Thanksgiving is not just one day of the year!!

Freedom of speech is one of those things in life that people will continue to take for granted until it is no longer present. Only when our freedom approaches a point of no return will our society remember what was once found. For example, some people do not appreciate the sun on a day to day basis because they “know” that it will be in the same place every single day no matter what they do. What the general public must understand is that our freedom of speech is being hindered in a number of different ways. Currently there are two forces that are filtering speech on the internet. There are the private companies and then there is the government. According to Lessig, these private filters that are in fact subsidized by the government are blocking content beyond the purpose of regulating speech. In addition to filtering “too much”, people are also unable to regulate these filters because they are created and sold by private companies. People are blind when this occurs because people are not notified when information is filtered by private companies. That is why I feel people should make sure their rights remain in tact on a day to day basis, because as soon as businesses/government find a way to slowly censor society more and more I promise that they will choose to do just that. So remember be thankful for your freedom of speech everyday, because without speech who are you?

I’m happy with my life, I don’t need a second one

I listened to the clip on “talk of the nation” where they discussed virtual worlds, including the very popular one called Second Life. To be honest I find this whole concept of virtual worlds kind of creepy and weird. I mean why would someone rather sit by themselves at home on their computer and do the things they want to do on this game, when they should be out in the real world doing the things that make me happy. Are these just all the people who are too afraid to go for what they want in real life? I was really surprised to how serious people take it as well. In the clip they talk about how one can better learn about how people behave and interact by observing the avatars online. I have trouble believing the fact that therapists, who go to school and work very hard for their degrees, can learn more and become better at their profession in any way from this game. Yes there are real people controlling these characters but they are not real people! How can we be certain that the way the avatars behave is the same exact way the people controlling them behave? I also feel that people take their relationships and interactions a little too serious as well. I mean you cant take it too personal if someone is mean to you on a game. People get married who are actually married in real life, and this causes complications in their marriage. This just all seems like a little much for me. I can see how it can be an interesting game and I am not trying to step on anyone’s toes, but I feel that people are taking it a little too serious.

Virtual Worlds of Warcraft

When it comes to living in a virtual world, there is one game that comes to mind for me: World of Warcraft. It holds the record for highest subscriber base of any MMORPG (11 million players), and just recently its expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, broke the record for fastest selling computer game, selling 2.8 million copies in 24 hours. Needless to say, the game is pretty popular. In fact, the game is so popular that people are able to make real money using the game's economy. There are hundreds of companies in China that hire young people to do what is called "gold farming". They put time into procuring valuable items which they sell at "auction houses" in the game for gold, the in-game currency. This gold can then be sold to players for real currency. In some cases, people can make more money by "gold farming" than they would be able to make otherwise. Even though they are not doing "real" work in the "real" world, they are paid for their efforts. They are, in a way, breaking down the barriers between the virtual and real world. Not only can you spend most of your time having fun in a virtual world, you can actually make a living there as well. As the information age progresses and more and more people become connected through virtual worlds like World of Warcraft, I believe that these "virtual jobs with real pay" can only increase in number. Is it that odd for people to be able to make money playing games? According to modern times, no: athletes are able to make almost obscene amounts of money by just "playing a game". There are even people out there that compete in competitive video game tournaments with real money as prizes. Slowly but surely, virtual worlds are becoming more prominent in our society. Is it that strange for people to make money in these virtual worlds like they would in the real world?

Second Life?

Do you ever wonder that life could be very perfect? Or, do you ever wonder if you could change what you do not like about yourself into something that you eagerly dying for? I wish I could but I doubt it. But you can definitely change it in the virtual world called Second Life. Basically, Second Life is an internet-based virtual world. You can create an “avatar”, in which it represents yourself in Second Life, or also called as alter ego. Through this virtual world, the users could interact with each other or to make it easier, this virtual world resembles the real world. Second Life also has its own currency which calls as “Linden Dollar”. The Linden Dollar can be used as we use money in real world, where we could buy goods, land, services and also trading goods with other users. The users can get the Linden Dollar by exchanging their US Dollar to Linden Dollar and using it in Second Life. These might sound interesting right?
However, what if you spend hours a day to be in the Second Life, become addicted to it and consider it as your real life? I think that this is scary. Just like in the handout that Prof Perry gave in the class about a woman divorcing with his husband after he found out that she is married with her in-world boyfriend in Second Life. Then, the woman met up with her virtual “husband” and realized that she did not really want that guy. If we think rationally, why should she choose to have relationship in the virtual world? For me, everything in the virtual world is unreal. We should not expect that anyone in the virtual world in better than the one that we met in real world. These people who obsessed with this virtual world, they should wake up from sleep, that virtual world is nonsense and they should just live out their own lives as the way it should be.

