Internet Users

If you've paid attention to Internet news over the past year, you might know that the notion of a "free Internet" has been hotly debated and seen by many as under siege. Internet activists recently stopped SOPA and PIPA , two bills that would've given broad powers to government and companies to shut down copyright infringing websites. Now, a U.S. Congressman, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa , is stoking an online debate on what a potential "Digital Citizens' Bill of Rights" could look like.

If you've paid attention to Internet news over the past year, you might know that the notion of a "free Internet" has been hotly debated and seen by many as under siege. Internet activists recently stopped SOPA and PIPA , two bills that would've given broad powers to government and companies to shut down copyright infringing websites. Now, a U.S. Congressman, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa , is stoking an online debate on what a potential "Digital Citizens' Bill of Rights" could look like.

INTERNET USERS OFTEN talk about exploring the World Wide Web, and the analogy is a good one. The Web is a vast, unmapped region with exotic scenery, strange languages and customs, hidden treasures, dark alleys and treacherous technological jungles and rapids.For armchair explorers, the Web is the most thrilling communications medium since the crystal radios that allowed my father's generation to eavesdrop on the conversations of heroes like the pilot Wylie Post, as he barnstormed the North Pole more than half a century ago.The Web, along with such relatively recent gear as lightweight portable computers, digital cameras and radio and satellite telephones, now enables us to participate in grand adventures as they happen on land, sea, air and in space.

Online privacy issues jumped to the forefront Wednesday in Maryland as the attorney general challenged Google Inc.'s new privacy policy, a few days after a pair of Baltimore attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook Inc. for allegedly tracking users who ventured off its online social network. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler sent a letter to Google that demanded a meeting in a week about the company's changes to its privacy policy, which gives the Internet company deeper access to users' data across its services, such as Gmail and YouTube.

The Internet's largest advertising company has quietly begun tracking some consumers' online activities by name and address, a practice that privacy advocates say has the potential to undermine the anonymity of millions of computer users. The move by DoubleClick Inc. comes after years of assurances by the company that it compiles online profiling data only anonymously and touches on one of the most sensitive issues in cyberspace. Several consumers have filed suits challenging the company's tactic.

Go ahead and sue, thousands of Internet users told the Recording Industry Association of America: We're still going to download music files. Grokster, one of the largest services where people swap songs, said last week that there had been no change in the number of people sharing files or the number of files being traded, despite RIAA's threats last month to sue people who share copyrighted music. Wayne Rosso, president of the service, was clearly pleased by the strong support from Grokster's users.

Internet users are more tolerant, trusting, optimistic and literate than nonusers, but not always more liberal in personal beliefs, according to a study to be revealed at the University of Maryland, College Park today. "I call it the diversity divide," said John P. Robinson, the UM sociologist who directed the research and presented the survey results to a "Webshop" that has gathered Internet researchers from around the country. The study, a joint effort by College Park and Princeton University scholars, attached Internet use questions to the 2000 General Social Survey, the annual study by the University of Chicago that tracks changes in social trends, public opinion and behavior.

While you're surfing the Web for information, the Web may be surfing for information about you. Hardly a day goes by without another report of cybersnooping - not by criminals or teenage hackers, but by corporate America. Wherever you travel online, businesses are hungry for information about you. The advertising industry wants to know what you think, where you live and what you want to buy - and critics say they're all too willing to invade your privacy to do it. Consider some Orwellian examples: Through "spyware" files embedded in many popular programs, advertisers can learn what information you download, what music you listen to, and what Web sites you visit.

Marc Singer sits on a couch, his shoes off, a phone in his ear, a laptop on his knees. At a round kitchen table, his friend Paul Maya works on two computers -- an ancient Macintosh from his high school days and a PC that is even older. As Paul tries to save a file on the PC, it crashes. It is November 1995, the middle of a decade that began at the financial bottom and will end in an economic bonanza beyond all imagining. Marc, 26, and Paul, 23, have quit their jobs and are holed up in Paul's one-bedroom walkup in Hoboken, N.J. Their only reliable source of cash is a plastic Halloween pumpkin filled with loose change.

Nine million women went online for the first time in the past six months in the United States, bringing "gender parity" to the once male-dominated Internet, according to a wide-ranging study released last week. The study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project also found that the Internet is enhancing social interactions, contrary to results of a February study by Stanford University, which said too much Internet use turned some individuals into recluses. "E-mail use has improved communication," said Lee Rainie, the new study's director.

