Societal Impact of Internet-Based Digital Essay

As a result, contemporary computer systems and networks must be well protected against malicious intrusions and other attempts to gain unauthorized access to computers and network systems (Schneider, 1999).

Legal and Privacy Issues in the Workplace and Copyright Issues

The prevalence of digital technology for social networking has also generated entirely new areas of law and issues of public policy, such as in connection with the privacy of individuals in the workplace (Dershowitz, 2002). Nowadays, Internet use and e-mail communications are so prevalent and so much a part of both commercial enterprise functions and social networking that contemporary employers must routinely establish specific rules and policies for authorized non-work-related uses of their equipment and information systems. Likewise, the privacy rights of employees in connection with their Internet use at work are extremely limited and subject to monitoring to an extent that is prohibited by federal law with respect to other media (Dershowitz, 2002).

Finally, the digital communications revolution of the early 21st century has already threatened to change the fundamental way that music and motion pictures are produced and distributed. That is largely attributable to the manner in which digital social networking allows individual consumers to share digital files in a format that completely undermines the traditional business model of entities who rely on marketing and selling their products to individual consumers one at a time (Dershowitz, 2002; Personick & Patterson, 2003).Federal law already prohibits copyright violations of this nature but the shear number of computer users and the popularity of digital communications has made it substantially impossible to police this particular issue effectively (Dershowitz, 2002; Personick & Patterson, 2003).

Conclusion

Computer technology and digital communications evolved extremely quickly from their inception in the late 1940s and the 1960s, respectively. Within only a few years of the first availability of Internet communications, digital communications media have become the predominant medium for personal communications throughout American society. In the process, they have fundamentally changed the manner in which Americans conduct both business and social relationship alike. In all likelihood, that evolution is still closer to its beginning than to its pinnacle and advances in digital media will continue to shape American society for the foreseeable future.

References

Dam, K., Lin, H. (1996) Cryptography's Role in Security in the Information Age.

Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Dershowitz, A. (2002). Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age. New York:

Little Brown & Co.

Evans, H. (2004). They Made America. Little Brown & Co.: New York.

Horgan, J. (1997). The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight

of the Scientific Age. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

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