Entering a conversation

Earlier on the semester, we were exposed to Graff and Birkenstein’s idea about ‘They say/Isay’. They promote people to enter a 'conversation' through writings. A new way of 'They say/I say' is now happening in the Internet, see youtube for an example. People broadcast their opinion in the form of video, and other people see these videos and they’ll response either through written comments or video response. I am surprised to see that a single video can generate thousands of response. And they are not just crappy or 'unintellectual' responses, but a lot of people are actually thinking about the issue and put their effort to express their own thoughts about the matter being discussed. With the Internet, it is possible to add our own opinion, argue and interact not only with the person (who first came up with the idea), but also with anyone who would love to engage in this new this new type of conversation. Everyone benefit from this process. People who publish the idea learn to receive criticisms from people who saw the content. The readers can get insights from different perspective instead of limiting it to just one source. This eventually leads to a better understanding and being well-informed. And this can be achieved by being exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints. I think it is good when people do not see the differences among them as a threat. Instead of being frightened or paranoid, they try to learn about what makes people different and treat others with respect.

Dude can you hear that? No? Something must be wrong with me.

Do you remember your mom telling you to turn down your music? Well what if you could listen to your music louder than ever, and you would be the only person that could hear it? Well I guess you are right you do have an iPod and a pair of headphones, but that is not really the same. There is this new thing that the military created that enables them to control sounds and direct it toward and individual within range. They can control is so well that not one person can hear the sound except the person that it is directed toward. So instead of getting tasered and dying like everyone else that you hear about, you can settle with just getting your ear drums blown. Sounds like a good deal right? Well, no. You see the thing here is that people who create this technology don’t just use it when the time is right. They continue to perfect it until they can use it for situations other than crowd control. Lessig even says that there are a lot of technological issues that we can not keep up with. Something like this might be used unethically. In fact further research and innovation made this product capable of reading thoughts. What if you were just walking around thinking about some new venture or product that you wanted to start, and someone just decided hey I am going to use this new technology and steal that guy’s ideas? I don’t know if your brain thinks like that, but hey I’ll know shortly right after I get my hands on this new technology. I mean listening in on phone conversations is one thing, but what the hell are you suppose to do when someone is listening to your thoughts? WTF!!! I personally believe that my thoughts are my most important property that I own. My thoughts make me who I am, and I for one do not want anyone swimming around in my head. It is like in Minority Report when Tom Cruise is walking around in the shopping mall, and all the ads are directed right at Mr. Cruise. This is similar to what would occur if this technology went public. Businesses would want to use it for marketing purposes whereas the government would want to use it for protection purposes. Businesses would be able to be more effective when marketing and advertising to consumers. They would know exactly what you liked and didn’t like because they would be in your head. This is something that makes sense, but what if people began using this technology for reasons other than marketing? Again that is why Lessig stresses the fact that technology is developing so fast, society can not keep up with it.

Mom get off the phone!!!!

