Well our midterm has finally been put behind us, so I thought I'd post my website here.

http://www.freewebs.com/coolrowe/midterm/midtermfinal.htm

There. Now, we're doing with that.

Just wanted to talk about something I came across while surfing youtube. Ebay scamming. This basically means that an user will falsify or lie about an auction and make it seem as though you are bidding on something even though it may be a completely different object.

Anyways, what I came across was a court case on an Ebay scammer who explicitly stated that the bidders on the auction were bidding on a photo. She argued that it's not her fault that the bidder "can't read". She was the one obviously being sued. She lost this case (duh) and had to pay a fine of $5000.

Well what I want to say it, who's fault is it really? She did state that they were only bidding for photos of this phone, but if that was on physical paper, would that change the outcome of this prosecution? Isn't it like signing a contract? Although she did mess up by posting that the shipment would weigh like 4.7oz or something. If she hadn't put that down, it would clearly be an auction for a photograph of a phone.

Lets take this out of the digital world. Okay, I'm selling a photo of a phone. I would write a description of the phone in the photo, and at the end of everything, I would put in bold letters, this is for a photograph. If I were to then go from house to house at an attempt to sell this photograph, would I lose in court if I were to be sued for fraud? I don't think so. Especially if I write at the end of the contract that I am not liable for any misunderstandings or unsatisfactory outcomes. So why can't this relate to the online realm?

I guess it is still quite detached from the "real" realm. Although people do dream about how great it would be, there is no government watching over what we do online. So I guess as another "realm" it is not fully functional. However, it's scary to think about what it would be like to have a governed internet. Censorship would have a huge effect on people, and we'd have media problems all over again.

Well enough ranting. That's all folks.