Epidemic-based self-organization in peer-to-peer systems

Steen, M.R. [Promotor]van Tanenbaum, A.S. [Promotor

Reducing Efficiency of Connectivity-Splitting Attack on Newscast via Limited Gossip

Newscast is aPeer-to-Peer, nature-inspired gossip-based data exchange protocol used for information dissemination and membership management in large-scale, agent-based distributed systems. The model follows a probabilistic scheme able to keep a self-organised, small-world equilibrium featuring a complex, spatially structured and dynamically changing environment. Newscast gained popularity since the early 2000s thanks to its inherent resilience to node volatility as the protocol exhibits strong self-healing properties. However, the original design proved to be surprisingly fragile in a byzantine environment subjected to cheating faults. Indeed, a set of recent studies emphasized the hard-wired vulnerabilities of the protocol, leading to an efficient implementation of a malicious client, where a few naive cheaters are able to break the network connectivity in a very short time. Extending these previous works, we propose in this paper a modification of the seminal protocol with embedded counter-measures, improving the resilience of the scheme against malicious acts without significantly affecting the original Newscast’s proper- ties nor its inherent performance. Concrete experiments were performed to support these claims, using a framework implementing all the solutions discussed in this work

Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion

382 p.Libro ElectrónicoEach of us has been in the computing field for more than 40 years. The book is the product of a lifetime of observing and participating in the changes it has brought. Each of us has been both a teacher and a learner in the field. This book emerged from a general education course we have taught at Harvard, but it is not a textbook. We wrote this book to share what wisdom we have with as many people as we can reach. We try to paint a big picture, with dozens of illuminating anecdotes as the brushstrokes. We aim to entertain you at the same time as we provoke your thinking.Preface Chapter 1 Digital Explosion Why Is It Happening, and What Is at Stake? The Explosion of Bits, and Everything Else The Koans of Bits Good and Ill, Promise and Peril Chapter 2 Naked in the Sunlight Privacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned 1984 Is Here, and We Like It Footprints and Fingerprints Why We Lost Our Privacy, or Gave It Away Little Brother Is Watching Big Brother, Abroad and in the U.S. Technology Change and Lifestyle Change Beyond Privacy Chapter 3 Ghosts in the Machine Secrets and Surprises of Electronic Documents What You See Is Not What the Computer Knows Representation, Reality, and Illusion Hiding Information in Images The Scary Secrets of Old Disks Chapter 4 Needles in the Haystack Google and Other Brokers in the Bits Bazaar Found After Seventy Years The Library and the Bazaar The Fall of Hierarchy It Matters How It Works Who Pays, and for What? Search Is Power You Searched for WHAT? Tracking Searches Regulating or Replacing the Brokers Chapter 5 Secret Bits How Codes Became Unbreakable Encryption in the Hands of Terrorists, and Everyone Else Historical Cryptography Lessons for the Internet Age Secrecy Changes Forever Cryptography for Everyone Cryptography Unsettled Chapter 6 Balance Toppled Who Owns the Bits? Automated Crimes—Automated Justice NET Act Makes Sharing a Crime The Peer-to-Peer Upheaval Sharing Goes Decentralized Authorized Use Only Forbidden Technology Copyright Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance The Limits of Property Chapter 7 You Can’t Say That on the Internet Guarding the Frontiers of Digital Expression Do You Know Where Your Child Is on the Web Tonight? Metaphors for Something Unlike Anything Else Publisher or Distributor? Neither Liberty nor Security The Nastiest Place on Earth The Most Participatory Form of Mass Speech Protecting Good Samaritans—and a Few Bad Ones Laws of Unintended Consequences Can the Internet Be Like a Magazine Store? Let Your Fingers Do the Stalking Like an Annoying Telephone Call? Digital Protection, Digital Censorship—and Self-Censorship Chapter 8 Bits in the Air Old Metaphors, New Technologies, and Free Speech Censoring the President How Broadcasting Became Regulated The Path to Spectrum Deregulation What Does the Future Hold for Radio? Conclusion After the Explosion Bits Lighting Up the World A Few Bits in Conclusion Appendix The Internet as System and Spirit The Internet as a Communication System The Internet Spirit Endnotes Inde

Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia

Digital media histories are part of a global network, and South Asia is a key nexus in shaping the trajectory of digital media in the twenty-first century. Digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others are deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people around the world, shaping how people engage with others as kin, as citizens, and as consumers. Moving away from Anglo-American and strictly national frameworks, the essays in this book explore the intersections of local, national, regional, and global forces that shape contemporary digital culture(s) in regions like South Asia: the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, the ongoing transformation of established media industries, and emergent forms of digital media practice and use that are reconfiguring sociocultural, political, and economic terrains across the Indian subcontinent. From massive state-driven digital identity projects and YouTube censorship to Tinder and dating culture, from Twitter and primetime television to Facebook and political rumors, Global Digital Cultures focuses on enduring concerns of representation, identity, and power while grappling with algorithmic curation and data-driven processes of production, circulation, and consumption

