I found this topic to be extremely interesting. The internet has created a new avenue for unethical, illegal and socially unacceptable behaviour. Businesses need to be vigilant to protect themselves, customer and employees from unlawful actions. There are so many areas with which businesses need to be compliant, such as free speech and copyright. Until doing some research on this topic I hadn’t considered that ecommerce sites can also get ripped off by fraudulent actions. I had only thought about the consumer side of it and hadn’t really thought about the fact that business need to protect themselves as well.
I can imagine the difficulty of trying to manage the laws that cover these areas because of the dynamic nature of e-commerce and the rapid development of the internet laws that cover the theses areas are constantly evolving; it would be a never ending cycle. Once you have covered on thing a new type of spam or scam emerges. I discovered that there are sites that developed my government agencies that deal with scam and that spam is actually illegal in Australia if it is unsolicited. Since purchasing some things overseas I have found that I have been getting a large about of spam which is really annoying I wish it was easier to stop.
When starting work at the company I currently work for I was required to sign an acceptable use policy (AUP) before I was able to access the company’s network. I had to agree not to access gambling or pornography sites, not to sexually harass other workers or clients and not use the companies email or internet for excessive personal use, any breeches of the AUP can result in potential termination. Every time that we log in we are agreeing to the terms of the AUP.
I found the section about hate sites and cyberbashing mind boggling, now if a customer isn’t happy with a product or service they voice their grievances it on a website and it has the potential for millions of people to view. The biggest problem I see with the internet is that anyone with a modem and a computer can be a published author!
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I entirely agree with your comments, the Internet has allowed the publication and distribution of many items which otherwise would have no publish-worthy merit. At my workplace we are also required to sign internet use policies, and although social networking sites have not yet been blocked I believe there have been concerns raised about the excessive use during work hours (by a minority of the staff). Social networking sites are also possibly an ideal breeding ground for spam, given the details available on them. Unfortnately, some web sites are unscrupulous enough to sell users details to advertising agencies (aka spam!) and despite Australia's supposed opt in policy, we are subjected to obscene amounts regardless. Like you mentioned, given the dynamic changing nature it is incredibly hard to police and keep up with the issues associated with online exchange. Possibly the only way to police the actions which occur on the Internet is to police your own (and families) activity and be cautious of what details you provide when unsure about a site. I have not gone into spam in detail as we would be here all day...the issues associated are simply too hard to keep up with for both users and computer technicians.
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