Don’t you remember the days when you had that girl in your fifth grade class that would always call your home and your mom would pick up? Well I do. Man, did I have a crush on her. My mom would giggle and hand me the phone, and I would always always turn red. I felt so weird talking on the phone with the girl, because I could never tell if my mom was listening to our conversation on the other line. Now that I am older my mom is not the problem. I wish she was the problem because now that I am old enough I can tell her to get a life (she is sooo annoying). Now I really have no idea who is listening in on my phone conversations. Is there someone recording my conversations? Is there someone listening at all times? Did I say something that is going to get me in trouble? These are just a few of the things that I think about when I am on the phone. Sometimes I feel like I can’t even talk about action movies with my friends on the phone, because all we talk about is how much we love to see things blow up. The point that I am trying to reach here is that I love my privacy!! Privacy is something that every person should have the right too. If I do not have privacy, or “alone time”, I do not feel like a human being. Instead I feel like I am just a little fish swimming in the open sea where anyone that wants to run into me can because there are no barriers just like phone lines. Phones have been tracked, traced, and tapped for years now, and I just can’t get over it. I am no longer comfortable sharing my thoughts with anyone on the phone. If you want to talk to me, we can meet face to face. I just wish I was 4 again, so I could worry less about invasion of privacy and more about getting my pee in the toilet.

Owning Music: A Thing of the Past

Everyone these days has an I-pod, MP3-player, or some sort of music-playing device that they use daily. People love music, and can't do without it. It's one of our society's most prized possessions. People will pay good money to see their favorite bands playing live in concert. However, few people actually own all the songs that they listen to. Now that we are living in the information era, it is more than easy to download any song you could possibly want to listen to for no cost whatsoever. This, of course, is highly illegal. Companies put a lot of capital into producing music that people listen to, and they expect to be paid for it. Though the likelihood is low for the average person, there are those who are prosecuted for the crime of stealing music. Apparently, even if you own a CD with a song on it, you cannot legally put that song on an MP3 player. In a recent case, a man was accused of creating unauthorized copies of music one would think he would have some right to. Though these kinds of cases are still somewhat prevalent today, I do not believe that it can persist much longer. As long as people have access to all the information that the internet provides, there is no way (that is currently known) to ensure that said information will be shared. I would not be surprised if, in the future, people did not own any CDs or legal MP3s at all. It's easy enough to have an entire library of music without buying anything today. It can only get easier as information technology progresses.

Is Big Brother So Bad?

We all know about 1984's famous "Big Brother". You know, the one who is always watching you. Government surveillance is something towards which we as Americans display extreme dislike. Privacy is important to us. No one wants to have a giant TV screen in their home, watching their every move and listening to their every word. It's intrusive, and interferes with our day-to-day lives. However, George Orwell did not anticipate the creation of the internet. Every day, millions of Americans transmit countless bits of personal information all over the web. While most of it is harmless, there are situations where information about illegal activity is being transmitted. Maybe there are people planning on pulling a big heist. Maybe there are a group of terrorists planning on blowing up a building. Maybe there are some kids out there illegally downloading music. If the government can prevent these people from committing the crimes they plan on committing, one assumes that the world one lives in will be safer. If the government were to use unobtrusive, undetectable methods of gathering information, would you be against it? Would you even realize it? The world is at a crossroads. It can choose to embrace freedom, or it can choose to embrace security. The question we have to ask ourselves is, "Is Big Brother really so bad?" In my opinion, Big Brother, is, in fact, really that bad. Benjamin Franklin once said, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Is it legal to copy music onto your computer? -Review-

It is no doubt that most of music fans, downloading the songs of their favorite artists from the Internet rather than spending their money to buy the albums. I, myself admit that I also downloaded the songs from Ares, an application that could find thousands of songs just in one click. It is much easier and time-saving as well as cheap too. Back in my country, the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) software such as Ares, LimeWire, Kazaa or even Torrent is not a big deal, albeit it is clearly wrong and not a good action to do. There is no action taken by the government that making us downloading the songs or movies or videos fearlessly. However, in the United States, an issue arises lately these days, that some people questioning that is it legal to copy music onto our computer? According to the article by Marc Fisher, there was a case in which, a man who kept a collection of more or less 2000 music recordings on his computer is said to do “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings even though he legally purchased a CD transfer all the music into his computer. The guy is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). RIAA claimed that personal copy of the copyrighted products on our computer is a violation. Based on my personal opinion of this issue, I do not see what the purposes of having music player devices such as MP3 players or iPods are, because RIAA said that it is illegal to copy the music on the computer. Logically, we have to use the computers to transfer the songs into the music player devices. The concept here is pretty much the same because we copy the songs from the albums to the music player and this is said to be illegal. Therefore, everyone that owns music player have to be sued because they copied the copyrighted music illegally. What do you think about it?

