Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program/Courses/Politics of Piracy (Kevin Gorman and Katie Gilmore)/Timeline/2

Democratizing Expression (The good, the beautiful, and the true)
What stood out most to me is Lessig's argument of how lowering the barriers for entry in a given field democratizes expression by opening up new avenues for creative works. The parallel between Kodak cameras opening the doors for the truly amateur photographer, and the increasingly more accessible costs of using digital media in the past decade is meant to demonstrate the possible consequences of squelching a inherently accessible new technology with laws in order to limit its growth. Indeed, many of the parallels drawn resonate with popular perception, as very few people would like to imagine a world where photography was to be preserved as a privilege only for the very rich, or where the photographer would need permission on a case by case basis to publish his or her photographs.

However, as with any metaphor, invoking such a parallel inevitably necessitates careful consideration of the differences between these two examples. It makes a good talking point to claim that “as the introduction of accessible photography didn't destroy the field of professional photography, neither will the blagosphere invalidate the need for professional journalism,” but relying on such a rudimentary (albeit evocative) parallel alone hardly addresses the heart of the issue.

The problem with a comparison is that once you start drawing lines between two points, there is almost an implicit invitation to continue expanding upon the parallel until a contradiction is reached. For example, it is very easy to draw a conclusion based upon the merits of accessibility, but such a metaphor falls apart once we consider five year olds piloting fighter jets.

There are very valid concerns that the quality of information, particularly in terms of fact-checking and editing, available through the blagosphere will be much lower than professional media. By lowering the barriers to entry, it is inevitable that such opinions which would never make it past a competent editors desk can garner a great deal of attention. However, the benefits of such conditions allow for opinions which would be suppressed for not fitting into the popular narrative to flourish and propagate. As we weigh the flaws and virtues of a democratized system, I can only feel that the benefits of a distributed narrative outweigh the potential for misuse of such a system.

As a society, one thing I feel has been lost is a degree of healthy skepticism. The potential for misinformation and abuse is there, but is this truly any worse than accepting a status quo where all information is assumed to be “verified” by virtue of its distributor (and which is also subject to abuses of its own)? Skepticism is one of the things which differentiates participants from “Passive recipients of culture produced elsewhere. Couch potatoes. Consumers. ” (Lessig) The concerns of a distributed media are most valid under the implicit assumption that consumers of information will be unable to differentiate between truth and falsehood. But if we view the problem not as the existence of falsehood, but the assumption of truth, a world where skepticism is necessary, and as a result celebrated can only better the public discourse by making it the norm, rather than the exception, to participate in the information sharing process.

Lawnjocke (talk) 07:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

==Of all the innovation and advantages to new media such as blogs and collaborative software, can you foresee any malevolent uses and should they be regulated rather than receiving free passes for being novel inventions?==

Yes, as with anything, there are always cracks in the construction. For example, slander and misinformation seen in the media occasionally is more rampant in blogs and the like because of the anonymity factor and minimized chances individuals face of being prosecuted or otherwise held accountable. While the mainstream media might bend truth under those with power, such as “gatekeepers,” as Lessig termed them, individuals are motivated by their own personal feelings and beliefs, for better and worse – the degree of difficulty it is for an individual to start a false rumor, make a false accusation, or the like is incredibly small, and happens frequently on the internet. These “journalists” of this D.I.Y. media world are not always versed in professionalism and content quality control as well, so poor reporting skills can cause an avalanche of misinformation. As far as regulating these issues, however, there is a lot of gray area in my opinion – who and under what guidelines can judge whether a statement or piece of information is being slanderous or misleading? Is it simply being facetious or sarcastic in an not-so-obvious manner? Was it published in good spirit, but based on a false source? (And can we hold someone accountable for not source-checking in the blog world?) The problems grow enormously when we consider the anonymity and decentralization Lessig himself examines.

