Reviews for Direct democracy and international politics

The average rating for Direct democracy and international politics based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-08-13 00:00:00 Joseph Palino Digital Democracy Policy and Politics in the Wired world Cynthia Alexander and Leslie Pal The 12 contributors of this book cover a range of policy related-information and communication technology issues such as technologies effect on the power of the state, teledemocracy, the activities of women’s and indigenous groups, privacy and property rights. Overall the book highlights both the promise and problems of these technologies, acknowledging their novelty but also recognizing the persistence of more traditional modes of communication. Cynthia Alexander of Acacia University and Leslie Pal of Carleton University bring together a variety of articles that examine both the positive and the negative implications of electronic democracy for citizens and clients of public services. Their emphasis is on the diverse applications, case studies, and policy implications of electronic democracy within the North American context. Several chapters are skeptical about the degree to which ICT’s can displace traditional modes of communication. For instance Dineh Davis points out that, despite a remarkable use of the internet for organizing the Beijing conference on women, those attending were still motivated by the need to be in one spot and communicate with one another directly. In discussing Canadian Teledemocracy, Bill Cross points to its deficiencies relative to traditional democratic practices, including the loss of the opportunity to develop a sense of collectivity when individualized electronic voting is substituted for political conventions. Michael Organ similarly stresses the vulnerability of the new public gathering places in cyberspace to commercialization with its promotion of passive consumption. Leslie Pal notes that even the opponents of the internet-restricting United States Communication Decency Act, despite their enthusiasm for the internet, relied as well as on a more traditional use of the courts, rallies and letter writing campaigns, although these were supplemented by such new techniques as the broadcasting of the court proceedings over the internet. Controversial policy issues are also discussed. Julie Thornburn looks at the complex issues surrounding intellectual property, and how confidential information can be protected in the digital environment. Michael Mehta considers the regulation and control of pornography on the Net, in both the technical and social realm. Ann Cavoukian discusses privacy-enhancing technologies such as digital signatures and biometric encryption. Cynthia Alexander & Sue Stafford look at the ethical, legal, and gender issues of ICTs in healthcare, from access to privacy and confidentiality conundrums, to how workplace organization is being altered by the introduction of medical "expert" systems. Finally, James May makes a plea for indigenous communities to become wired so that ethnodiversity and various Native literacies will survive into the next century. …………… In the Philippine context the internet started in the country in the year 1994 and progressed throughout even though it was hindered by many obstacles such as cost, corruption in the government and unequal distribution of the internet infrastructure. Based on the report from Nielsen Philippines on September 30, 2011, 33% of Filipinos access the Internet, five percentage points below the Southeast Asian regional average of 38%. Internet penetration amongst consumers aged 15 to 19 was close to two-thirds (65%). 74% of 15-19 years identify Internet cafés as their main point of Internet access. In relation to this, digital democracy in the country is widely embraced specifically the young population. Both do have an advantage and downfall. Some advantage includes easy access to variety of information, where we are all open to give our opinion and be informed of the opinion of others. As well as fast information dissemination, just like last night while writing this review, in Facebook in less than 30 seconds earthquake and tsunami alert information was disseminated through different sources. Political views and debates are also shared over the web as well as current events all over the world. The downside part of this digital democracy as also discussed in this book includes life privacy, for example the issue of controversial sex videos of Hyden kho that spread all over the web, killing his morality as a person and nearly destroyed his entire life. Intellectual property issues also like copyrights of movies, music, softwares, books and writings are widely unregulated, creating loss and damage to the owner. And the most prevalent problem over this digital democracy nowadays is pornography. Unregulated pornography in the country is majority brought by the democracy over the web. Even the young population can access pornographic materials over the web. Control of our government in pornographic material in the web is not evident, since the government does not have the technology to keep track of these illegal materials in the net. It is a major problem since young people may be addicted to pornography and it may take same effect like drugs according to experts. Based on Pornography Time Statistics, every second - $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography. Underground Philippine porn industry earned about $1 billion in American dollars in 2006, ranking the illegal Philippine porn black market in eighth place around the world, tied together with Canada and Taiwan. 2006 data shows 4.2 million (12% of total websites) are pornographic and 420 million pages contain pornographic materials. Today according to statistics, pornography is incomprehensible in the web. Every second 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography. In that same second 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines. Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the US alone. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion. How much more today that we have devices capable of containing and spreading pornographic materials from one device to another. Pornography in the Philippines is defined by Philippine law in the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines and Republic Act No. 7610. According to this Philippine legislation, pornography are illegal doctrines, publications, shows, and other similar material or portrayals that advocate human immorality, obscenity, and indecency. But still it is very hard for the government to regulate the web pornography that endangers the young population to porn addiction without proper technology. This book was published last 2004, and what I can say, the problems indicated in the book due to digital democracy become worst specifically in our country. Our country must take steps to improve the information and communication technology, filtering and blocking illegal materials in the internet guided by proper policies and monitored implementations.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-06-03 00:00:00 Vicki Tapp Great book .... Good context