For my final project, I will seek to do a bit of investigative journalism to explore ethical issues surrounding fair Internet usage by students at universities (specifically WSU) and the various gray areas and problems school authorities have with enforcing their own policies. Illegal downloading, file-sharing, pornography, and other potential unlawful activity happening on the college’s network bandwidth are subtopics that will be useful as I delve into this topic. We already know the potential issues so I specifically want to inform on how the university deals with these issues and what causes them to take action. In an age where practically everyone is connecting to the Internet on a daily basis and with us living and working at such a large university, I want to know how WSU deals with Internet crimes while students are operating under university owned computers and Internet access. I may need to narrow the scope and focus of this topic because Internet crimes can include a variety of things. I may run into problems with university officials not knowing of or not willing to speak about what exactly WSU does with offenders of their policy. Are the policies truly enforced or are they merely “scarecrows” meant to dissuade and steer away the majority of the student body away from committing Internet faux-pas? What has been done? What is being done?
Jeff Snell:
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