Permanent Record

This radio clip talks about how people cannot avoid the presence of online profiles and how they cannot fully control what is included their own. A woman named Nazanin Rafsanjani comes on the show and talks about a letter she wrote when she was nineteen to Americas response to 9/11. She is from Iran and talks about how she did not like America’s response to 9/11 but cannot side with Iran and therefore stands by the innocence of our country which was so brutally attacked. This letter was posted on www.irannian.com and she does not like the fact that she cannot control the fact that this will personally be attached to her permanent online profile. She considers herself a private person and asked for it to be removed but they refused to do such a thing. She said that she was just a teenager and thought that it would only be posted for about a week and then disappear, but it was a much bigger deal than that and she is still dealing with the consequences. I think it is a little unfair that someone who later regrets something they say cannot do anything about it because it is now permanent and they are then forever stuck with that. At the same time I feel that it is a bit of a catch 22 because that person should know what they are getting themselves into when putting their opinion on the internet. People should be aware of how the internet works and should be careful with what they say. Yet this can also cause a state of paranoia to build. People can no longer trust to say how they feel without having it hanging over their head. Is this an issue of privacy? It can be argued either way, but regardless the internet is rapidly growing and people should be careful when dealing with it.

Is copying music on your computer illegal?

This radio clip talks about a dispute between the RIAA (recording industry association of America) and an article that was written in the Washington Post. The article states that the RIAA views copying legally a legally purchased CD onto a computer or an MP3 player is unauthorized and subject to a lawsuit. A representative from the RIAA was on the show and cleared this up by saying that it is perfectly acceptable to legally purchase music and upload it onto your computer or MP3 player if it is for personal use but the second it is put into a shared file for others to download then it is considered stealing because it is no longer authorized. From listening to this clip it seems that many record companies instead of looking for new ways to sell music to the public, are simply using the court systems to try to protect themselves and are trying to make a statement. They are just bugging a lot of college students and should be putting their efforts elsewhere that might help them make more money. I agree that if someone buys a CD and puts it on their MP3, it is perfectly legal. I can understand however that once it is shared with millions of people, the record companies see that as stealing. They have lost a lot of money over the past few years to this and must be pretty frustrated about it. I am not sure how this will pan out for these companies because illegal downloading is so popular and so easy and also saved a lot of money for the public. Anyone who tells you that they have not done it themselves is probably lying. I am not an expert in the business of music but it seems that the companies are going to have to do more than just sue people if they want to solve their problems.

What do you think about Consumer Panopticon?

Through the advances of technology, many systems has been invented to make our life becomes easier. One of the systems that I learnt recently is the Consumer Panopticon system. From my understanding of reading Hull’s, Consumer Panopticon is a system that records the customer’s purchases to construct a profile of consumption preferences for the use of a variety of marketers. The information that is obtained from the customers is being used by the marketers to produce new things that are believed, can attract the customers. The existence of this system might not bother some people but as for me, I personally do not like this system. I do not like any information about me such the things that I bought, types of clothes I like or any information that relates with me is being tracked, stalked or recorded by other people. However, its existence is undeniable and I admit that Consumer Panopticon has helped the consumer’s needs and desires to be fulfilled. This system helped the marketers to create new products based on the needs of the consumers. For instance, if we browse through products in eBay or Amazon.com, there is a section that display a few lists of things that another buyers that has more or less or even same interest like I do. The things that we browsed and bought also being recorded and our interests could be tracked by the companies. As the marketers know about our interest and conclude what type of buyers we are, they tend to make a number of strategies and sending out a lot of junk e-mails promoting their new products which are more likely the same as our interests. For me, I find out that this is very annoying and feels that my privacy has been invaded as they keep sending junk e-mails to me. At the same time, the advertisements make me tend to waste my money frequently as the marketers promote new products that satisfy my desires.

