 | |
| Author | Sarah Jeong |
|---|---|
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Published | 2015 |
| Publisher | Forbes [1] The Verge (2018 reissue) |
| Media type | Digital (e-book) |
| ISBN | 978-0-692-18121-8 |
The Internet of Garbage is a 2015 non-fiction book by journalist and lawyer Sarah Jeong. [2] [3] [4] It discusses online harassment as a threat to the useful functions of the internet and argues for new approaches to managing the issue. The book was reissued in 2018 with a new preface by Jeong.
In 2015, Forbes published The Internet of Garbage in 2015 as part of their "Forbes Signature Series" of e-books. [5] In 2018, The Verge reissued a "1.5" version of the book with a new preface by Jeong after she joined the editorial board of The New York Times . [6]
The thesis of the book is that most of the internet has always been garbage, which has always threatened to make the internet useless. Spam is one such form of garbage, and it has been addressed, imperfectly but manageably, through the use of technology and human curation. Online harassment, especially of women and people of color, has become the newest kind of garbage, and new ways of thinking, new law, and new technologies are needed to manage it. [7] [8]
Written after the concentrated harassment campaigns perpetrated against Caroline Criado Perez in 2013 and multiple other women in the Gamergate controversy in 2014, the book deals with issues of online harassment, and especially gender- and race-related harassment, with an emphasis on the physical danger caused by doxing. [9] [10] [11] : 21 The book describes how harassment makes the Internet smaller, and less free for its targets, and seeks to broaden the frontier of free speech for all Internet users. [12] [13] [14] It also discusses the effects of online visibility on social reputation, [15] and spam. [16] [17]
Writing from a legal and policy perspective, Jeong describes how the regulations applied to the Internet, such as the DMCA and the Communications Decency Act, have been based in copyright law and are focused on taking down problematic content after it has been posted, and were designed to protect corporate interests. She describes how this has made user-generated social media much more viable than it could otherwise have been, but on the other hand, it has left platforms without a framework or legal motivation to address hate speech, harassment, and propaganda. [18] [19] The book suggests other approaches to dealing with harassment, more akin to the way that spam is filtered. [11] : 202 [8]
The Internet of Garbage was favorably received in the technology press [14] [20] and by feminist organizations. [21] Writing for Techdirt, Mike Masnick reviewed the book as "nuanced and well worth reading". [13] Author and professor Alan Jacobs called it "very well done, and rather sobering". [7] Fortune called the 2018 reissue "more valuable than ever". [22]
A copyfraud is a false copyright claim by an individual or institution with respect to content that is in the public domain. Such claims are wrongful, at least under US and Australian copyright law, because material that is not copyrighted is free for all to use, modify and reproduce. Copyfraud also includes overreaching claims by publishers, museums and others, as where a legitimate copyright owner knowingly, or with constructive knowledge, claims rights beyond what the law allows.
Internet censorship in the United States is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship.
The Streisand effect is a phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information, often via the Internet. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project’s photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003.
William Haskell Alsup is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology's legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution. It focuses on intellectual property, patent, information privacy and copyright reform in particular.
Although Internet censorship in Germany has traditionally been rated as low, it is practised directly and indirectly through various laws and court decisions. German law provides for freedom of speech and press with several exceptions, including what The Guardian has called "some of the world's toughest laws around acclaimed propaganda". An example of content censored by strict German law are resources meant to enlighten citizens about the Holocaust due to "inaccurate portrayal of history". If caught viewing censored information the German government can punish the viewer up to 15 years in prison as of a court date ruled in early 2000's. According to the Google Transparency Report, the German government is frequently one of the most active in requesting user data after the United States.
Internet censorship in South Korea is prevalent, and contains some unique elements such as the blocking of pro-North Korea websites, and to a lesser extent, Japanese websites, which led to it being categorized as "pervasive" in the conflict/security area by OpenNet Initiative. South Korea is also one of the few developed countries where pornography is largely illegal, with the exception of social media websites which are a common source of legal pornography in the country. Any and all material deemed "harmful" or subversive by the state is censored. The country also has a "cyber defamation law", which allow the police to crack down on comments deemed "hateful" without any reports from victims, with citizens being sentenced for such offenses.
