CSE 619

For the second part of The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler goes into more detail about patterns of nonmarket individual and cooperative social behavior. In the past we did not have to worry too much about people plagiarizing or being able to burn copyrighted movies and CDs. However, as technology has developed and prices have been increasing people have gotten crazy with wanting to save money. With this money saving in mind people are finding ways to cut corners like burning movies and CDs and plagiarizing for papers. Laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are being put into place so that there can be more of a safety net for the businesses that create the movies, CDs and books.

            Along with all of the big laws and acts that are out there, there are also the ones that are more there for another layer of protection like the second enclosure movement. Things can be safer with more protection but it also can have its back fires. Some people have the thought that having all of this protection is challenging them to break the code, so to speak. I do not know this from personal reasons, so you can stop thinking that (Just kidding).

            Companies have to decide how they want to go about with protecting what is rightfully theirs. This means with film companies being able to make money off of the film they just aired or the artist whose CDs was just released. I do not like that the people that are breaking the law are taking away something that is not theirs to take. I know that some people may think that the Hollywood stars, singers, authors, producers and all of the other people that are being ripped off when copy writing and plagiarism is happening do not need more money because they are already rich. I just want to point out that if everyone thought this way than those Hollywood stars, singers, authors, producers, etc. will not have a job to pay their bills. Yes they are getting paid a lot more than many different professions but if everyone takes away how they are earning their money than we are taking away their way of life.

            Even though every country has their own laws and expectations, they are all pretty similar in their laws against copywriting. Nothing is the exact same for every country but they are the same when it comes to layering the protection. The countries take notes an advice from each other like when “Europe covered similar ground on telecommunications, and added a new exclusive right in raw facts in databases” (Benkler, 2006). There are the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties that the United States and Europe established for telecommunications.

            The line still for the where is the laws and treaties going overboard in order to protect and when they are just silly ways to put more boundaries on people and their creativity. I understand fully that these laws and treaties need to be put into place because it could get to crazy and people will not be able to figure out whom to give credit to.

Works Cited

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

CSE 619

     This week are reading was for The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler. The chapter of this book that really grabbed my attention was chapter 8 Cultural Freedom: A Culture both Plastic and Critical because made comparisons from media literacy to real life situations. Media literacy has many layers. The different layers can be referred to as different cultures. Each resource provides a new view point on what the person is looking for.

     Chapter eight starts off by comparing the movie Gone with the Wind and Strange Fruit a song by Billie Holiday and lyrics by Abel Meeropol. It compares how the two different Medias are similar in their content but they were held at different levels by the public. Gone with the Wind was very popular and got great reviews however; the song did not do as good.

     Media literacy is so diverse that it has no problem with being compared to our society. When people are thinking about making a commercial for their product they have to make sure they know who their audience is and the best way to show that audience what they are selling. When people are trying to choose when their commercial needs to be aired the producers will look at their target audience and put it on channels that best fit its purpose.

     I found the perfect video that is a good visual to what I am trying to say, the video is called JCPR/JCIP Right Message Wrong Audience: Commercial Real Estate. When looking through the resources that are out there, teachers need to make sure that what they are finding and planning to use in the classroom makes sense with what is being taught.

     Teachers also have to look at the resources they find to see if the media literacy’s they find are the in the points of view that the teacher wants their students to look at. With Gone with the Wind and Strange Fruit it comes from different points of view. Both resources can be looked at in similar ways however; the song is more intense and descriptive than what is given with the video.

     Teachers should not just look at the views of the resources but of their own classroom as well. They need to make sure that students will feel comfortable enough when watching a video or listening to an audio clip that they will be able to take something away from it. If the resource is to disturbing, as an example, then students will be using their time to try and not hear/see what is going on and will be able to not take away the message that the lesson is trying to get across.

Teachers also have to make sure that the video clip or other media literacy is on the same level as the audience. If the resource is too hard too easy for the level that is watching it students will spend too much time either getting to bored to pay attention because the information is to easy or falling behind because the information is to hard.

Works Cited

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

JCPR, J. a. (Director). (2013). JCPR/JCIP Right Message Wrong Audience: Commercial Real Estate [Motion Picture].

