Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Nobody likes being called a thief, even those that download pirated music online. But the fact remains that people who perform free music downloads or buy music online using credit cards, from controversial web sites may be part of international piracy.

For many shoppers online, “legal” and “legitimate” are two words that do not mean much and they would not mind buying music from unethical sources, if it means having to pay much less than what it actually sells for.

There are several websites that sell all the latest downloads from top American artists for pennies on the dollar. Music fans are only too thrilled at the prospect of getting music so cheap, especially with the quality and experience being almost the same as the music downloads found at legitimate music sites such as iTunes and others. They willingly enter into the black illegal world of piracy, where they are asked to use their credit cards to purchase music downloads.

What they fail to realize is that, by buying music from these illegal sources, they are becoming part of the theft and piracy racket.

Not many music aficionados who download music from these file-sharing sites really understand the extent of this crime, but even those that do, pay no heed because of the convenience associated with such sites, in terms of low prices and newest songs. (more…)

Outsourcing is subcontracting work to a third-party company, either for product creation, design or some service. Outsourcing has always been carried out by many major businesses as well as smaller companies. As far as corporations go, this means business process outsourcing (BPO.)

Internet has long been bitten by the outsourcing bug and most online businesses tend to allot most of their product creation and some have started outsourcing their marketing as well. Internet marketers outsource ebook creation, article writing, web development and designing, software development, making lists of affiliate programs with all the details, sorting particular information into lists and every other job that is either time consuming or requires expertise.

Outsourcing is being described by some as an unfortunate byproduct of a global economy. The thinking is simply that when the same work can be done by someone else cheaper, get it done. While this is certainly a more profitable way of conducting a business, it does have its negative side too.

It is said to be for people who have little patience and a lot of money. There may be people who think that looking at the disadvantages of outsourcing amounts to thinking negatively; however, it is always better to consider all the disadvantages in advance to avoid any future surprises or should we says shocks.

One of the most crucial facts of life is that no third person or company can understand the product better than the owner. In spite of their best efforts, they may not be able to help business owners reach their goals.

Communication gap is said to be one of the demerits of outsourcing, where the person who the work is outsourced to may not be familiar with a particular culture and that lack of understanding could reflect in the work performed. (more…)

With more and more websites allowing user comments and cloaking the users’ identities with the excuse of catering to the “free speech online” concept, malicious gossip is freely posted by negative elements who are secure in the knowledge that they are safe in their anonymity.

Previously, there used to be a few sites that allowed user comments, such as AOL and Yahoo! The advantage they had was that, when someone subpoenaed the website host, they could get the person’s home address and full name. But that is not the case anymore. Now, most of these websites that allow comments either wipe them out or do not store the details necessary to track down visitors to their sites.

Several users suffer due to this, as malicious posts about them do the rounds which give their full name, attacking their integrity in several ways, such as calling them anorexic, a homosexual, or that they have sexual diseases etc. These things just cannot be shrugged off as this has an enormous effect on the reputation and the mental state of being of the person concerned.

There are very few legal means to compel websites to police message boards. The Communications Decency Act of 1996, has protected these websites from suits concerning user comments for many years now. Their stand is that such sites are similar to public parks and are not considered publications.

According to some lawmakers, these protections are too broad and they are now asking for changes in the law in order to address this growing problem. (more…)