Rachelxsutton (talk) 05:58, 6 February 2012 (UTC)Rachelxsutton

Constructing Meaning in a Lagging Read-Write Culture
It is easy to say that with a large majority of the population being literate, (that is able to both read and write,) we do have a read-write culture in the format of text. However, just because most people are able to read and write, and may exercise this ability in various ways, such as reading books, signs, blogs, ect, there is normally little success in “constructing meaning” of the text, in the sense of asking questions about the text is saying, and ask why and how the author constructed such text (in terms of a message, as well as literary devices). Lessig points out that learning to “write” in a format such as film media allows students to make more meaning out of the media that they constantly see, and the same goes for the concept of writing (text). I think the idea of lacking a “writing culture” is often over-looked because many people obviously do write, however the vast majority do much more consuming of text that creating text, which I believe does have an effect on the way one constructs meaning to a text and later uses the vast amount of information that is read everyday. A good example of our lack of a “read-write culture” is Wikipedia itself which as we know is one of the biggest openly collaborative bodies of information, and although millions of people view it every day, only a tiny fraction of those viewers are themselves contributors. Atavel (talk) 06:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)AngelicaTavella

Lawrence Lessig Loves Free Media
He does. His Powerpoints are quite impressive. He definitely uses images that are copyrighted. Then again, he's a Harvard professor and they might give him the funds, etc. to get around legal issues like that. Anyways, he calls attention to the importance of tinkering with new forms of media for education and democracy, something I hadn't thought about (maybe I'm just a Luddite and I'd rather read and write than watch and edit YouTube videos). Of course I'm quick to attack big media corporations who police copyright infringement, but do they really care about mere tinkering? In extreme situations, yes, but I'm under the impression that media is generally free for educational use. High school filmmakers aren't going to be selling their collages of other people's videos, they're simply turning them in for a grade (and learning too, right!). Of course in my perfect world, nobody profits from art, because art is art and not business. But in this world, the copyright police care about profits, and as long as tinkerers aren't profiting from art that someone else has a legal claim to profit from, the copyright holders shouldn't care, right? Most likely wrong. Clearly I need to take this class and learn more about the actual laws behind all of this. EHammid (talk) 06:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

A Polarized World
Prompt: Of all the innovation and advantages to new media such as blogs and collaborative software, can you foresee any malevolent uses and should they be regulated rather than receiving free passes for being novel inventions?

I disagree completely with Lessig's contention (quoting Dave Winer) that “An amateur journalist simply doesn’t have a conflict of interest, or the conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know you can sort of get it out of the way.” The blogosphere today is incredibly polarized - left, right, libertarian, socialist, so on - and in my opinion, the Internet facilitates separation rather than bridging it. The rise of the Internet means that anyone, me in San Jose, CA, Bubby Blay in Dallas, TX, or Joanna in Nashville, TN, all can consume our preferred media outlets exclusively, which only output talking points which we agree with. Centrism, in my opinion, will quite likely die with the fall of print-media journalism and the rise of the blogs. Blogs make it easier, not harder, to ignore every viewpoint but those which jibe with our beliefs. They'll polarize America, not bring us together. wawert (talk) Wawert (talk) 09:27, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Response: I think you neglect to consider the second clause of the sentence: "or the conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know you can sort of get it out of the way." Blogs are undoubtedly biased, but they are generally quite open about that bias. Blogs today are in some ways comparable to political magazines like National Review or The New Republic (although not nearly as professional as a legitimate magazine). The point is that the bias is present and that the publication is open about it. You also seem to believe that the old media was centrist--hardly. The only difference is that with blogs and the like the bias is disclosed. With the old media they acted as though they were impartial, but often had a bias. I'm not just talking about the common conservative accusations of bias, but also matters like the Amanda Knox trial. The American mainstream media was distinctly sympathetic to Knox; the foreign media largely wasn't. In addition, centrism is not always right. If one person says that 2+2=1, and another says that 2+2=3, the best answer is not 2. Here, both sides are wrong. Simply "splitting the difference" or striving for a compromise will not necessarily produce the best result.

