
There is also very precisely described the essence of the hacker. There is said that a hacker is a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and like to program himself/herself; appreciates the hack value and is quick in thinking; is expert or enthusiast of any kind; enjoys intellectual challenges or is somebody who is poking around to discover sensitive information.
Hacker is the person who is called hacker by others not called by oneself. And if one claims he/she is hacker but isn't, then this will be soon discovered.
There are also mentioned some of the most famous hackers: Linus Torvalds, Dennis Richie, Ken Thompson, Stephen Wozniak and Tim Berners-Lee. Interesting to read about them.

There is also mentioned one very nice metaphor for hackerdom - gift culture. That hacker gives away the time, creativity and results of ones skills. Sweet - it sounds like Christmas time, when Santa is handing out the presents. :)

Provided also the list of things one should do to be respected by hackers. This would be very good knowledge for beginners.

Applicability of hacker ethics - it is written that hacker ethics has remained the same since MIT times, just environment have changed. And also that new hackers know traditional hacker rules, but just add some innovation for them because of changes in the society. Specially I liked: self defense and trust, but test. These were so contemporary.

When I am in the middle of reading it I suddenly realize that this introduction page is the hole work together and when clicking on the title, then I will be lead to each part separately. Very clever. :)

I am also able to read about the term web 2.0 and its history. It is mentioned that web 2.0 key feature is the development of software which allows mass participation in social activities like sharing pictures , video or information or just networking, bookmarking or tagging. There is also the list of popular web 2.0 websites.

In conclusion they are saying that: "Ideally Hacker Ethics will be better understood, perhaps even the term 'Hacker' can lose it's negative connotation in the future - and be less misunderstood."

The list of references is quite long and includes some of the names we have gone through in this course.

Also I like the forum idea. Discussions are always available to everybody and very easy to communicate.

This team managed to do their work well and would evaluate them with expression: very good.