SIR FROI

• Research strategies and search tools are provided to find accurate and reliable information from the internet
• Major access routes for using internet resources are electronic mail, telnet, and e-mail groups
• After completing the course, students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of social, legal, and ethical issues, create business letters, reports, and memorandums, evaluate resource credibility, construct search strategies, and research strategies
• Legal, social, and ethical issues of the internet include freedom of speech, information privacy, and the impact of social media
• Cybercrime and security topics cover categories of cybercrime, types of cybercrime, scams, and types of malwares
• Plagiarism, copyright infringement, and fair use topics include differences between plagiarism and copyright, types of plagiarism, avoiding copyrights, and differences between copyright and fair use
• Electronic mail basics cover how e-mail works, e-mail protocols, e-mail addresses, and e-mail etiquettes
• Advanced search strategies and techniques include keyword and subject searching, phrase searching, wildcards, truncation, and parenthesis
• Advanced search operators cover Boolean operators, advanced Boolean usage, proximity operators, and Google search operators
• Introduction to search engines includes search engine components, importance of search engines, search engine types, and meta-search engines
• Evaluating information sources involves purpose and intended audience, authority and credibility, accuracy and reliability, currency and timeliness, and objectivity or bias
• Understanding different research perspectives includes research terminologies, developing research ethics and strategies, research methodologies, and research tools
• Social issues related to technology include communication breakdown, defamation of character, identity theft, cyberbullying, gaming addiction, and privacy concerns
• Legal issues related to the internet include copyright laws that protect original works, the Copyright Act of 1976, and the exclusive rights granted to copyright holders
• Copyright holder has exclusive rights such as reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, display, audio & video transmission
• Copyright is automatically created on original works
• Copyrights created after January 1, 1978 have protection during the life of the author plus 70 years
• In the case of more than one author, the protection term is 70 years after the death of the last surviving member
• In a 'Work-Made-For-Hire', the protection term is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from the year of creation
• Once copyrights expire, they become part of the public domain and are free to use by anyone
• In a 'Work-Made-For-Hire', the person hiring holds the copyright, not the designer or author
• If work was prepared by an employee within his job duties, the employer holds the copyright
• Websites are an odd variation to the 'Work-Made-For-Hire' rule, where the website designer holds the copyright unless specified otherwise in the contract
• Child Online Protection Act (COPA) makes it a crime to publish harmful sexual material for minors without restricting access
• Online harassment can occur through email, chat rooms, instant messaging, newsgroup posts, or message board posts
• When writing in a blog or posting to a message board, one cannot write untrue things about people that may affect their reputation
• Hate speech is protected under the first amendment in the U.S. except when it crosses into threats, intimidation, racial slurs, or racial hostility
• Web speech under Communism is heavily controlled, with actions to block certain websites and monitor users' online activities
• Ethical issues include ensuring equal access to media and technology to avoid the "digital divide" and enforcing acceptable use policies
• Privacy online is a key ethical question, balancing creativity and freedom of expression with concerns of mass surveillance
• Big data collection raises ethical questions about who the data is collected about, who makes decisions about it, and how reliable it is
• Net neutrality is the principle that internet pipelines should not pick and choose content, ensuring free flow of information
• Access to the internet raises ethical questions about whether it should be seen as a human right and how to create equality in internet access