The Internet and professional journalism: content, practice and values in Irish online news

Journalism’s encounter with the Internet has engendered a multi-layered debate concerning the place of established news media and its practitioners in public communication. The Internet and its affordances re-animate familiar themes in discussions of journalism, not least concerning power relations, gate-keeping and objectivity claims. In many popular and some academic analyses, so-called ‘traditional’ journalism is under examination because of economic forces driving the development of digital networked media, but also because the univocal nature of older media, with its enclosed culture, is considered at odds with the potential of a reconstituted public sphere founded in the open, interactive system of emerging spaces. This study, related to a wider European research project, investigates the intermeshing of Irish journalism’s professional output, practices and normative values, as materialized online and as expressed in the opinions and attitudes of practising journalists as expert respondents, with the potentialities of the Internet. Where much of the discourse to date is framed in a narrative of progress or, similarly, posits a research timeline maturing from examination of outputs to constructivist investigation of news work processes, this study seeks to find commonalities between professional journalism, as expressed in print, and the evolving online information ecology, and to critically examine claims of advancement

Rethinking copyright and the internet: a new model for users’ rights

The laws of copyright can be slower to adapt and evolve than the industries they regulate. As the landscape of how protected works are made and how the public views how those works should be treated changes, the law does not seamlessly follow in course. Rather, it typically slowly grows obsolete and then undergoes periodic points of drastic redefinition in order to adapt. Since the Statute of Anne, the foundation for modern copyright law across the globe, many nations have implemented subsequent reforms to their copyright acts to adapt both to the modern world and to previous failures of the law. The British Copyright Act of 1956 adapted the law to a world connected in trade by expanding protection for works whose initial publication was outside of Britain.1 In 1998, the United States enacted one of the most important pieces of copyright legislation as a reaction to the effects of the internet and technology on the enforceability of copyright law. This law is known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA,among its many alterations and additions to the law, created a safe-harbour provision so that online service providers could avoid vicarious liability for the actions of their members- moulding the law to the digital space.2 In 2012, Canada passed its groundbreaking Copyright Modernization Act which sought to address the rise of user-generated content by legitimising transformative works made for non-commercial purposes.3 Thus, the overarching trend in copyright law is for it to gradually grow obsolete or ineffective within the scope of the industrial or technological power of the market until a great force of legislation brings the law back in line. This thesis will argue that we have reached such a turning point. It asserts that an inability to adequately apply current law, seen through impotent enforcement mechanisms online, coupled with vague legal boundaries has brought about a need for redefinition within copyright law. Further, it hypothesises that the that the property-law model used as a basis for copyright law today is the root of issues with balancing user’s rights against creators' rights and is no longer the ideal means to protect creative works online. It will demonstrate how technology and global communication have changed the culture of creativity and creative dissemination in such a way that copyright law is no longer a competent tool in protecting and fostering the development of a large body of creative works. It will examine current would-be solutions to the problem of online infringements and analyse their inadequacies. In analysing the current relevant legal mechanisms, their failures and successes, as well as how the notion of property-like rules influence these failures and successes, it comes to the conclusion that stepping away from this property model and towards a system of liability rules online will not only help to foster new works, but will benefit those who own the rights to existing works as well. It concludes with a suggestion for a newly constructed system of liability rules, targeting areas previously discussed where the law is failing, to be applied in lieu of property rules for certain aspects of copyright protection. The overarching research question this thesis serves to answer is how can we appropriately balance author’s rights with the dissemination of information in a digital world in a way that leads to a system of copyright law that is practical, fair, and enforceable? It is intended to highlight and address the growing inefficacy of copyright law in the digital world, analyse the weaknesses of modern attempts to adapt the law to the digital space, and offer unique solutions to the problems it addresses. It analyses copyright law from a global perspective through the lens of online infringements. I adopt this global perspective for two reasons. First, while copyright law is strictly territorial, it serves at the behest of a global economy and has been largely unified through treaties with respect to minimum requirements for protection and framework standards.4 Second, a global perspective is important for the comparative analyses I employ. The comparisons target the successes and failures resulting from enacted solutions to online infringement in an attempt to offer a workable solution that may be applied anywhere. Thus, this thesis sets out to be a policy analysis that dissects copyright law and online infringement as a whole. 1 Copyright Act 1956 (UK) 2 Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 (USA) 3 Copyright Modernisation Act 2012 (CA) 29.21 4 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Paris Text 1971

