Information Technology: Contemporary Technology Issues

The use of a computer network, especially the internet, for crime.

Cyberbullying refers to the use of technological communication tools and devices to intentionally inflict harm on an individual or group.

The convergence of terrorism and cyberspace, particularly the politically motivated sabotage of information systems.

Rogue computer program, typically a short program designed to disperse copies of itself to other computers and disrupt those computers' normal operations.

Unauthorized access to computer systems, either for fun or for malicious or fraudulent purposes.

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes of the new millennium.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
Information access refers to the ability to keep watch on how governments govern and the right to peruse freely the facts and figures that officials have collected about everything from annual rainfall to budget expenditures to criminal records.

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
An online, nonprofit organization that collects and publishes secret and classified documents from governments and organizations of various kinds, WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Australian-born Internet activist Julian Assange.

The digital divide refers to the disparity between those that have access to information and communication technology (ICT) and those that do not.

Specialists estimate that between 6% and 14% of Internet users in the United States have a destructive dependency on the Web and that the vast majority of these people do not realize they have a problem.

Proposed that the segments of a population that have higher socioeconomic status (SES) tend to acquire information flowing from the media at a faster rate than do segments with lower status and that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease over time.

Concern has arisen in recent years that modern computer technology may alter the balance of power between individuals, corporations, and the government in ways that compromise privacy.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
Computer technology can affect privacy in a number of ways.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
In the Internet age, data security has become of paramount importance because of the literally millions of users in cyberspace who might, accidentally or otherwise, invade and compromise the integrity of data on the computer calling into the Net.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Copying of digital files from one computer to another, usually over a network or the Internet.

Intellectual property is knowledge or expression owned by an individual or a corporate entity. Intellectual property consists of three customary domains: copyright, patent, and trademark.

Napster is the name of an Internet music company and of a real-time system by which Internet users can locate the MP3 files (a standard technology and format for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file) of other users.

Free and open source software (F/OSS) is emerging as a promising alternative to proprietary software.

Piracy of intellectual property refers to the unauthorized use, reproduction, and/or distribution of protected material such as computer software, video games, music, or movies.