By: Ashley Ginn and Jonathan Boland
Before we can discuss the legitimacy of the world wide web, first we must understand what legitimacy truly means. By definition legitimacy means to make legitimate, justify or make lawful. With that being said, I think it is best to discuss the importance of legitimacy on the web and its history. As we know there are laws setup that people are supposed to follow to make their lives safer. Such as wearing a seatbelt, stopping at stop signs etc. Just like real life, the digital world has its own set of rules, but they are a little less defined and not as well known as common everyday laws mentioned above.
When the Internet was first introduced, there weren’t any rules that needed to be followed, seeing as how the web was designed to enable more effective collaboration and communication between scientists and researchers whose background was the early Internet and previous ARPANET. In early American History, the essentially quiet little community was invaded by hordes of people who didn’t know any rules, and, unfortunately didn’t know enough to know that there should be rules. It is great when people publish content on the web because it increases its value for everyone, but everyone still needs to respect other people’s intellectual property.
Over time the web has evolved into what we know today as being a fundamentally social system open to everybody with Internet access. The current danger is the backlash against people who have been using the Web illegitimacy to their own advantage. History has shown that while legislation of morality does not immediately change the world, consistent enforcement of ethical laws does eventually create a new context where the desired legitimacy traits exist. Since the Web essentially has no such laws, and has allowed the cultural reinforcement of the “just go get it on the Internet; it’s free” attitude, the net effect is to undermine the original ethics on which the community was established. The current emphasis on Copyright law, DCMA and other similar efforts are a direct result of illegitimate behavior by a few (or in some cases, a large majority) who do not share the same legitimacy context, or that use the apparent anonymity of the Web to avoid accountability for their actions. The people who define the way the Web should evolve to address these issues cannot afford to only attempt to add new laws (system constraints) without attempting to address the social issue of legitimacy. If the establishment of a common context of legitimacy can be achieved (and we’re a long way from this happening), it will allow the Web to develop into the worldwide, collaborative community it was originally envisioned to be. http://atownley.org/2006/03/why-context-legitimacy-in-the-web/
Because there were so many issues with plagiarism on the web with people just using the information that was presented on the Internet with no such rules to follow, that is when copyrighting came into play. Now it is against the law the to take someone else’s work and make it your own. Most websites on the Internet have at the very bottom, their copyright logo. The importance of copyrighting is illustrated here http://www.k-state.edu/academicpersonnel/intprop/webtutor/sld004.htm. The most common use of plagiarism is found in schools and colleges. Students who have research papers to do find that it is easier to just copy and paste someone else’s work as their own instead of actually doing the assignment, failing to recognize the consequences of their actions. Colleges especially have strict guidelines that they enforce if a student is caught plagiarizing. More information about that is shown here https://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/RegsOrdsPolicies.html
One website that is growing very quickly is wikipedia.org. It is a free on line encyclopedia with millions of articles written in many different languages. Wikipedia is a very popular site when looking for information to source, which can cause a lot of frustration between students and teachers. That is because anyone can edit information on the site, but what a lot of people fail to realize is that having that feature creates somewhat of a healthy balance. When false information is posted on the site someone comes along and reads it, then corrects the errors that were made. Wikipedia is also making efforts to combat false information being posted. Users that are caught “vandalizing the site” may be blocked from making any further revisions to the on line encyclopedia. With hundreds of thousands of users on the site all the time, revisions are being made constantly. Students that find information on Wikipedia should cross reference the material they find with other sources, maybe even go old school and use a non-electronic source. In addition to this, some “important” topics such as pages about certain wars can’t be edited without approval, which virtually eliminates false information being posted.
The real problem that needs to be addressed with legitimacy on the web is students not being able to figure out whether a website is credible. Today’s students are often times too lazy to do a little research to figure out who the host of a site is and what interests they may have in posting information. Doing that would require students to sit down and actually think, which is something most of them are terrible at. Critical thinking skills seem to diminish with each new generation of students. With a lot of emphasis being put on math and science, students don’t learn a whole a lot about actually thinking for themselves and putting together their own thoughts. Today’s students are more into formula’s that can provide them instant gratification. The problem of legitimacy on the web is a whole lot deeper than one website posting false information. It happens to be a cost associated with today’s culture.
With all this information on the web students find that the Worldwide Web has become the future of the world; linking people to vast amounts of information with a couple clicks of a mouse. The Worldwide Web is a fragile environment that holds endless amounts of information that anyone can enter onto Web’s pages. On the Worldwide Web, there are no real regulations and guidelines that a person needs to follow when entering information, as one once needed with writing books, articles, documentaries, and other traditional text methods. Anything that one would like entered into the Web, regardless of its truth base, is fair entry. With the ability of any person to enter any information onto the web, one needs to learn how to judge a site for credibility and legitimacy. If the web is going to continue to grow and prosper, school’s need to take some initiative and make sure students know how to properly judge a website.
So the question that remains is, how can you tell if a website is legit or not? Simply follow these steps listed which explain to you if a website has accurate and legitimate information. http://library.fandm.edu/howto/websites.html
Websites