Overprotected

Imagine the situation where we are buying a soft-copy of a famous book online. First, there is a pop-out window with that 10-page license agreement (some sort of contract). In that license, described that we are not allowed to make copies and sell those book or any of its content, and such other things protected under the copyright law. Like every other normal person, we clicked on the bottom-left box that says, I agree, without even pick a glance on that contract. And yet, we are most likely to make copies of that book, share them among friends, and even publish them on the Internet. We are talking about cyberspace, with unlimited contents on the Internet; it's hard to keep track of every single person who violates the contract. This is where the code plays its role. The creator (or in many cases, the publisher) embedded codes in the soft-copy, making it impossible for us to make copy of its content. Or maybe they can make it that you can only read the book via their website, in which you have to pay first before you have access to that website. Smart! People don't have to rely totally on the law as code provides better protection. But, as Lessig discussed more and more about striking balance between the right of the creator to exclude others and the right of the public to make use of the content, I start to think that, what if the protection of intellectual property is too powerful? It is just like the enclosure in the past. The code, is like the fence, it denies people's access to the contents surrounded by the fence. Why is this not good? Well, it's hard to tell the future, but it could be, one day, code protects the creators and ignored public interest. And there will be shortage of new inventions, and that's a shame.

You and I are numbers now!

"Hi! My name is 127.02.06.340!"
It may be weird to introduce ourselves as numbers, but we do it all the time each time we logged on to the Internet using our Internet Protocol (IP) address. Every device connected to the Internet is assigned an IP address. And various people with different interests are able to identify us based on our IP addresses. Forget anonymity, as IP address completely destroys anonymity. I thought we are in control of what information about us to reveal, to who we give that information to and for what purposes. It seems that, that's not the case anymore.

As Lessig points out, when we visit certain websites, they collect data about us. And this data can be used for various purposes, but he seemed to be focusing on marketing strategy. I don't know how it works crystal clear, either. But I'm assuming that it's not just when we make a purchase on the Internet. IP address makes it possible for them to collect data through the sites we've visited. If they see that you enter their website from a sports website, they may assume that you are athletic. They will add that to their ever-growing list of data. Who knows who have access to that data. Then, somehow you start receiving junk mails giving offers on sports equipments. And when you visit certain websites, it seems that the ads relate more and more to your particular interest.

Some people might have no trouble with this. They don't want to be bother with ads that has no relation to their interest. But, I personally think that this is not good. I don't want big companies to shape my interest. I want to have the ability to choose from a wide variety of selection. Because if everything about me is fit into a pattern, isn't life dull?

Intellectual Property and Copyright Law

Creativity is one of the God's gifts that not everyone could have. Anything that we created through the imagination of our mind is called intellectual property. In Spinello's CyberEthics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace Third Edition, "[i]ntellectual property consists of intellectual objects, such as original musical compositions, poems, novels, inventions, product formulas, and so forth" (Spinello pg. 94). Also, symbols, names and images are the examples of intellectual property.
Copyright, with symbol © is an idea that provides ownership and exclusive rights to the creator of a creative and original work to manage its distribution for a certain time period. However, if the copyright is not renewed, the works will enter public domain. Copyright always comes with the phrase 'All Rights Reserved' which means that all rights of the author's property are reserved. This means that if anyone steal or use the ideas of the author without his or her permission will be in a huge trouble. If the author finds out that someone uses his idea and publishes it, the author has the right to sue or brings the person to the court. As Prof Perry discussed in the class, there are two different views of Copyright Law. One view from Lawrence Lessig and the other view are from big media companies. Lessig agrees with this law, yet there should be a limitation for this. He said so because he wants to encourage individuals to be creative and innovative, and to do that, is by letting people know that they will get money for their hard work. I agree with no doubt with his opinion. On the other hand, the big media companies want to extend copyright as long as possible. The issue that I want to highlight here, is the extension of copyright, good for a long run to every people if there is no limit as what Lessig said?

