Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/University of California, Berkeley/Politics of Digital Piracy (Spring 2013)/Week 9 assignment

Weekly Assignment
If you are in group B, the weekly assignment is to (after watching Clay Shirky's TedTalk), talk about one example of collaborative organization replacing institutional production (things like open source, peer to peer file sharing, wikipedia, ect), and how do you think the future of this collaborative organization might evolve and change this in society. Please post your responses below:

The first example that springs to mind is that of the university. Here we have this institution that was created for a specific and very needed purpose: pull in the academics to one place and make it a place of research and learning. That said, with the dropping costs of communication and collaboration that model can be seen to be shifting. We have webcasted lectures, slides posted online, or even courses offered entirely online. The main rallying point that people for this shift make, is that now everyone can have access to education, but even more than that, now there is a way for the students to become the teachers and really collaborate; a marked shift from the traditional top-down model. Cp123127 (talk) 23:57, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I would say that one of the best examples from Shirky’s talk was the one about tagging in photos. This simple innovation seems to have led to photographers being replaced by the average Joe and, in a way, losing legitimacy as a profession. However, despite the objections from those in the profession, I believe that this trend is going to be around for a very long time as it has been expanding more and more and is a benefit for companies and individuals who are now being granted an increased level of access. I believe society is going to continue to push for similar levels of access with music, television, and other forms of media. -Dkingg

As someone who is a member of several different collaborative organizations (which have been enabled by the internet), I found this discussion interesting. In particular, one collaborative organization that I've been involved in is the Archive of Our Own, a fanfiction archival site that was created as a project by amateur authors and programmers. It host largely derivative works of popularly produced works, with occasional original work. All stories are submitted by individual authors, edited (or "beta'd") by individuals on their own initiatives; they are by authors to indicate content, and other users can bookmark them with their own tags to further clarify subject matter; they can also use "bookmarks" and "kudos" to indicate liking the work, allowing other users to look for popular works. (it's interesting to note that collaborative fansites like this also are much more flexible about no stopping copyright infringement). It is very much a collaborative rather than an institutional project. When compared to more institutional models such as book publishers, it has several differences - which may or may not be advantageous. On the one hand, the easy of entry and lower access barriers mean that it allows for huge amounts of work to be produced and hosted, and crowdsourcing tagging and rating makes it easier to find works based on subject and popularity. However, there are also downsides that can come with such collaborative efforts. First of all, crowdsourced collaborative efforts often have no clear leadership or direction; and while simply moving with the crows can make interesting organic goals, if one already has a specific goal, relying only on collaboration can make keeping on track to that goal more difficult to acheive. In addition, quantity does not necessarily equate to quality (and quality does not necessarily equate to popularity); while collaborarive efforts can greatly increase quality they may do so at the cost of being less able to control for quality. In addition, collaborative efforts (at least currently) are more often amateur; whereas institutional setups allow for training in both skills and more standardized protocol which can increase overall quality and make for more reliable filtering (even if on a smaller and much more restricted scale).

For another example, I also work with a largely web-based asexuality activist group, which couldn't exist without the ways that internet collaboration lowers access and communication barriers. On the other hand, our ability to function is largely impeded by lack of clear leadership and the difficulty of dissolving disputes, especially since although the internet makes communication easier, it still is not as good as actual face-to-face interaction; and in structures that require more long term commitment, volunteer collaborators are much more likely to drop out. It's also harder to train large numbers of volunteer collaborators, which can result in more chaos and inconsistent standards, which is especially problematic when dealing with sensitive topics requiring a lot of knowledge of specific jargon and dispute resolution skills which most people don't inherently have. So basically, while collaborative models lower communication barriers, they still (currently) work better for instances where the focus is on quantity over quality; and pose difficulties for activities requiring specialized skills or who need to maintain certain levels of product or service quality. Adrianvallence (talk) 23:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Facebook serves as a great example where both individual and institutional contributions come together to create a hybrid form of collaborative organization. I think this is the future of collaborative organization because institutional entities, with their human and financial resources will always take advantage of the low-cost marketing/publicity aspect of collaborative organization. Therefore, the influence of institutional entities on collaborative organizations is inevitable and irreplaceable. While individual contributions will gradually play a larger part in collaborative works, the existence of institutional influence will always remain as an essential part of collaboration organizations – for better and for worse. Pphan91 (talk) 00:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

One example of collaborative organization replacing institutional production is the use of flicker and tagging photos which is a key issue. In Shirky's talk the use of the regular people taking pictures because of this collaborative organization is creating a new avenue for them and slowly creating them into professional photographers. In addition many other file sharing websites such as Instagram has blown up into one of the most popular photo sharing type of organization in the past year. I feel that the future is only going to continue and grow stronger with this movement because of the technological advances that we how are society is make things much more easier and available. 2607:F140:400:2185:226:8FF:FEE7:D6BF (talk) 20:52, 19 March 2013 (UTC)Chadyy

I think the best way to change the field in terms of collaborative organization is start with universities. When you think about it if you combined Facebook of today with the Facebook of the past you would have a legal person-to-person file sharing site that could be regulated by the university that the students attend. That is why I believe it would be beneficial for each university to have their own person-to-person file sharing in which if you attend the university you have an extra amount of money billed into your tuition that allows you to access this site to share movies, music, and copyrighted images. The money would go to any and all incurring fees that the creators thereof may want and act as an immediate settlement so that students, as long as they are enrolled at the university, can share as much as they want without recourse. ORambo (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Current Events
Group A, please post your current events below

"Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of $222,000 piracy verdict" Gloudas (talk) 23:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

"Yes, Piracy Does Cause Economic Harm" Editingcontent2 (talk) 23:59, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

"BitTorrent Courts the Entertainment Industry"RKan (talk) 08:57, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"Online Music Piracy Doesn’t Hurt Sales, European Commission Finds" Melconser (talk) 17:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"New research: music piracy should not be a 'concern for copyright holders'" Jimmyslope (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"Supreme Court issues major copyright ruling on foreign sales" Kaylaholderbein (talk) 20:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"Free Peer-To-Peer Video Streaming is Here" MarkDavidoff UCB (talk) 23:07, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"“Wee Man” Not Happy With Copyright Troll Lawsuits" Sheeveed (talk) 00:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

"Is Tech Driving Security Policy?"IanElli (talk)

Wiki Projects

 * For the Wiki projects, if 'Geniac' has recommended to post your page proposal on the article talk page, please do so. This will allow other Wikipedians who are working on that page to give you feedback.
 * By Friday you will be expected to have a more filled out rough draft of your changes to the article in your sandbox (after posting it on the article talk page). This should include headings, subheadings ect, and will count for your WIki project midterm grade.