Perhaps the most influential invention of the past 75 years is the Internet—a way to connect instantly with our friends and loved ones, to meet new people, and to network and share ideas.
The Internet has been able to provide a voice for the mute, give courage to the shy, and has sparked connections that have evolved into loving relationships. But like most good things, there is a dark side: an underground network of pirates, predators, perverts and scammers.
Movie piracy has been around since the first person connected together two VCRs, and so has the debate about it.
Since the advent of the Internet, piracy has started a huge problem for the film and the music industry. It may not be the most taboo crime on the Internet, but it is wrong and illegal.
An amazing film or album that should have been successful can fail because more people choose to pirate rather than pay. This is especially true for independent films, which have to work hard just to earn back their budget.
Most of us are guilty of some Internet piracy, but to save the art we love, we must not steal it.
Internet scams are nothing new.
They are deceptive acts of indiscriminate manipulation, aimed at innocent, ignorant, and vulnerable people.
To make sure that you never become a victim you must be vigilant. The Nigerian Scam, named for the original incarnation of the scam, was a random email explaining that a large amount of money from Nigeria has to be transferred into a United States bank account for safety.
For helping out, the victim was told they would get a percentage, sometimes millions of dollars. Of course this is not true, only a way to get the victim’s bank account information.
Other scams include counterfeit websites. They are made to look like legit websites so that you enter your personal information. Always double-check the address bar.
The Internet can also be very dangerous, not only for finances but also for lives. Evil Internet predators lurk on the web with the intent to harm.
They hide in online chat rooms and wait for kids or vulnerable people, where they try to lure a meeting.
These encounters can be harmful or even deadly. There is a presence of police task forces and investigators online but the danger is out there.
Parents need to take control and leave nothing to chance. Teaching a child of the dangers of online predators is very important; stranger danger is online too.
The web can sometimes go beyond taboo into a place that is disturbing, disgusting, and evil. The website 4chan describes itself as an image based online form with emphasis on anonymity, which is true.
But anonymity sometimes comes at a cost, and it is that cost that I believe the website should be taken down. The website has a sub-form that is titled “Not Safe For Work (NSFW),” and this is used for disturbed individuals to share and gawk at illicit pictures ranging from human mutilation to borderline child porn.
The Internet is a place to express freedom of thoughts and ideas, a place almost free from censorship, but there is a line that has been crossed on 4chan.
The website does moderate and take down illegal images when they are posted. But it allows the “technically” legal images.
These include very young girls in very little clothing, crime scene photos of horrible murders, etc. The sub form on 4chan is morally repugnant and the laws need to change to combat the evil shared there.
This article was not meant to discourage the active use of the Internet, but was meant as a warning of the dark side. The Internet is a great tool that can be used to accomplish many things. It blows my mind that people were able to graduate college before the Internet was invented.
The World Wide Web will continue to grow and so must our regulation of it. I am a firm supporter of keeping the web reasonably uncensored, but we have a moral and ethical responsibility to keep it safe for everyone who utilizes the freedom of expression and power of information on the Internet.
Joey Miller
March 13, 2014 at 11:31 pm
Is it really necessary to begin with an explanation of the internet? Is your intended audience a remote rain-forest tribe, or is it 21st century college students? If you must presage your argument with a history, at least take the effort to make it accurate and informative. Piracy (really copyright infringement, piracy occurs at sea and is an inflammatory term) did not originate with the VCR, it originated with the copyright soon after the invention of the printing press. Moreover, your assertion that "An amazing film or album that should have been successful can fail because more people choose to pirate rather than pay" may be technically true (i.e. such a thing may be possible) yet I doubt you can name a single instance of such a thing occurring. This is due in part because those who choose to pirate are not necessarily those who might pay. To make that point clearer, one who would choose to download a film for free may not consider the film worth the cost of legal purchase, therefore many instances of copyright infringement do not prevent a likely purchase. To offer a convincing argument against online piracy you will have to forego the unrealistic notion that "the art we love" will cease to be from this ubiquitous crime.
"They are deceptive acts of indiscriminate manipulation, aimed at innocent, ignorant, and vulnerable people." — These acts cannot be both "indiscriminate" and also aimed at particular types of people.
"The Internet can also be very dangerous, not only for finances but also for lives" Before this sentence, you have already discussed the dangers of online financial scams, so you should not say the Internet "can also be very dangerous". This sentence might be rewritten as "The internet can be dangerous not only to finances, but also to lives".
"These encounters can be harmful or even deadly." — Death is a type of harm, so this should read "These encounters can be harmful and even deadly" since the encounters cannot be deadly yet not harmful, as your phrasing implies.
"The website 4chan describes itself as an image based online form with emphasis on anonymity, which is true." — The word is "forum", not "form". The same mistake is made twice more when you type "sub form" in place of "sub-forum".
The website has a sub-form that is titled 'Not Safe For Work (NSFW),'" — No, 4chan does not have such a sub-forum. It has eighteen sub-forums which are categorizes as NSFW, which are titled by their respective subjects including /b/ the "Random" board to which you probably meant to refer.
"The website does moderate and take down illegal images when they are posted. But it allows the “technically” legal images. These include very young girls in very little clothing" I assume you mean "minors" or "children", a distinction which matters. Many of your legally adult peers are "young girls". You are referring (I am forced to assume here because your writing is so poor) to sexually provocative photos of clothed minors which are technically legal (is there any other type of legality?). Aside from being very poorly phrased, this is incorrect. 4chan moderators delete threads made to share "teen" or "questionable" photographs. Here is an official statement to this effect, which you would have found in your research had you done any.
http://boards.4chan.org/s/res/9112225
I would like to explain to an ethical argument against censorship, but I doubt I could phrase such an argument in sufficiently simple terms. Hopefully your education will include Milton's "Areopagitica", but your should take an introductory English course first.
Risky Boltz
May 12, 2014 at 6:09 am
I Thank you for your thoughts! as you could tell this is just an opinion piece. Plus Im a video guy, writing is not really my thing. Thanks for the insults, as far as naming a movie that has been directly impacted by Piracy, sure, Zombieland, look it up, I agree we should not censor the web, but the is a point where to far is to far. It true that I didn't do a ton of "research" on 4chan, but after 1 minute in the /b/ I felt like I was gonna throw up. If thats something you wanna defend than go ahead. (Dont go though this reply and try and find gramar issues lol)