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Network Neutrality

The Legislative History of Online Gambling: A Case Study of Poker on the Internet

This project looks at the legislative history surrounding gambling over the Internet. Although gambling has been a part of human culture throughout the ages, several countries have attempted either to regulate or prohibit this behavior. Traditionally gambling took place in brick-and-mortar establishments where local law had clear jurisdiction; however, since the advent of the Internet gambling has moved into the borderless territory of cyberspace. A majority of this project evaluates recent attempts within the United States to enact legislation surrounding online gambling. Namely I will outline how the government's first attempt, retroactively invoking the 1961 Wire Act, remained weak in its ability to prohibit online poker until the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) made the processing of payments for online gambling illegal. Currently there is legislation slated for September 2009 that would repeal the UIGEA and move to regulate and tax rather than prohibit online gambling.

Powerlaws, Weblogs and Inequality

"Powerlaws, Weblogs and Inequality." Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet - Economics & Culture, Media & Community, Open Source. 8 February 2003. .

While the internet does have the potential to give a voice to all who are digitally connected, what purpose does it serve if that voice is never heard or if it is not heard by a robust audience? Shirky speaks about the audience distribution of blogs, with 12% of blogs accounting for 50% of the web trafficing in the webworld. The popular belief that the blog world eliminates hierarchical power structures and systems of inequality is debunked. Shirky's basic argument is "Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality." All blogs can not be equally popular all the time. What's more is that the more popular a blog, the less conversational it becomes as it becomes more difficult to maintain personal relationships with subscribers. Instead of being a conversation forum, it becomes a one-way point of entry into information.Conversational blogs then become the "long tail" of blogs, those blogs with few subscribers that can neatly facilitate interactive experiences between blog subscriber and blogger.

This article begs two questions when discussing citizen journalism (in blog format or website format): 1) should news be conversational #2) does citizen journalism threaten the same discriminatory hierachies that originally catapulted news blogs? In Andrew Keen's book, "Cult of the amateur: how the internet is killing today's culture" he insists that news is not meant to be conversational, objectional reporting is not something to be discussed and weighed in on. Media professionals are meant to act as gatekeepers to newsworthy information, society has entrusted them with this responsibility and such a responsibility is not to be infringed upon by everyone's uinformed and even informed opinions. Centralized power exists to maintain accuracy and order but the internet is based on decentralized power.

Also, if the popularity of news blogs is a result of the mainstream media's abuse of power, do online blogs threaten to recreate these same power structures and consequentially the same abuses? Theories purported by Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell suggest that this is unlikely. Accroding to Drezner and Farrell, the news blogs often do not just serve as news resources but also as part of a checks and balances system for the mainstream. Therefore, their position in the news world is fostered in relation to the mainstream media's abuse of power.

Politics of Internet communication / Robert J. Klotz.

Klotz, Robert J. "Journalism and the Internet." Politics of Internet communication / Robert J. Klotz. Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.113-132.

In his chapter, "Journlaism and the Internet" Klotz starts off discussing the move of traditional papers (i.e. The Washington Post, The New York Times) to the internet . Klotz performed a study in which each of the fifty states main newspapers (those with the largest subscription base) was analyzed. He found that all 50 of these papers had a corresponding website, some reaping great profit through advertistment and content charges. Klotz lists two great benefits of online advertising as opposed to paper advertisement: 1) advertisement is included on the homepage, whereas in print, advertisments rarely appear on the cover 2) online classifieds allow easy searchability through use of the "search" box. Furthermore, the use of the internet in traditional journalism is ever more prevalent, with journalists using email and online research databases (ie. Lexis Nexis) for finding unpublished and published materials. Non traditional news sources (not necessarily Blogs) such as Slate, and Salon are often special interests based, focusing on political commentary, sports, etc. Trying to cover general news would yield little readership. As it is, non-traditional online news sources face competition from traditional online sources and find it hard to turn any profit, as most people aren't willing to subscribe to them. Klotz ten goes on to question the necessity of journalists, with the invent and expansion of the internet, most laymen have access to documents previously only provided to professional journalists (i.e. governmental and non-govermental primary documents). More insight into who is going online for their news, with some predictable statistics: generally better educated people, most users are below the age of 65, etc. Lastly Klotz gives discusses the "acceptable balance" vs. the "unacceptable balance". the acceptable balance asserts that an equilibrium between availability and accuracy can be reached while the unacceptable balance asserts the opposite, that online journalism lends itself to inaccuracy. Online journalism makes it more difficult (as opposed to print journalism) in determining a source's credibility and allows untrained journalist a platform to report inaccurate stories.

Klotz writing provides great insight for the introduction of my project. While I intend to focus on the rise of citizen journalism, mostly the "why" of this phenomenan, my argument would be incomplete with an introduction to the "how" of online journalism (traditional and non-traditional). Klotz discusses internet journalism in the context of traditional vs. non-traditional and how each functions independent of one another, structurally, financially and he ethically. Klotz commentary will drive questions of what online journalism allows and demands from the public. This chapters does a fine job of introducing some basic advantages and disadvantages of online journalism from traditional and non-traditional sources. This brief introduction of statistics and theories will mobilize my questions of theories. Klotz helps provide the "how" of internet journalism which will segeway into the "why".

Citizen Journalism - The who, what, why, where and how of it

The purpose of this project is to analyze the recent phenomenon of citizen journalism. The internet has created a new platform for the creation and distribution of information. The layman or amateur is now able to perform professional functions through news websites, blogs, photo sharing sites, etc. Newsworthy material is no longer guarded by a select few people who the general public must depend on to remain informed. With this new power that the layman has yielded comes responsibility though... or does it? Should the layman be held accountable by the same standards as a traditional journalist, if they are in fact performing the same function? Furthermore, is it really possible for an amateur to perform the same function as a professional? This is to say much of what makes a professional is based on the technology they have access to, a journalist is not simply a journalist simply because he writes or even because he has studied journalism but because he is a part of a recognized industry. Other issues surrounding the move of traditional print news sources move to the internet are to be discussed. What threat do citizen journalists pose to traditional papers' websites? Can anyone really compete with the Washington Post or the New York Times? Perhaps most importantly the question of why citizen journalism became so popular will be addressed. I hypothesize that technology has a great deal to do with it. People create blogs and offer their opinion to the digitally connected world simply because they are now able to. High quality camera phones and digital cameras allow us to interact in a way and with an immediacy that was never possible before, so why not indulge. But, beyond egotistical motivations I think cross media market monopolies must be held accountable. The homogenization of news material, amongst other things, has forced the "amateur" to take news gathering into his own hands. With the help of the FCC and deregulation, media conglomerates are now able to own mostly all of the venues of information for entire markets. Television stations, radio stations (i.e. Clear Channel) and newspapers are all owned by the same company in some markets, which begs the question what is being fed to the public? If we depend on these limited resources to inform an ever growing populace, everything from what the local weather will be like to how we will vote for the future of our country, then a lack of diverse opinions threatens democracy. I this very homogenization is part of the reason that the citizen has taken things into his own hands to become an autonomous news source.

The Future of the News

Thesis: As news and journalism shifts to the internet, new technologies will inherently alter the core of journalism