Copyright vs. Creative Commons

In "Six Faces of Piracy", Lobato puts forward the idea that piracy is not a black or white issue - good versus bad - but a complex stack of reasoning and outcomes. Additionally, those varying approaches need to be taken into account when forming opinions as well as policy.

Two of the types of piracy outlined are "Piracy as Access" and "Piracy as Free Enterprise". Piracy as free enterprise is based around the idea that there are holes in the current economic structure. Savy users as well as everyday consumers find ways to fill those holes and jump through those hoops; "In the laissez-faire imaginary, piracy fills gaps in the market with maximum efficiency, catering to demand when and where legitimate industries are unwilling or unable to do so." (75) Piracy as access is the idea that piracy, or borrowed content, exposes people to the music, movies, industry, culture that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to interact with; "This approach is interested in the transformative aspects of piracy, in piracy’s capacity to disseminate culture, knowledge and capital." (82) This expands the influence of said industry while also giving the general populous the content they want.

In this article, Alyssa Rosenberg looks at former president Bill Clinton's views on piracy. Clinton outlines the advantages of 'Creative Commons' and creating new ways to connect the artist to compensation as well as connecting the audience to content. He cites Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital as an example of a more connect market. Saint Jude's does not charge patients for their services but rather asks that those who can pay do. He points to a system that doesn't have to be driven by profit but can rather be driven by a desire to share ideas. He used Bridegroom, a short film about a gay couple. “It’s a gripping portrait of how people are grappling with all of these identity questions. It was 100 percent crowd-funded,...I think there are a lot of these kinds of films about gender discrimination, girls sold into sexual slavery, boys sold into bondage. There would be a plethora of things where you don’t want intellectual property to get in the way of immediate and powerful exposition of problems the world all over that can be dealt with by people on the ground, NGOs, who also will be crowd-funded because of this.” He doesn't give concrete or practical ways of accomplishing this but says “We need to have a more explicit framework to nurture and support creativity”.

Clinton's approach to the copyright debate combines the Access and Free Enterprise portions of Lobato's article. The example of Saint Jude's helps to fill a flaw in the system that interferes with certain people's access to content (in this case, medical care). The Bridegroom is about access - being able to spread ideas without being restricted by cooperation or copyright control. Clinton's ideas enhance Lobato's idea that there are many ways to approach the copyright discussion. Clinton seems to agree that it will never go away but instead needs to be directed and understood. Clinton's ideas also show that Lobato's 'Six Faces' aren't enough - or at least they aren't distinct. This discussion needs to continue, the layers need to grow and our understanding needs to change in order for us to move forward in this issue.

MixBit -> Moving Forward with the Amateur

In the chapter, the Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture, Beyond the Professional-Amateur Divide, Burgess and Green address the different way the YouTube community and user base has developed. They lay out five different kinds of users, "1) formal participants; 2) casual users; 3) active participants; 4) YouTube or "tubers"; and 5) YouTube "celebrities"" (93) The participatory culture creates a variety of individuals who fall under the umbrella of "ordinary user", who - in varying ways - play off the idea of 'broadcast yourself'. Some are not broadcasting themselves; some are broadcasting an idea or a product.The common thread being that they use the blurred line between amateur and professional to participate in and draw an audience from the community. The community aspect created by YouTube means it once again blurs the line between a content/information source and a social site.

And then along came MixBit - with the tag line "The future of video is launching soon." As outlined in this article, MixBit is created by the founders of YouTube. They announced the sight in light of the April Fools joke about Youtube shutting down.

It has yet to launch. Currently if you go the site, you have the option to sign up for their newsletter and receive an invite when the site is officially launched.

Chad Hurley, one of YouTube's three co-founders, describes the purpose of the site as having "flexibility for people to work together and create content." 

