HUMN-306-SU90 #1 (open for editing)
May 19, 2009
For Whom It May Concern:
Thanks to Web 2.0[1], the people who live in the 21st century now have access to the internet not only to surf and shop, but also to share, network, collaborate, and build trust. This applies to websites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Myspace. This revolutionary change opens up opportunities for everyone to remix, and collaborate on their artworks with anyone in the world.
Undoubtedly, this brings up the issue of intellectual property and copyright. As quoted from my instructor’s Podcast, “Cory Doctorow [2] claimed that the enemy of cultural producers is not digital theft, the enemy of cultural producers is obscurity.” Doctorow’s success is built on the fact that he gives his books away for free. Now for people to copy materials from the web is an inevitably easy action. It is impossible to protect one’s work fully in a digitally-based world. We live in a culture where information is meant to be shared, edited and remixed by the public. Since this has become the major stream of communication in cyber space, we should take advantage of it. After all, we are all involved in Web 2.0 user-created content. According to Doctorow: “ Copyright shouldn’t come between an end-user of a creative work and her property.” (18)
However, I am still skeptical when it comes to trusting the sources that are behind peer collaboration, as in the case of Wikipedia entries. I take these websites as just one reference rather than taking them as a fully accurate source of information.
There was this news that was posted by the Globe and Mail that happen to touch on the subject that this course is talking about. I have attached the link.
The Globe and Mail Saturday May,16th 2009
[1] “Web 2.0” refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
[2] Cory Doctorow (born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian blogger, journalist and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his books. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow
I’m actually really skeptical about the first half (concerning copyright) than the second half of your post. For me, if it’s peer collaborated sources, there has to be some justification for them using those sources.
But “Doctorow’s success is built on the fact that he gives his books away for free” is kind of ironic, if he gives his books away for free, what exactly is he making money on? (I know money isn’t the only form of success, but then why is he successful?) Maybe you can clear that up for me?
it does seem as though the ones who benefit most from free sharing are usually those who are a) already in a position to do so or b) those who generate a buzz as being the first to release their work in a certain way. Radiohead stated this fact when they recently released their latest album as “pay what you want” – that the only reason they could do this was because of their pre-existing fanbase, as well as the buzz that it generated. Where does this leave smaller, independent artists?
I post 2 comments here is the link:
http://inkfed.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/asl/#comment-33
http://liucy.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/chat-thoughts/#respond
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