As websites buzzed with the news of Osama bin Laden's death, Baltimore resident Gin Ferrara restricted herself to work-related Web browsing only. Not that she wasn't curious about the startling commando raid in Pakistan. But the news broke during one of her periodic weeklong breaks from media, during which she limits her use of the Internet at work and cuts herself off completely in her downtime. "All the news about bin Laden's death is not going to settle down in a week," reasoned Ferrara, 38, who works at NewsTrust, a California-based nonprofit funded by several foundations that is running an experimental news criticism website in Baltimore.

Judge orders release of Guantanamo detainee WASHINGTON: A federal judge ordered the military yesterday to release one of its first Guantanamo Bay detainees, a 21-year-old man who has been detained and accused of being a terrorist since he was 14. Mohammed el Gharani, who is of Chadian nationality but had lived in Saudi Arabia, should be released from the U.S. prison in Cuba "forthwith," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said in a ruling from the bench....

China will probably surpass the U.S. as the nation with the most Internet users later this spring, according to statistics recently released by the Chinese government. The number of Internet users in China rose 53 percent to 210 million at the end of 2007, up from 137 million at the end of 2006, according to the quasi-governmental China Internet Network Information Center. That compares with roughly 215 million Internet users in the U.S. The Chinese government's crackdown on political bloggers and censorship of certain Web sites, sometimes dubbed the "Great Firewall of China," will undoubtedly receive greater attention - and condemnation - as the world focuses on Beijing for the Summer Olympics.

Earlier this year, pundits and politicians were again buzzing about the apparent democratic power of the Internet when a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois posted a video on YouTube portraying rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York as an Orwellian dictator. Take a close look at the Internet, however, and its democratic luster disappears like Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. Let's begin with the ad about Senator Clinton. It was reported that the video had spread to television, where network and cable news shows had aired portions of it. The Washington Post reported that within days, it had been "viewed" online more than 2 million times.

I took an online test this week and found out that I'm an Omnivore. That got me worried, because Omnivores are the geekiest of online geeks, according to a new study of Americans' relationship with the Internet, cell phones, iPods and other accoutrements of the information age. The report, issued this week by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that Americans - including many who have pockets full of gadgets - see the wired world as...

While America was riveted on a love triangle featuring a female astronaut driving 900 miles wearing a diaper, another significant story received little notice. A new study reports that 42 percent of Internet users ages 10 to 17 have viewed online porn. Another day. Another blip. America shrugs. Porn has gone so mainstream that we hardly flinch at its mention anymore. No longer the dirty purview of the sleazy fringe, it's everywhere - in hotel rooms, on the Internet, in America's video cabinet.

A wide-ranging study of bloggers, the chattering class of the Internet, concluded that a mere 5 percent of them use news as their primary topic - a figure at odds with perceptions that blogging is remaking journalism. The study, released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, reported that 37 percent of those surveyed cited their own life and experiences as primary fodder for their blogs. Eleven percent of the respondents said they blog regularly about politics and government; 7 percent about the entertainment world; 6 percent about sports, and lesser fractions on business, technology and faith.

The following is an excerpt from an editorial in Friday's Los Angeles Times: China's no-nonsense-named State Bureau of Secrecy has issued a list of proscriptions to Internet users aimed at protecting the government's control over the flow of information and its monopoly on power. Internet users, including those sending e-mail or participating in chat rooms, are banned from sending or discussing "state secrets." What's a state secret? In practice, it's any information -- for example, corruption within the Communist Party -- that has not been officially released.

A wide-ranging study of bloggers, the chattering class of the Internet, concluded that a mere 5 percent of them use news as their primary topic - a figure at odds with perceptions that blogging is remaking journalism. The study, released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, reported that 37 percent of those surveyed cited their own life and experiences as primary fodder for their blogs. Eleven percent of the respondents said they blog regularly about politics and government; 7 percent about the entertainment world; 6 percent about sports, and lesser fractions on business, technology and faith.

The Internet is in danger of becoming one big red-light district, but at least it won't have an officially sanctioned one. That irony speaks to the very impracticality of the proposal to create a special domain name - .xxx, like .com or .org - that could be used to designate the Internet addresses of pornographic Web sites. There's no question that porn has crept into every nook and cranny of the Internet. It is causing big problems not only for parents, schools and libraries intent on protecting children but also for such widely used non-porn Web services as MySpace.