CSE 619:

Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright by Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi is a great book that explains what Fair Use is and how it works. I found it interesting that the book goes through all of the steps on how to create a code for the best practices in fair use. It goes from talking about the people that are going to be a part of the group to what is going to be done by the group. When it was describing who would be in this group it reminded me of when I would be put in groups and each of us would have a role within the group.

I remember that there was a recorder, speaker, reader, a leader, and an illustrator. Now reading through the book I can see that this type of set up is not just used in the classroom. With every group you need to make sure that everyone will work well together and all of the different roles are the right ones to use. It talks about how, “The industry executives or brokers who license the copyrighted material a community uses are never good friends for this purpose…” (Jaszi, 2011). This shows that people need to be careful when trying to create their own code for fair use.

                The next step in creating a fair use code is to collect research on why there may be problems with using copyrighted material that the community that is your group has. The book suggests that using surveys, interviews or both are good ways in collecting the information that you are looking for. Using these methods, the fair use group, are able to see what problems accrue in the specified field that is being looked at. With the survey and interview information the fair use group can narrow down the issue that is being had and the best way to go about moving forward in the mission.

An example is if I am writing a lesson and come to a road block because I want to try something more creative than what I have been doing, I would look online to see if I find anything that looks like it would be more fun to do. If I were to have found a lesson that looked like it would be a great substitute for what I originally had I would fill out my survey explaining that I found a lesson I want to use but I do not want to use all of what the lesson gave. I would be wondering if I would need to cite where I found the lesson or if I tweak it enough that I would be able to call it my own.

The information that the survey and interviews collect would be looked through and have not just the things people are asking about but also the obstacles that the person is going to have to go through in order to get what they are asking. Recommendations on how to proceed will also be included so the questioner will not be left hanging. All of this information will be the most helpful for the people in the same field as the questioners.

Works Cited

Jaszi, P. A. (2011). Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637.

CSE 619:          

With all of the new technology that is coming out it gets harder and harder to make it difficult for people to pirate DVDs or sell books online, which are copied. I have said before that new technology is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it is allowing teachers to get more creative with their lessons. However, nothing is perfect so the down side of the new technology is that it is getting easier to do things like make pirated movies.

I remember when I was younger and seeing the no pirating screens while watching a movie and wondering why would people want to make a copy of a movie when they could just buy it. As I got older I started hearing people talk about how they have a pirated version of a movie or a CD. It always confused me why people would risk getting in trouble for doing something that silly. I still think it is a stupid thing for people to do. I saw a pirated movie once and it was not as good a picture as the actual copy, so that even furthered my musings of making pirated movies.

            It was smart of people to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to make it even more difficult for people to pirate DVDs. It was a little sad to see that a fifteen year old was able to brake the encryption on DVDs and that he had the time just to figure it out so people would be able to pirate DVDs. It is situations like that that make me wondering about people and what are they doing with their life if they have time to sit down and brake an encryption.

            Reading about piracy and how it is truly affecting Hollywood is eye opening. I knew that the production companies can lose money from people making pirated copies but I never saw how big of an impact it can truly make. On page 177 of Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back gives a really good description and breaks it down so I was able to fully grasp the impact.

            On page 243, it states “Users complained it overcharged their credit cards, which just goes to show there’s no honor among thieves” (Levine, 2011). This statement was talking about a Russian pirate site. People had to pay for a subscription in order to use the site. I like that this was said because it is true. It went on to talk about how if piracy kept getting worse than it, “…endangers free speech by reducing the incentive of artists to create new work” (Levine, 2011). Why would people want to create new amazing things just to lose more money than what they put into their work? It defeats the purpose of making a living.

            I am a coach for Girls on the Run and this week’s lesson was treating others the way you would want to be treated. Going along the lines of this I would like to see the people that are doing the piracy to switch places with the production companies and see how much they like make amazing films and then getting their income lowered just because others are taking in illegally.

Works Cited

Levine, R. (2011). Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business can Fight Back. Toronto: Doubleday. 

