NETWORKING
Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
Chapter Overview (1/2)
• Introduction
• Email and spam
• Fighting spam
• World Wide Web
• Ethical perspectives on pornography
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Chapter Overview (2/2)
• Censorship
• Freedom of expression
• Children and the Web
• Breaking trust on the Internet
• Internet addiction
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Introduction
• Networking increases computer’s utility
– In addition to Word processing, Excel, …etc, you can share
printers, extra storage, exchange data, e-mail.
• Internet connects millions of computers
– Powerful computational resource
• E-mail, surfing www, promoting your company.
– Even more powerful communication medium
• Network utility grows as number of users squared
– 10 users → 90 sender-receiver combinations
– 100 users → 9900 sender-receiver combinations
• As people grows
– Network may suffer overload
– people may act irresponsibly 4
How Email Works
• Email: Messages embedded in files
transferred between computers
• Email address: Uniquely identifies
cyberspace mailbox (2-parts User….@ Domain....)
• Messages broken into packets
• Routers transfer packets from sender’s mail
server to receiver’s mail server
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The Spam Epidemic (1/2)
• Spam: Unsolicited, bulk email
• Amount of email that is spam has increased
– 8% in 2001
– 40% in 2003
– 75% in 2007
– 90% in 2009
• Spam is effective (Cheap way for Ads. $500 - $2000)
– A company hires an internet marketing firm to send
thousands of emails
– More than 100 times cheaper than “Junk mail”
– Profitable even if only 1 in 100,000 buys product
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The Spam Epidemic (2/2)
• How firms get email addresses
– Opt-in lists
– Dictionary attacks (made-up email addresses to ISP that bounce back)
• Spammers seek anonymity
– Change email and IP addresses to disguise sending
machine
– Hijack another insecure system as a spam launch pad
• Spam blockers
– Attempt to screen out spam (spam filters) by blocking
suspicious subject lines.
– Have led to more picture-based spam
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Attributes of the Web
• It is decentralized
– No need for central authority
– BUT it becomes difficult to control the Web
• Every Web object has a unique address
– URL. Every Web page has a unique URL
• It is based on the Internet
– It needs browsers, media for storage, SW for
retrieving data, ftp, OSs…etc.
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How We Use the Web
• Shopping
• Contributing content (wikis, blogs)
– A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages
via a web browser using a simplified markup language. Collaborative site – many authors
– Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary. Personal site (Ex:
online journal)
• Promoting business
• Learning
• Exploring our roots
• Entering virtual worlds
• Paying taxes
• Gambling
• Lots more!
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Too Much Control or Too Little?
• Not everyone in the world has Internet
access
• Saudi Arabia: centralized control center
• People’s Republic of China: ISPs sign
“self-discipline” agreement
• Germany: Forbids access to neo-Nazi sites
• United States: Repeated efforts to limit
access of minors to pornography
– like child pornography
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Pornography Is Immoral
• Kant
– Loved person an object of sexual appetite
– Sexual desire focuses on body, not complete person
– All sexual gratification outside marriage wrong
• Utilitarianism
– Pornography reduces dignity of human life
– Pornography increases crimes such as rape
– Pornography reduces sympathy for rape victims
– Pornography is like pollution
– Pornography industry diverts resources from more
socially redeeming activities
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Adult Pornography Is Moral
• Utilitarianism
– Those who produce pornography make money
– Consumers of pornography derive physical
pleasure
– Pornography is a harmless outlet for exploring
sexual fantasies
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Commentary
• Performing utilitarian calculus on pornography
is difficult
• How to quantify harms/benefits, such as harm
done to people who find pornography
offensive?
• How to deal with contradictory “facts” by
“experts?”
– Harmless outlet AGAINST more likely to commit rape
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Direct Censorship
• Government monopolization
– TV and radio stations
• Prepublication review
– To monitor government secrets (Nuclear
weapons)
• Licensing and registration
– To control media with limited bandwidth.
(Freqencies)
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Self-censorship
• Most common form of censorship
• Group decides for itself not to publish
• Reasons
– Avoid subsequent persecution (CNN in Iraq)
– Maintain good relations with government officials (if
the offend government they loose their official sources
of information)
• Ratings systems
– Movies, TVs, CDs, video games
– Not the Web (some may have warning– and ask for
agree to enter a site)
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Challenges Posed by the Internet
• Many-to-many communication
– It is easy to close a radio station BUT difficult to do so for a
Web page (millions can post pages)
• Dynamic connections
– Millions of PCs are connected to internet yearly
• Huge numbers of Web sites
– No way to monitor them all.
• Extends beyond national borders, laws
• Can’t determine age of users
– an adult Web site can not confirm the age of a user
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Ethical Perspectives on Censorship
• Kant opposed censorship
– Enlightenment thinker
– “Have courage to use your own reason”
• Think for yourself
• Mill opposed censorship
– No one is infallible
– Any opinion (not the majority opinion) may
contain a kernel of truth (a part of the whole
truth)
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Mill’s Principle of Harm
“The only ground on which intervention
is justified is to prevent harm to others;
the individual’s own good is not a
sufficient condition.”
When individual’s act harms others
the government must intervene.
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Freedom of Expression: History
• 18th century
– England and the colonies: No prior restraints
on publication
– People could be punished for sedition or libel
• American states adopted bills of rights
including freedom of expression
• Freedom of expression in 1st amendment
to U.S. Constitution addressed this issue.
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Freedom of Expression
Not an Absolute Right
• 1st Amendment covers political and
nonpolitical speech
• Right to freedom of expression must be
balanced against the public good
• Various restrictions on freedom of
expression exist
– prohibition of cigarette advertising on TV
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Children and the Web: Web Filters
• Web filter: software that prevents display of
certain Web pages
– May be installed on an individual PC
– ISP may provide service for customers
• Methodologies
– Maintain “black list” of objectionable sites
– Before downloading a page, examine content for
objectionable words/phrases
• Child Internet Protection Acts started to arise
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Breaking trust on the Internet:
Identity Theft
• Identity theft: when a person uses another
person’s electronic identity
• More than 1 million Americans were
victims of identity theft in 2008 due to their
online activities
• Phishing: use of email or Web pages to
attempt to deceive people into revealing
personal information
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Chat Room Predators
• Chat room: supports real-time discussions
among many people connected to network
• Instant messaging (IM) and chat rooms
(which is similar to IM) replacing telephone
for many people
• Some pedophiles meeting children through
chat rooms
• Police countering with “sting” operations
– Policemen enter chat rooms to lure pedophiles.
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False Information
• Quality of Web-based information varies
widely
– Moon landings
– Holocaust
• Google attempts to reward quality
– Keeps a DB of 8 million web pages.
– Ranking Web pages uses “voting” algorithm
– If many links point to a page, Google search
engine ranks that page higher
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Is Internet Addiction Real?
• Some liken compulsive computer use to
pathological gambling
• Traditional definition of addiction:
– Compulsive use of harmful substance or drug
– Knowledge of its long-term harm (misuse)
• Kimberly Young created test for Internet
addiction
– (8 questions on gambling on the Net)
– (5 “yes” ------- means addiction)
• Her test is controversial
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Contributing Factors to Computer Addiction
• Social factors
– Peer groups
• Situational factors
– Stress
– Lack of social support and intimacy
– Limited opportunities for productive activity
• Individual factors
– Tendency to pursue activities to excess
– Lack of achievement
– Fear of failure
– Feeling of alienation
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