The global village will have its village idiots, but can the internet afford the exercise of extreme stupidity through actions by those with a lack of conscious control
Jordanian websites went offline yesterday [August 29, 2012] in protest against proposed government censorship plans and new restrictions on the Internet.
Where were you when news of the tsunami hit Japan in 2011? How about when Michael Jackson died? Probably online, according to many experts who claim that social media has become the main media source for hundreds of millions of people.
Remember the heady days of 2002 when all you had was a 56k modem which took 30 seconds to download a picture and fifteen minutes to download an mp3? Remember how everyone used Internet Explorer and the mobile internet was awful on a tiny screen? A lot has changed on the web in the last decade.
Google announced today that it will lower the search engine rankings of websites that receive a high number of DMCA takedown requests, independent of whether the linked content is lawful or not. The algorithm change is the result of extensive lobbying efforts by Hollywood and the major music labels, and could severely degrade the rankings of websites such as The Pirate Bay, FilesTube, and even YouTube.