What concept or idea intrigued you most in this weeks' readings? How/does it impact your thinking about the questions and issues you wrote out for yourself last week?
I found the concept of "property rights" in cyberspace in the Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age a fairly intriguing piece. Given that the piece was published in 1996, I thought that the authors had incredible foresight. (In 1996, I didn't I even know that there was such a thing as "cyberspace".) Dyson et al. state, "Defining property rights in cyberspace is perhaps the single most urgent and important task for government information policy." (page 306)
I'm not sure exactly what steps the government has taken in the 14 years since this article was published. With respect to education, I know that there are laws around "fair use" that allow teachers to use materials (videos, images, and text) that do not belong to them for a given period of time. But the sharing/distribution of these materials outside of "fair use" is pretty rampant. Today, for example, I was in a meeting where we were reminded that it is illegal to download music, videos, etc, from services like "Limewire." Limewire encourages the sharing of these materials with complete disregard to copyright laws. So how does the government protect individuals (artists, authors, musicians, researchers) who have copyrighted material from being shared without the individual's permission? Do they have the resources to go after everyone who downloads from bit torrent site?
How does this relate to my post from last week? In last week's post I remarked on how people were very liberal in posting things to the web that aren't necessarily flattering. In terms of property ownership, who does that "status update", "tweet" or "image" belong to? You posted it (an idea, a photo, a thought). It's not copyrighted. It's out there in cyberspace. You can't take it back. Others can see and share it. They are not required to attribute it to you (although if it's unflattering, attribution is always there). Is it still yours?
image via zdnet
Hi Deepa,
ReplyDeleteI also have the same general wondering about the copyright issue in cyberspace. A social network site such as Facebook has millions of people registered to be a part of this online community and millions of pictures have been posted on the site every second as we speak. I’ve seen so many times that those celebrities’ pictures (on their personal profile) on Facebook were taken and sold to paparazzi or sometimes end up in gossip magazine. Whose fault is this?
I like it that you brought up the point about "fair use" in the cyberspace. Ownership online has always been very complicated issue. I know we already have "Creative Commons" to help distribute knowledge freely in academia and beyond; but more often, we are concerned about anything we, as ordinary individuals, has put up online. We wanted to be genuinely ourselves; but undeniably we fear the privacy issues; and we somehow stop the intention of doing online publication. Thus, are we even having less freedom in the Cyberspace?
ReplyDeleteHello Deepa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning Limewire, I did not know about it very much. It reminded me a similar kind of P2P File Sharing website WinMX, which was very famous in Japan when the user of the software accused and convicted. What I found very interesting at that time was the discussion whether the developer of the software is guilty or not. Since then I think it became much more common that responsibility of using files lies with the users, so I found Creative Commons very reasonable. It helps creators represent their stance on their ownership clearly.
I personally openness and sharing are very important creative activities, but I think we should make decisive agreement with each other to protect our social status(income, prestige, etc), even if it's almost impossible technically on cyberspace.
Thanks for your inspiring post!
Yumiko
Hi Deepa -
ReplyDeleteIn reference to your comment about the changes made by government...although government itself has not instigated the changes, there are many organization who have been promoting (and with success) transparency in government. Government 2.0 is a hot topic, and Esther Dyson in particular is very involved in it. There is an annual conference in NYC focused on Digital Democracy and I believe that over time, great strides have been made but even bigger ones are ahead. The ability for the "little guy" to reach out and speak with a big voice is very powerful.
Donna