Journal Entry #3 (Digital Rights and Responsibilities)

For this assignment, we created our own Ten Commandments regarding digital rights and responsibilities. The assignment was actually quite fun! We were able to use "ancient language" while talking about modern technology and it was easier to understand the untold rules of the internet. The most surprising part of this assignment for me was how serious some rules should be taken. For example, downloading music and pictures illegally or using someone else's art and needing to pay them can create a huge situation out of something very small that could have been avoided if the "rules" were respected. I believe that the majority of people act responsibly on the internet, but there will always be the odd ones that decide to ruin good things for others! I think that a lot of people are using the internet responsibly because it is becoming more and more developed and professional and just a safer place in general. Social media is being used by more adults for business purposes and parents are being more cautious of their children's activity on the internet. Out of all ten commandments that I created, the most important one, in my opinion, would be "Thou shalt not use the internet for illegal activity" because it can result in horrible consequences. On the internet, there are many people who share videos of crime scenes or deaths and others run drug selling companies. This section of the web can be very dangerous to even enter if the activity done there is serious enough and the majority of these websites and videos are posted and are never reported to the police because they are so difficult to find and the poster could be anyone!

I believe that the biggest issue around digital rights and responsibilities among young people is definitely cyberbullying, and using the anonymity of the internet to cause harm to others. Teenagers tend to use the internet to share any hatred they have for a certain person because most of the time, there's nothing anyone can do about it or the victim keeps quiet about it! The act of cyberbullying can result in death which is one the worst possible consequence of any act and it has happened many times in the past. Unfortunately, I don't believe that the internet will be free of cyberbullying as a whole, but it is being taken care of in some places in the world that have made it illegal, and the people doing the bullying are being charged or, in the more serious cases, arrested.