Daniel Cobb

Journal Entry #14

201S

April 7, 2024

Illegal things you do on the internet

The author highlights many things we do illegal on the internet unconsciously, while typically they don’t result in direct punishment but can inconsequently lead to various negative outcomes. These seemingly harmless actions when compounded, can lead to unintended consequences that affect not only individuals but also broader digital communities and society at large. One of the most serious violation that stood out to me was “Using unofficial streaming services to watch copyrighted movies, TV shows , music videos, or premium sports content online for free. I know many friends that do this to watch anime, sports or even to watch premium events like boxing. I believe the reason this is becoming more prevalent in today’s digital world is the sheer amount of subscriptions, many diffrent platforms offer subscriptions and non of the platforms transform between each other so buying every subscription across multiple accounts can be quite a headache. This typically drives consumers to shy away from paying and ultimately chose to use these unofficial streaming services. I think another major violation that is committed that typically isn’t as accidently as others is “performing illegal searches on the internet”. More common places for these activates in particular to take place is the dark web. Generally people go to the darkweb because of the anonymity it provides with the lack of traceable digital footprint. This is a serious violation to me because the amount of people that do this daily is unfathomable and hard to control. Sharing passwords, addresses, or photos of other without consent is a major violation and also stems from the darkweb as well. User sell information on induvial obviously without consent, they tend to sell passwords to accounts, credit cards, and valuable information. Not being able to pinpoint where you’re information is being sold it is hard to even realize that it’s being sold and typical takes until the victim experience’s losses finical or even direct confutation with the attacker. Faking your identity is such common practice on the internet and is very hurtful for everyone, not being able to trust anyone on the internet even in the slightest is so dishearten to me. Faking identities to connect with others or even try to build relationships with certain groups of people is truly disappointing. It’s such a hard topic to focus on because the lack of verification of identity on the internet. I’m not asking for complete lockdown on the internet but we need some form of verification of identity. Last but not least another indirect violation committed on the internet would be cyberbullying and trolling, while many just see it as some harmless words it can lead to deeper indirect actions. Being wary of what you say on the internet should be a priory for most and not use the internet to openly express hate towards others. While these violations defiantly committed on purpose by many I don’t think they grasp the full severity of their actions on the internet. Now by no means this excuse induvial actions but their should be some form of education on topics of such as well more responsibly for these platform owners.