V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-American engineer, politician, entrepreneur and anti-vaccine activist. He has become known for promoting conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and unfounded medical claims. Ayyadurai holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including a Ph.D. in biological engineering, and is a Fulbright grant recipient.
Social spam is unwanted spam content appearing on social networking services, social bookmarking sites, and any website with user-generated content. It can be manifested in many ways, including bulk messages, profanity, insults, hate speech, malicious links, fraudulent reviews, fake friends, and personally identifiable information.
Derek Khanna is an American conservative political commentator and columnist. He has written for the Washington Post and The Guardian, maintains a blog with Forbes, and is a regular contributor with The Atlantic, National Review Online, Human Events and Politix. He is also an adviser and board member to several technology start-ups. He was listed on Forbes's 2014 list of 30 under 30 for law in policy for his work on technology policy and the successful phone unlocking campaign which resulted in the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act passing Congress and being signed into law by President Obama on August 1, 2014.
Operation In Our Sites is an ongoing effort by the U.S. government's National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center to detect and hinder intellectual property violations on the Internet. Pursuant to this operation, governmental agencies arrest suspects affiliated with the targeted websites and seize their assets including websites' domain names. Web users intending to access targeted websites are directed to the server operated by the U.S. government, and greeted with a graphic bearing the seals of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (NIPRCC), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Between 2011 and 2018, a series of disputes took place about the copyright status of selfies taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to the British nature photographer David Slater. The disputes involve Wikimedia Commons and the blog Techdirt, which have hosted the images following their publication in newspapers in July 2011 over Slater's objections that he holds the copyright, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who have argued that the macaque should be assigned the copyright.
Danielle Keats Citron is a Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches information privacy, free expression, and civil rights law. Citron is the author of "The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age" and "Hate Crimes in Cyberspace" (2014). She also serves as the Vice President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, an organization which provides assistance and legislative support to victims of online abuse. Prior to joining UVA Law, Citron was an Austin B. Fletcher Distinguished Professor of Law at Boston University Law School, and was also the Morton & Sophia Macht Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law.
Thomas Goolnik is a person formerly associated with the company TLD Networks. He has achieved notoriety in a battle over the European "Right To Be Forgotten" (RTBF), in particular whether current articles written about the RTBF are also subject to that regulation.
Social justice warrior (SJW) is a pejorative term and internet meme used for an individual who promotes socially progressive, left-wing and liberal views, including feminism, civil rights, gay and transgender rights, identity politics, political correctness and multiculturalism. The accusation that somebody is an SJW carries implications that they are pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and engaging in disingenuous arguments.
Sarah Jeong is an American journalist specializing in information technology law and other technology-related topics. A member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 2018 to 2019, she was formerly a senior writer for The Verge and a contributing editor for Vice Media's Motherboard website. She is the author of The Internet of Garbage, a non-fiction book about online harassment.
Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate", and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings. The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki, which The Independent called, "..the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".
Online hate speech is a type of speech that takes place online with the purpose of attacking a person or a group based on their race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, and/or gender. Online hate speech is not easily defined, but can be recognized by the degrading or dehumanizing function it serves.
Richard Liebowitz is a currently-suspended American lawyer and photographer specializing in copyright law. He is known for filing a high number of lawsuits against media organizations on behalf of photographers who assert that their images have been used without permission. This practice has polarized the U.S. media industry. Liebowitz has been sanctioned and labeled a "copyright troll" by courts for his conduct.
The White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse is a United States task force whose stated function is to address and prevent online harassment and abuse. It will particularly focus on online harassment and abuse against LGBT people and women, who are disproportionately affected. The task force was launched on June 16, 2022 in an announcement made by Vice President Kamala Harris.