Politicizing copyright

In the clip “politicizing copyright” Lawrence Lessig is a guest on a radio show, and he talks about some issues of copyrights and how copyrights are being used in politics. The clip starts out by talking about proposition eight. Proposition eight is a law that is trying to get passed in California that eliminates the right for same sex couples to get married. They talk about how a first grade teacher, who also is a lesbian, brought her class to her wedding as a learning experience. The media got a hold of this and publicized this even to the extreme as people used it as ammunition in the debate over proposition eight. The parents of the children were furious that their children were being used for this political football match and they felt that they have certain rights over whether their children are portrayed in this even or not. Another way that copyrights are showing up in politics is in our presidential campaigns. Both McCain and Obama have been threatened by news networks for replaying some of their material for their presidential campaigns. Lessig talks about how if one were to study presidential elections, copyrights are seen popping up everywhere. He tells us how politicians now a days use copyrights to silence the words of their competitors instead of just responding to them. I guess they see this as a safer way to approach the conflicts that we see so much of when the heat is on between two potential presidential electives. I thought this was interesting because I always assumed that copyrights just dealt with the work of people like their music or art or a book they had written. I think as the dynamics of copyrights change many things around them change as well, politics obviously being one of the effected aspects of our society.

Copyright Laws and Patents

The right to property is one of the foundations of our society. It allows for people to create and share what they produce in order to enrich society and enrich themselves. This is why the Constitution protects property, both physical and intellectual. However, the Constitution does not express the desire for intellectual property, specifically copyrights and patents, to remain private for too long. This is for a number of reasons. While copyright laws and patents can potentially allow one to make a huge amount of profit, it is wholly unconstitutional for this profit-making to continue for prolonged periods of time with no end in sight. Copyright laws and patents were put in place so that people would be encouraged to create new things and share their myriad ideas, not so that they would be encouraged to have one good idea and spend the rest of their life charging other people for it. If one opts for the latter path, one is no longer being creative, and is no longer benefitting society. The Constitution was not created to protect those people. The Constitution was created to protect idea-sharing, not idea-hoarding. Copyright laws and patents exist so that people can reap some reward for sharing their ideas as incentive to do so. However, allowing them to reap said reward indefinitely defeats the purpose of having them share it. Unfortunately, the nature of our capitalist society is such that any means of producing large amounts of profit will be abused. As organizations who defy the framers' original intentions concerning Copyrights and Patents become richer, they have more resources available (namely, cash money) to influence the goings-on in Washington to be in their favor. This influence in turn allows them to keep their intellectual property private (and thus profitable) for longer. This cycle has led to the situation we are currently in. While many argue that this is how it should be, I say that our society's view of intellectual property has diverted from the path set forth by the framers.

Room for Creativity

One of Lessig's concerns, discussed in his book, is the copyright law. He's not oppose to it as there is still some good in it, benefits such as it promotes more people to be creative and convince them that they are able to make money out of their work, since their work are protected under the law. But he thinks that there should be some limit of how long is a certain intellectual object should be protected under this law.

At least there are two different views on this issue. Big media companies are the intermediaries who hold the rights over the copyrighted objects. They are in favor of copyright term extension since they will keep making profit out of intellectual property so long as the object is still protected. Other people must pay (or ask for permissions) if they wish to make use of the intellectual object. People like Lessig think that this is good for profit-making, but it would harm the humanity in other ways. The urge to be creative, or to express our ideas and actually turn it into a reality, and to share it with other people is limited. Copyright term extension has put constrained on the tools that many people depend upon to create new ideas, to invent new things. We are human, it is almost impossible to create new things out of nothing, we use ideas from others. If everything is protected forever, then there will be limited number of new inventions in the future.

When I saw the creative commons website in class, I think that it is a convincing alternative to copyright. People can share their intellectual work without worrying too much whether other people will take this idea and sell it in the market. It is against the law as creative commons license still protect some of the rights of the owner of the intellectual property, namely the right to make profit out of it. At the same time, people are still able to be creative without putting themselves at the risk of being sued by the big media companies as this is totally legal. I personally think that creative commons is the kind of balance we are looking for, which is the balance between the exclusive rights over an intellectual object and at the same time letting others to make use of the object.