Sunday, May 11, 2014

Reaction Paper: Cybercrime

Fatemeh Halabisaz 

2013-14444

Forum on the Cybercrime Law Reflection

    The lecture on cybercrime law was interesting and eye opening, especially for college students like us who have social media accounts and can very well be victims of cybercrime.  The lecturer began with how communication technology came about from the ancient times up to the present. My mind was blown when I found out that we call journalists and the like as “press” because wine presses were used to print the newspapers! Then he went on with defining very important terms that were used in the cybercrime law, as to not get things confused. This was vital because we might have had different definitions for each (one student might have thought that the use of computer is limited to using the internet while another would have thought otherwise). After, he discussed the actual law and what he disagreed with it. This part was a bit technical, and to be honest, I kind of got lost a lot of the time. However, what I did understand was that his advocacy group thinks that some parts of the law have to be changed because there are already other laws that help fight these crimes (cybersex, child pornography etc.).

    I was definitely persuaded by the lecturer because of the points that he raised. He claimed that anyone could be accused of cybercrime if the law was to be followed. For example, even if the libelous document only stayed on your computer and not online, you might still be jailed for libel because the law says ‘on a computer’ and not ‘online’. This is scary because it seems like you can’t even express your opinions anymore. It seems that this law would totally defeat our freedom to say or accuse people of things. Also, I was persuaded when he said that there were other laws that already combatted the crimes mentioned and so they should just be removed from the new law altogether.

    All in all, I learned a lot from the lecture and I’m grateful that I was able to attend class that day. 

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