Facebook Limbo: Private space or digital commons?

Experts are unsure whether millions of Facebook accounts globally are private or public spaces.

“There’s no well defined legal answer,” said Professor Avner Levin, director of Ryerson University’s Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute.

Levin said that laws haven’t evolved fast enough to provide sufficient answers.

Avner Levin, head of Ryerson University’s Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute.

That’s why a Swiss bank fired a woman who called in sick when bosses discovered she was on Facebook instead of at work.

“The company says it followed a simple logic: that those who are well enough to use Facebook with a migraine are well enough to work with a migraine,” the BBC News reported.

Regulations policing social networks at universities also follow as society is unable to clearly say whether their Facebook profiles are private property.

Popular social networking site Facebook.

Some courts, Levin said, have ruled that once someone has as many 600 friends on Facebook, their profile becomes public domain.

However, Levin said, a user’s number of friends shouldn’t define whether their profile is public information. Rather, the way information is posted and the access users grant to others determines whether their profile is private or public.

“If you don’t restrict your privacy settings you might as well just write a blog,” Levin said.

WEB ALLOWS "SCHLUBS" TO COMPETE WITH BIG MEDIA

The internet makes anyone a journalist and shatters the traditional media’s monopoly on news.

Tony Veltri is the best example of this. He’s editor, reporter and designer of the New Tecumseth Free Press Online.

He was first a writer for the Alliston Herald before he was fired for insubordination.

View Larger Map

MAP OF NEW TECUMSETH, Ont., courtesy Google.

It was then the internet arrived.

“I had a flash about how great an idea it would be to publish a newspaper in every sense of the word except it would be online,” Veltri said.

Veltri launched his website then reporting council and school borad meetings, crime and court stories and other local news. He also started some investigative reporting.

Screen shot of madhunt.com

“I'm a one man band really, going on a full 11 years which makes my site older than Google and the Time Warner AOL merger,” he said.

Veltri said his operation could never exist if it wasn’t for the world wide web.

“The internet is the great equalizer. Because a schlub like me working from home can compete mano a mano with the Metroland chain of newspapers and make a solid go of it. And it doesn't cost a fortune to do it,” Veltri said.

PRISONS DON’T WORK: JOURNALIST SAYS

Toronto's prison system is becomming overloaded and a waste of tax dollars says Toronto Star Journalist Jim Rankin, yesterday.

"It's just easy to build a prison. We're spending a lot of money on police. That's more police and more salaries," Rankin told a lecture hall of journalism students at Ryerson University.

Students listened to how the award winning journalist developed the Star's web feature Crime and Punishment.

The project shows for approximately every prisoner in jail the federal government spends $250 a day. And the province spends $160.

His work maps communities with the highest incacerations.

"It's where single mothers live. It's where high rates of diabetes occurr. It's where they have the lowest levels of eductaion."

Salaries for lawyers, courts, judges, police and maximum security prisons could be spent on other social services.

"We havem't put more social workers in schools. Instead we're putting more police officers."

ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION

· Reduce poverty and school dropout rates.

· Invest in comprehensive childhood development initiatives.

· Make housing affordable.

· Increase access to health care and rehabilitative programs.

· Reduce incarceration rates, partly through alternatives to jail, and direct savings to neighbourhoods with a high number of offenders.

Source: thestar.com

Toronto's breweries are must sees on any tourist's itenarary.

The Distillery District attracts many visitors each year. Englishmen James Worts and William Gooderham opened the facility in 1831. And at one point it brewed almost half of Ontario's total alchohol production.

Many other breweries dot Toronto. Underneath the CN Tower sits Steam Whistle Brewing. The brewery only began in 1998 after three brewers decided to open the business when they just lost their jobs.

The city produces many beers, including pilsners, lagers and stouts. Most beers are made from water, malted hops and yeast. However, Toronto beer manufacturer Cool Beer makes one of its beers from British Columbia’s finest hemp.