Author Archives: Dimitri Gallard

The Struggles

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Research is often tedious, as it refreshing. Some difficulties that I found as I work was obtaining various court cases and documents (primary sources). When the media reports on Copyright Infringement, often, names are left anonymous and sentencing is also left in the dark. Thus, in order to successfully correlate infringement punishment and morality, obtaining court documents is a necessity. It is painstaking but its almost completed.

A strategy that I found exceptionally useful is the use of narrowing search parameters. Using “AND” frequently in search engines and databases has garnered better results than simply searching for a broad topic.

Is it really safe for work?

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Elizabeth Liddy discusses important points in which the internet search operates. It was truly facinating how the search engines utilizes various protocol to help me find the latest episodes of ‘Dexter’. However is the search engines really categorizing data correctly? When I google “Dexter”, will my favorite narcissistic and sociopathic killer really pop up; and not some “not safe for work” content?

I recall in High School, my headmaster was telling us a story about how his son googled something relatively specific, “beavers”, and rounded up receiving something entirely inappropriate for a child. Is data and information really caterorgized properly? Is it really being review and distributed correctly or can any haphazard sap cause me grief at work when I google “Lizards” or “landing strips”.

 

The information barriers of repression

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Professor Samuelson’s article “Aaron Swartz: Opening access to knowledge”, open a variety of important points on morals and ethics that Aaron Swartz was attempting to face before ultimately taking his own life. His “theft” of articles from JSTOR is the act of a modern day Peter Pan. It ultimately raises a few questions and the ethics of information holding at the attempt to gain profit.

It is just to withhold knowledge from the public? Is it acceptable to repress the lower class, who aren’t able to access said knowledge without a platinum visa card? Knowledge is what improves a society; essentially its like an enzyme. It increases societies improvement,as a whole. It destroy’s the vicious cycle that chains the poor from achieving success. By crumbling this “information barrier”, this nasty mechanism designed to gain profits, we can remove the chains of repression from the poor and marginalized and improve society as a whole.

Copyright…my right to copy!

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Grey discusses copyright laws and the latest advancement in copyright infringement.  He notes that while laws are becoming stricter,  the means to ascertain copyrighted material hasn’t. This poses a highly confusing , albeit interesting, argument in the ethics and morals of technology usage.

Everyone needs food and shelter as it is a basic human necessity. In order provide for ones self, money becomes the most invaluable commodity;  especially in a city where the price for a one bedroom apartment in South Bronx can buy you a three bedroom house in southern states. This begs the question; “Is it really a serious crime to copyright infringe?” In latent terms, its something virtually everyone does. I’m not advocating for breaking whatsoever laws. However, it being such a massively committed act, is it really justifiable to send people to prison for years (CEO of Mega Upload) for something 10 year old Billy does in his spare time?

Critically Thinking in a Repressed Society

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Thomas Eland exposes the reader to a flawed view that the masses hold towards the freedom of information and media.  He reminds us that we interpret information solely on “internalized filters”. Essentially he is saying that we have internal barriers that prevent us from understanding and expanding on information presented to us though media, such as news and magazines.

Its mind boggling and actually discouraging how in a “free” society, one would have to resort to radical journalism to seek what Eland believes to be as credible information. In addition, its also  bit disturbing to realize that we ave,  basically, monopolies in a world in which laws were created to prevent such a system. Its true that in reality, we don’t have companies that can simply startup in a production. These various production lines are inherently monopolized and prevents any further  companies from entering.

Media Convergence transforming information

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Media Convergence authors, Graham Meikle and Sherman Young, divulge into the ever transformation of the field of information technology. They break the barriers of substandard nicknames for technological processes, and provide astounding examples of how Media and information is essentially “converging” and changing the process in which information is sent and received.

Its truly fascinating how rapidly society has improved our modes of information reception. For instance, most adults can recall the obnoxious sounds of dial-up and exceptionally long wait; whilst today, connecting is wifi is virtually effortless (and soundless). Hours spent in the library attempting to locate books that correlate to a project, is now minimized to a mere few minutes at a computerized resource machine or online databases! Technology is transforming and slowly converging into something that would cause the world to blacken should that technology cease to exist.