The importance of SOPA, Leveson and Koobface for IT and media graduates

There is a lot going on in the world of online media at the moment, with developments around the world poised to have a potentially massive effect on the online and offline media industries. For any graduates interested in getting a career in these industries, understanding these developments can be a good way to display commercial awareness.

SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill and its sister, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) bill, are currently the focus of attention for many Americans. The protest the bills generated – a one-day 'blackout' on 18 January – received much more publicity than the bills did themselves.

In essence, the bills are designed to protect the film and music industries (among others) from the file-sharing websites that are siphoning off a chunk of their revenues. However, the legislation is a very heavy-handed proposal, which would allow lawmakers to instantly block any website which even contains links to file-sharing websites.

Large-scale, impossible-to-monitor sites like Google, Facebook and Wikipedia are understandably nervous.

What is more, this legislation would allow America to take action on websites hosted on foreign soil, effectively taking control of world media. This would sound familiar to 23-year-old Sheffield student Richard O’Dwyer who is now facing extradition and a 10 year US jail sentence for his link-hosting website TVShack.

Despite the blackout, withdrawals of support and President Obama’s opposition, PIPA will still go before a vote on 24 January. The result will have an important impact for many sections of the media.

The Leveson Inquiry

The events leading to the Leveson Inquiry broke in July 2011 when the Guardian alleged that News of the World investigators had hacked into murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile and deleted messages.

This led to the 168-year-old NOTW biting the dust, unleashing its 200 employees onto the already crowded job market and prompting an investigation into ethics in the press.

The ongoing inquiry is a tour-de-force of all the wrongs committed by the press over the years, including phone hacking, computer hacking, ‘blagging’, breach of privacy, contempt of court, libel, corruption and more.

For their part, editors have insisted that they need a way to compete with social media like Twitter – where many news stories now break – while maintaining their independence from government and freedom of speech.

The hearings opened on 14 November 2011 and are likely to continue for some time. Lord Leveson’s eventual findings and the actions they inspire will have a significant effect on the British media for years to come.

Koobface

If the word ‘Koobface’ sounds familiar it may be because it’s an anagram of Facebook, one of the most successful sites on the internet. But actually it’s the name of a worm designed to spread across the social network.

It stole passwords, usernames and other details, but not credit card details – probably one of the reasons why it remained active for so long. Koobface sold these details to unscrupulous advertisers, aping the revenue-generating tactics that Facebook uses itself.

The good news is that the threat has been reduced. This story broke on 17 January, when Facebook announced the names and identities of the five hackers responsible. The bad news is that investigators drew a blank at the suggested locations, and the gang responsible is still at large.

The unusual move of exposing the hackers, rather than waiting for law enforcement to apprehend them, cut the Koobface gang off from the advertisers who were their main source of income.

The fact that this tactic was successful provides a precedent for websites and social media to take personal security into their own hands. This story will also add to the debate surrounding social networks such, and whether they place enough premium on users’ privacy.

Lessons for graduates

SOPA and the Leveson Inquiry are two sides of the same phenomenon. Social media is becoming a strong force for sharing information and media, with offline media struggling to keep up. A transition from one to the other isn’t going to be gentle.

The Koobface development adds another dimension. As with the 18 January blackout, this is an example of new media protecting its own interests directly. Any new graduate moving into information technology, media, or even the legal sector will benefit from understanding these developing events and how they will affect them.

Posted by Ross_TARGETjobs on 20 January 2012

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