The Regulation of Digital Content

Regulation

In March 2013, the Google Play Store removed the software the software named 'Adblock Plus' due to a possible security flaw. Adblock Plus, an application that added 'needed features' to Adblock was created in 2006. Adblock silently removes advertising and social buttons from websites. It initially began as a niche product and thus did not garner a larger amount of attention, but by 2009, it had over 2.5 million users and is the most downloaded Firefox addon.

The removal of Adblock brings up the issue of consumer versus producer rights in New Media. Websites have the technology to block users that block their ads, but viewing, what add-ons people use is viewed as a privacy violation and may hurt a website's image. The first issue that needs to be addressed is why consumers want to block advertisements. Consumers typically pay for their computers and their connection to the Internet, and thus may extend that ownership to the websites they visit.

A study by Cho and Cheon found the main cause if ad avoidance found in the study was perceived ad clutter. Advertisements were also viewed as interfering with goals. As the internet tends to be a goal, task, interactivity, information oriented medium in addition to entertainment, excessive advertisements could interfere with a consumer's interest needs. Consumers see Adblock as a right and blocking of it a removal of a fundamental right. Privacy rests on two principles, the right to be left alone and the right to control personal information.

The right to personal information applies to advertisements, as collected data, a privacy concern, is used to create target ads. The right to be left alone, includes a lack of unsolicited ads. Even if they didn't use information gathered from consumers. Ads may be malicious or misleading. Consumers may view Adblock use as a method of protesting disliked ads, and removing that program removes right to protest. Blocking software also brings up the issue of stifling innovation and consumer choice. People do not want groups like Google decides what gets made and sold. 

Apple's Retail Army

Analysis of the article 'Apple's Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay'

Primary Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/apple-store-workers-loyal-but-short-on-pay.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Secondary Source: Classnotes

America’s love affair with the smartphone has helped create tens of thousands of jobs at places like Best Buy and Verizon Wireless and will this year pump billions into the economy. The Apple Store is the undoubted king, a retail phenomenon renowned for impeccable design, deft service and spectacular revenues. Worldwide, its stores sold $16 billion in merchandise. But most of Apple’s employees enjoyed little of that wealth. While consumers tend to think of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as the company’s heart and soul, a majority of its workers in the United States are not engineers or executives with hefty salaries and bonuses but rather hourly wage earners selling iPhones and MacBooks.

The Internet and advances in computing have created untold millionaires, but most of the jobs created by technology giants are service sector positions — sales employees and customer service representatives, repairmen and delivery drivers — that offer little of Silicon Valley’s riches or glamour. Much of the debate about American unemployment has focused on why companies have moved factories overseas, but only 8 percent of the American work force is in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “In the service sector, companies provide a little bit of training and hope their employees leave after a few years,” says Arne L. Kalleberg, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina. “Especially now, given the number of college kids willing to work for low wages.”

In other areas, Apple has been a leader. Stores in a variety of fields have adopted the company’s retail techniques, like the use of roving credit-card swipers to minimize checkout lines, as well as the petting-zoo layout that encourages customers to test-drive products. The problem for Apple Store employees, they said, wasn't just the pace. It was the lack of upward mobility. There are only a handful of different jobs at Apple Stores and the most prestigious are invariably sought after by dozens of candidates. And a leap to the company headquarters is highly unusual.

Different layers of internet

Relevance of OSI layer in Internet

Primary Source: Classnotes

Secondary Source: http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/designosimodel/a/osimodel.htm

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/designosimodel/g/bldef_osi.htm

http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~icucart/networking_basics/7layersofOSI.htm

Figure 1: 7 layers of OSI Model

Anyone can design new applications to operate over the internet. Good applications can then adopted widely while bad ones are ignored. The phenomenon is a part of internet's 'hourglass architecture'.

Figure 2: Hourglass Architecture of Internet

Figure 3: OS vs. Hourglass structure of Internet

The hourglass portrays two important design insights. First, is the notion that the network can be carved into conceptual layers. The exact number of layers varies depending on who is drawing the hourglass and why. One basic way to understand the network layer is through understanding of the fact that it  has 3 layers. At the bottom we have the 'physical layer'. The physical layer consists of the basic networking hardware transmission technologies of a network. It consists of the basic hardware stuffs. The physical layer defines the means of transmitting raw bits rather than logical data packets over a physical link connecting network nodes.

At the top is the 'application layer', representing the tasks people might want to perform on the network. Sometimes, above that, we might think of the 'content layer', containing actual information exchanged among the network's users, and above that the 'social layer', where new behaviors and interactions among people are enabled by the technologies underneath.

By dividing the network into layers and envisioning some boundaries among them, the path is clear to a division of labor among people working to improve the overall network. Those who are making or creating the information/data are at the top of the society.

On the proprietary networks of the 1980 s, in contrast, such divisions among layers were not as important because the networks sought to offer a one stop solution to their customers, at the cost of having to design everything by themselves.