This takes the community and amateur aspects of YouTube to a whole new level. Looking at the place hold picture on the site displays that all by itself. The mobile phone as the mode for capture and creation puts the site in the hands of the user - quite literally. Additionally Hurley uses the words 'work together', this tags the site as a place for social creative interaction. So while the community and blurred intersecting sectors present may have been a bit of an accident or social evolution  MixBit is very purposefully embracing the social and creative Amateur.

Losing the Leash and Embracing the Tether

In the chapter "Growing up Tethered" from her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle discusses how tied, and even dependent, teenagers are on their favorite technological device - their cellphone. Under the heading "Degrees of Separation", Turkle discusses the contract parents pair with the 'gift' of a phone to teens; "the gift typically comes with a contract: children are expected to answer their parent's calls." It is a way for the parents to maintain some control while setting their kids loose in the big-wide-world. But, this is not always followed by teens. In fact, some teens ignoring the contract (not answering their parents calls) is seen as a way to show independence.

In "Teens rule mobile Web, parents play catch-up", Katie Humphrey looks at a different aspect of the cellphone, more specifically smartphone, invasion - privacy. Humphrey outlines how parents are struggling to find a balance to both keep their teens connected (to them and the outside world) but also keep a leash on their time and where teens are going on the internet. For teens the smartphone is a catch-all for all their tech needs. Using their smartphone a teen "texts, talks, posts to Instagram and Facebook, plays word games, even tracks practical stuff like schedules." But for parents it is a screen they can't see and time they can't monitor and that makes them uncomfortable. “It can be a great tool and it can also be a really scary thing for a parent,” Postuma said. “We are learning and figuring this out as we go.” Postuma is a parent who recognizes the usefulness and practical application but struggles to fit it into her parenting schema.

The article shows another aspect of the parent-teen phone contract that is still in the draft stage. While the answering aspect from Turkle most likely still stands, parents are struggling how to incorporate this next issue into their contract. Will parents let go of the leash and learn to embrace the tether? Moving forward, parents and teens alike will be watching, waiting and negotiating to see how this new element gets inked in the contract. 

Trouble with Twitter

In the chapter Trouble Brewing in Cyberspace, Sternberg names spamming as one of the "triad of troublesome online behavior" (80). Most anyone who has spent time online has at some point experienced spam, it's like an annoying pest that won't go away and leave you in peace. Sternberg demonstrates that this has been an issue online since the beginning - giving examples of issues with advertising on inappropriate subsections of Usernet. Additionally, Sternberg also talks about how controlling spam has been dealt with outside the wires and virtual spaces. While user of the new web were trying to discover how to handle the issues of spamming years ago, today it proves to still be an issue that has emerged in the realm of social media.

Forbes recently published an article "Twitter's growing spam problem", in which journalist Tristan Louis looks at the issue of spamming via fake twitter accounts. Louis looks at the numbers reported by Twitter as to their user base, but he also analysis his own numbers on what kinda of users those really are. He focuses on the top 25 followed users (including accounts like Lady Gaga, Barack Obama and The Ellen Show). Using sites like Fake Follower Check, he finds that possibly 42.44% of the users following such big names are fake and that in the general user base of Twitter possibly 31.83% of accounts are fake. Louis believes this to be an issue because it is messing with the reliability and credibility of the audience and Twitter seems to be doing little to nothing to fix it; "But as it keeps delaying dealing with the issue, the problem will become larger and more ingrained, making it more difficult to deal with further down the line...Social spam, as it already exists on Twitter, will continue to grow and unless the company addresses the problem quickly, it may be the one thing that sinks it." With follower buying becoming increasingly common and important, 'user spamming' may prove to be a make-or-break scenario.

While the type of spamming has evolved from the instances demonstrated in Sternberg's chapter, it is still an instance where an online community and the more general public are struggling to find a way to handle an emerging issue. Both are taking advantage of an captive audience. In the cases Sternberg presents, the online community we looking for ways to mediate the issue and the large companies were seeking outside legal action. It seems the twin issues on Twitter are similarly searching for a solution. So, those of us who still wish to brave the web, will have to deal a little longer with swatting at that all-too-familiar pest.