CSE 619:

I have to be honest, it took me a couple times reading sentences over to fully understand what is being said. After kind of getting the flow of the text it got me thinking that there is a lot more than what I originally thought that goes into creating your own community. The first couple of paragraph got the layout of the baser needs of the community. At first I was a little afraid that I would actually have to make my own community.

Reading The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind match what I already understand with how things always start at a base point but grows and expands on the point that came before it. The quote in the book, “…while the facts below (and ideas above) would remain free for all to build upon” (page 57, paragraph 3, (Boyle, 2008)) is where I made the connection of building upon what is our prior knowledge.

The information that is given in The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind has very good evidence to back up its arguments by using reports, studies and databases from different places around the world. I think it is very smart that Boyle also compares different databases like the European Database Directive and the U. S. database directive.

The chapters about songs and particularly the song written by Mr. Randle and Micah Nickerson was a little out there compared to what was being said in the chapters before. Reading the song called “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” got me a little upset because I hate to think that at this day in age we still have to fight through segregation.

 This part of the book has me thinking that I really need to be aware of my students and how I act with all of them. I need to be aware if anyone is feeling like I am picking on them more than others. I remember when I was in high school and in my English class we were playing a game of Jeopardy to study for the upcoming test. As we were playing the game the teacher was making calls that helped one team more than it did the other. I remember being very upset about it because she was picking favorites.

I work with second and third graders at an after school care and I pride myself on how I try my hardest not to have favorites and make sure my instructions are fair for everyone.  I believe that the worst thing that a teacher can do is show that they have favorites and are not fair in their decisions.

To be the best teacher I can be I will treat every student equally. I will make sure I have in place for myself ways to make sure my decisions will be fair for all of my students. I will spend my time as evenly as possible with all of my students. Last but not least, I will make sure my students know that they can come talk to me about anything.

CSE 619:

Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright by Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi helped me get a better sense of what is and is not copyright. In high school I was taught about copyright and how to site sources. It got a little trickier when there were different ways to site sources. It helped when Microsoft Word allowed me to choose what form of sighting sources I needed.

When reading this book the part that I did not know from before reading this book was the concept of ‘Fair Use.’ I believe that there is a very thin line between what is considered plagiarism or just, now what I know is called, fair use. I like that there were many examples of actual situations where directors or writers had to figure out if and when they needed ask permission to use other pieces of other work.

While writing this blog post I had a really difficult time making sure that what I am writing will not be considered plagiarism. It is helpful when examples are given that help me put what is being said into a different way of looking at things. For an example, there is a quote in the book that says, “They called them “skeletons”-courses so bare that they were unhelpful teaching tools-and “Swiss cheese”- full of holes where crucial copyrighted material had been removed”  (Jaszi, 2011). When authors use illustrative words or a food/object so I am able to place that picture in my head and make those connections to the text.

It is quite interesting the process that people have to go through in order to get permission to use a 10 second clip in a movie or something else that is not that big of a thing. It is a little funny to me to think of lawyers have to get involved and it can often be a long and windy process. There is also the added step of all the other people that need to get involve such as, supervisors, insurers, publishers, and other authority person.

I was watching a show on HGTV and the lady was a professional blogger. I did not know that there was such a thing because I do not understand how you can make money from that but then the reading for the past weeks got me thinking that people like professional bloggers need to be very careful what they post and how they post it. To me it would seem that doing something like being a professional blogger would be more work than is really necessary and I would want to do something that would not put all that pressure on myself.

However, to go along with the last paragraph, the same could be said about being a teacher because we as teachers need to make sure that we are covering our own tails when creating a lesson. I remember when I was doing my student teaching and I had all of these big ideas to do with my students and I had to think about sighting the sources that I would be using. It is sad to say that some of my big ideas I changed because the sighting of it was a little too complicated than was really necessary for that particular lesson. It was also a recurring theme within my classes that my teachers encouraged us to use things that we found elsewhere and less time trying to make something up on our own.

I really took away a lot from this book and I am excited to have it as a reference point in my other assignments.

Yodio

Here is my Yodio recording, sorry it took me so long, every that could go wrong did. I finally got it made hope you enjoy.

http://www.yodio.com/yo.aspx?CardId=NUcjeVWHgB6zxcMdrWvOAG.