Creative rights

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Since 1700 the copyright has been around, Grey also tells us in his video the law has became more strict. Creator’s works being protected by copyright laws, until after they pass away. The question is if these laws are restricting us from being truly naturally creative, are they choking creativity? Lessig talks very passionately, mentioning our children are being effected the most by these strict unfair copyright laws. Disney and other  corporatioms protect their works. Disney however has played a big role in lobbying to extend certain copyright laws. Copy Right Term Extension Act has also been nick named Mickey Mouse Protection Act, because of Disney’s involment to extend copyright laws. After viewing Fadens’ s video I searched Wikipedia for Disney and copyrights and  found out corporations’ creative works have the longest copyright laws. Even readimg Center for Social Media’s document shows how much concern educators have to not break any copyrigjt laws. Which leads me to think if our creative rights, are being hindered.

Copyright

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Its has been proven throughout history that any activist of knowledge will pay the consequence. In this great country I would never have expected Swartz to go out the way he did. These copyright laws aren’t willing to compromise to any situation even if it will be more of beneficial than a misfortune, especially with the issue of spreading knowledge. Even within this day and age where access to information is so easy and can be found almost anywhere there are still documents and information that is used to gain some sort of profit. The limitations and restrictions found with in this “democracy” is observed. Self expression should come with so many restrictions.

Digital Divide

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The percentage of adults that have online access are pretty low in comparison to what I had expected. Research has shown that 15% percent of adults with in the U.S do not have online access. This came as a serious surprise to me. Growing up and living within the city I tend to forget that there are rural areas within the United States with the difficulty of installing satellites in order to generate this access. Not only is getting to these rural areas a bit difficult the expenses for installation and monthly billing can be a bit out of reach for certain american individuals.

Today’s summary, and reading/blogging for Wednesday 10/9

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Today we discussed access with some reference to the Martin article and to the case of Aaron Swartz’s activism, described in the Samuelson article (and many other places). Slides from today are available here.

On Wednesday 10/9 we’ll discuss metadata: information about information; taxonomies and folksonomies.

Please read the following: Badke ch. 4; Dye, Folksonomy: A Game of High-Tech (and High-Stakes) Tag; Harrod, Flickr: The World’s Photo Album
Your blogging assignment is one comment of at least 100 words on a classmate’s blog post, or 2 comments totaling 100 words on 2 different blog posts.

Questions about the research topic proposal draft, due 10/16? Refer to the guidelines, review slides of class discussions, and get in touch with your questions! I’m glad to discuss over email, by appointment, or during my office hours, Monday and Wednesday immediately after class.

~Prof. Leonard

GIVE ME KNOWLEDGE OR GIVE ME DEATH

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If we were judged by how our heart thought rather than how our brains worked we all would qualify for a noble honor. In the case of Aaron his good heart was hurt by the laws that govern his brain and the world. His action may have arguable lead him in his demise, but what certainly did was the fact that he was breaking the law with out intention to. This “LAW” and laws that govern information have to either lighten up or come to an end it makes knowledge which should be free to the world and everyone in it a golden secret that very few should obtain. In my honest opinion the record of information should be free and able to access to all who wish to gain

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.

Spread the word

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All Aaron Swartz wanted to do was spread knowledge and for that he was tried at court resulting in him commuting suicide. He didn’t have any bad intentions with the information he put out he was generally trying to help others out. Sometimes we come across websites that require us to be members for which we have to pay to be. So why not have access to credited and reliable information when it can really help us? Although I do have to add he should’ve been a little more cautious about the way he used government funded information. Copyrighting from the government already sounds like something that can get you in a plethora of trouble. But I do believe that his idea of spreading information was not wrong.

Learning or breaking the law

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Research and copyrighted material has become so vital in the past years. People who are attempting to spread knowledge are getting accused of breaking the law. In Pamela Samuel’s article, she wrote about a person named, Aaron Swartz, who was an internet activist and was accused of fraud and computer abuse, resulting in him committing suicide. His goal was to provide more access to knowledge in the internet. I agree that he was careless in these decisions and that he should have thought about copyright and possible consequences. In Brian Martin’s writing, he discussed what research was, and how almost every profession utilizes it. In my opinion i believe that the copyright law is overrated and the penalties shouldn’t be severe because it makes people feel limited to knowledge.

Information leads to knowledge which leads to power or a felony

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Its funny how people say that “Knowledge is power” which makes other people want to gain more knowledge(hopefully), but when we want to gain knowledge there is always an obstacle in your path when we try to gain or pursue it. In “Aaron Swartz: Opening Access to Knowledge” the article explains how Mr.Swartz wanted to share information with everyone that can give them knowledge but people would have to subscribe(such a horrible word these days, makes you cringe right?) to a digital library such as JSTOR. Mr.Swartz wanted to share this information and he did, but when he did somehow under vague wire-fraud and computer-abuse laws, he was charged with 13 felony offenses(and here I thought sharing was caring).

Why cant information just be free? Why is it that we the consumers must pay to receive information that can one day help us? 

Aaron Swartz: Opening Access to Knowledge

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Internet activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide after downloading 4 million articles from JSTOR and got charged with 13 felony offenses. The writer Pamela Samuelson argues that charges against Aaron was necessary but Aaron’s mission or goal was worthy. Many JSTOR articles were funded through research grants and governments and foundations, so Aaron had no idea that he didn’t have to pay for it. Even articles are not covered by which listed above, some articles written by university professors are covered by their salary. And JSTOR were written by scholars to share the knowledge. Pamela argues that copyright is being an obstacle to knowledge and articles like JSTOR should be open-access for scholarly work.