Jwhite88 (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Why YES, I am going to talk about Facebook

 * Lessig relates how the Kodak camera's success was largely due to the high sociability that photographs offered, everyone could document and record parts of their lives in vivid and detailed ways, through the medium of the image. I think parallels can easily be drawn to many technologies/innovations that exist today and are playing a huge role in the lives of people.  Facebook and "social media" (don't we all love that term) are examples of the camera taken a step further- instead of just images of one's life, it also includes their thoughts, friends, interests, and everything else people post on these sites. The social aspect of Facebook is obvious, apparent, and advertised as such, and it has had a huge impact on how we socialize with eachother, connect, and chat (and whether this is for better or for worse might be of some debate).  But the economic aspect is there too, and it plays a very big role as well. I see the internet in general as becoming something that is a blend of providing some social utility or function while trying to profit economically off this service.  Facebook serves as the shining example of a company/website that is making a lot of money off of advertisements, but needs the high social use of the website to both generate data for ads and market them. This economic edge to these new social technologies is not as emphasized as the social role these technologies/websites play. But, you can see how the start-up industry in apps and the internet is booming, indicating the large economic role that this sector is playing in this world.  This industry is profiting economically indeed, yet I think that these technologies definitely do serve a larger social role, one that already is and very likely will continue to have a huge effect on our society.
 * I'd like to also tie this into the other question of freedom vs permission as the default. Facebook can serve as an emerging tension between these two ideas. Where does the information, photos, everything you post on facebook lie in this issue? I think it currently is in freedom, as you are willingly posting these things to the website and have the ability to control the privacy of such things. But what about facebook using these things you post, as it already does, and as many many people are quite wroth about. Well, they do request permission, but the ways in which this is done and how data is used have made many people upset with their privacy policies.  Where should the premise of permission enter in for such "social media"- are we to assume that everything one posts is similar to being in public? There are privacy settings, yes, but these are not infallible and there emerges a new space of 'in the public, but only to a certain sector of the public (say, your friends), and this space can also potentially be invaded'. What about people who pour through someone's online presence to find out as much as they can about that person, and then subsequently abuse this information? The person's intent on posting such information about themselves obviously would not be for it to be abused, and intuitively it feels like there is some violation of the person, despite all this information at some point being voluntarily offered. I still would presume that facebook would follow the default of freedom, but as new technologies, internet sites, and innovations emerge, I think there is potential for this freedom vs. permission issue to become much more blurred and ambiguous.

Charlotte (talk) 19:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Old Versus New
In this chapter of Free Culture Lessig frames the legal debate surrounding photography, art, and tech as a battle between the old, entrenched interests versus new and upcoming competition. This decision to frame these topics in this light links these categories to the economics, politics, and philosophy in a smooth way which shows all of their interrelations. The question of the old (the photography industry prior to Kodak) is pitted against Kodak and the emerging new form of taking pictures. Kodak ultimately prevailed but the conflict between the interests which stood to lose profits by Kodaks invention is manifest in much of the other intellectual property debates which Lessig covers in other work surrounding the internet, radio spectrum, and online music. Usually in these debates, as was the case with Kodak, the public stood to gain immensely from the new innovation while protection of the old would have only served to protect their flow of cash. On the other side, intellectual property rights must support the old at certain times so that a new actor in the market has the incentive to enter. I find this frame a useful way of thinking of intellectual property rights as a balancing act between private innovation and the public good and Lessig wants us to constantly weigh both sides of the scale in determining what is best for innovation and society. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Levminassian1936 (talk • contribs) 00:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Toppling the cultural elites
In the way that Lessig states that the Kodak’s biggest breakthrough “was not economic. It was social.” (33) Are currently contested technologies great implications economic or social?

I think this question ties in to the discussion of read-write culture as well. The reason the Kodak was a social breakthrough was because it gave everyday people the chance to record (write) the experiences they had in their lives. Now scenes from personal lives, the violence in inter-city neighborhoods, the poor, the broken, could be recorded as photographs. And this gave photographers a chance to bring the issues they faced in their own lives to the attention of those who had never before confronted such scenes. It ended the domination of the elite in photography. In the same sense, we now live in a culture that is defined by pop music that is frequently degrading or not substantial. The voices of the rest of us are drowned out unless we can use the materials we have to create our own music and express ourselves in ways that connect us to the rest of the world. In this sense, something like the internet can empower us to rewrite modern culture.

67.169.112.131 (talk) 01:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)lesldock