From the polis to Facebook : social media and the development of a new Greek public sphere

The objective of this research project is to critically examine how social and new media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and online radio have influenced the potential development or rejuvenation of public sphere, civil society, and public discourse in Greece during the years of the country’s economic, political, and social crisis. The project attempts to answer how social and new media have impacted the public sphere and civil society, how social and new media have contributed to the formation of new political and social movements, how social and new media have contributed to the formation of alternative online news sources, and whether social and new media are considered to be more credible sources of news and information compared to mainstream media institutions. Greece was selected as the site for this research project in response to the prevailing view found in the body of academic literature that Greece’s public sphere and civil society have historically been underdeveloped when compared to the countries of Western Europe and the United States. In addition, the political and economic upheaval which accompanied the Greek economic crisis and the country’s location at the intersection of Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, presented intriguing possibilities for research and for examining the role that new technologies can play in the redevelopment of the public sphere and civil society during a time of crisis. Interviews were conducted with over 120 individuals, including elected officials and political personnel, journalists, media professionals, bloggers, academics, opinion leaders, activists, and representatives of organizations active within civil society. Five illustrative examples of organizations with a prominent social media presence, including a non-governmental organization, a political party, a mainstream media corporation, an online news portal, and an alternative online radio station were examined. Electronic survey research was also performed across three sample populations, including Greece’s representatives in the European Parliament, editors of major Greek newspapers, and representatives from organizations operating in the civil society sector. This dissertation is based on longitudinal, multi-year research performed in Greece between September 2012 and August 2017.Radio-Television-Fil

2018, UMaine News Press Releases

This is a catalog of press releases put out by the University of Maine Division of Marketing and Communications between March 2, 2018 and December 31, 2018

US-American inoutside perspectives in globalized anglophone literatures

This study examines the way in which contemporary anglophone novels from around the globe engage with the USA as a political entity and as a point of reference for individual and collective processes of identity formation and cultural exchange. The analytical perspective employed relies on a backdrop of globalization theory, of research on anti-Americanism, on conceptions of the performative and on stereotypes. In examining nine twenty-first-century novels, the author applies an adapted version of Obioma Nnaemeka’s concept of the ‘inoutsider’ and pays particular attention to narrative framing as well as to the novels’ political and historical con- and subtexts. The larger aim of the study is to promote a scholarly perspective that goes beyond the common distinction between English studies, American studies and the so-called ‘New English literatures’. The scholarly project is to help establish a disciplinary framework broadly defined as ‘globalized anglophone studies’. In addition to this, the study contributes to the ongoing debate around reformed notions of cosmopolitanism, subjecting the cosmopolitan perspective in literary studies to a critical rereading. Primary texts: Zadie Smith, On Beauty; Peter Carey, His Illegal Self; Imraan Coovadia, Green-Eyed Thieves; Salman Rushdie, Fury; Caryl Phillips, Dancing in the Dark; Chris Abani, The Virgin of Flames; Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Hari Kunzru, Transmission; DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little.Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht zeitgenössische anglophone Romane in Hinblick auf ihre Auseinandersetzung mit den USA als politische Instanz und als Bezugspunkt für individuelle und kollektive Prozesse der Identitätsbildung und des kulturellen Austausches. Die analytische Perspektive, die in der Arbeit entwickelt wird, bezieht sich auf Globalisierungstheorie sowie auf Forschung zum Thema Antiamerikanismus, unterschiedliche Konzeptionen des Performativen und auf Stereotypenforschung. Die Verfasserin untersucht neun zeitgenössische Romane und verwendet hierbei eine adaptierte Version von Obioma Nnaemekas Konzept des ‚Inoutsiders‘. Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich insbesondere mit Erzähltechnik und den politischen und historischen Kon- und Subtexten der Romane. Darüber hinaus setzt die Verfasserin sich für eine wissenschaftliche Herangehensweise ein, die die übliche Trennung zwischen Anglistik, Amerikanistik und den sogenannten ‚neuen englischsprachigen Literaturen‘ überwindet. Die Arbeit ist insofern ein Versuch, die disziplinären Rahmenbedingungen für eine neue Tradition der ‚globalisierten anglophonen Studien‘ mitzugestalten. Weiterhin setzt sie sich kritisch mit der derzeitigen Debatte zu Neudefinitionen des Begriffs ‚Kosmopolitanismus‘ und mit dem Potenzial einer kosmopolitischen Perspektive in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Analyse auseinander. Primärtexte: Zadie Smith, On Beauty; Peter Carey, His Illegal Self; Imraan Coovadia, Green-Eyed Thieves; Salman Rushdie, Fury; Caryl Phillips, Dancing in the Dark; Chris Abani, The Virgin of Flames; Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Hari Kunzru, Transmission; DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little