In 2011, Congress proposed two relatively similar bills—House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Senate’s Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA)—that legislators and lobbyists hailed as providing important protections against piracy and counterfeiting online. Yet, this apparently strong support was…
Since the goal of brand management is to optimize the market’s perception of a brand, it follows that effective brand management requires establishing and maintaining a relationship with the target market. Recently, much of relationship development has been accomplished through social media. Although, brand awareness can expand with social media,…
Crowdfunding involves a large number of people contributing small amounts of money to finance a business venture, typically an early-stage startup company. Over the past several years, online crowdfunding platforms have become a popular tool for new businesses and entrepreneurs to market inventions, generate revenue, and increase customer base. While…
With technological advances rendering complex cellular devices increasingly affordable, the majority of the world population is now using smartphones. Further, applications that employ global positioning system (GPS) tracking allow these worldwide smartphone users to take advantage of location-specific information and social networking. In addition, GPS technologies have aided law enforcement…
The recreational use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), has become increasingly popular in the United States. While such use has gone largely unregulated due to the unlikeliness that these drones will obstruct air traffic, commercial and governmental use of drones—especially larger drones—has sparked safety and privacy concerns leading…
In an online penny auction, participants purchase bids for a fee, with each bid placed on a particular item increasing the price of the item by a small increment (e.g., one penny) and extending the bidding period for that item by a few seconds. The last participant to place a…
The recent cyberattack on Anthem, Inc., one of the largest health insurance companies in the United States, illustrates the persistence and severity of the risk of data breaches. On February 4, 2015, Anthem confirmed that one of its databases had been hacked. The data breach exposed personal information of approximately…
Net neutrality refers to the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all Internet traffic equally, regardless of the source. Among other implications, net neutrality includes the idea that a website should not be given the option to pay an Internet service provider a premium to speed up…
Virtual currencies have become a popular tool for allowing direct peer-to-peer online transactions using electronic payments that eliminate the need for conversion between currencies. Over the past few years, Bitcoin has enjoyed a considerable amount of praise as the virtual currency of choice. This hype carried with it significant funding…
In general, online privacy falls under two categories. First, is personal privacy. Second, is corporate privacy. For example, corporate privacy concerns the protection of corporate data (e.g., electronic communications) from retrieval or interception by unauthorized parties. Security is important for the protection of trade secrets, proprietary information, and privileged communications.…