Lesson 29 Following on from Lesson 28, we'll begin by discussing what you learned from the prep:  What did reading Flickr's 16 January 2008 blog post about the creation of Flickr Commons tell you? What are the aims of Flickr Commons? What did you learn there and from Wikipedia about crowd-sourcing? What part does tagging play in Flickr Commons, how many are there on Flickr — and who created these? What video should this remind you of from earlier in the course (it's in Lesson 21 and you also used it when you learned how to embed a video in your own blog)? Did you know you can search Flickr Commons by tag and by full text? What permissions to use a Flickr Commons photo do you have? What other examples of crowd-sourcing have you encountered or heard of? Here's a very new one. 2) "Read: this Twitter from Stephen Fry, James Boyle: The Public Domain and In Defense of Piracy - WSJ.com. Be ready to discuss these at the start of next lesson." Stephen Fry was twittering about Pirate Bay after the conviction of the four founders. He only has 140 characters to tweet in! — but what do you think of his comment? (See also here.) James Boyle: did you find out who he is? What is his book, The Public Domain, about? Larry Lessig wrote the Wall Street Journal article you also had to look at. Who is he? What's his link with Creative Commons? In the WSJ article, Lessig argues that "Copyright law must be changed" — why and how? The article, we learn at the end, is adapted from his latest book — what's that called? Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight At heart of much of the contemporary discussions about copyright is the difficulty of balancing artists'/owners' rights against the freedom of others to be innovative. Here's Born Digital again:
And here's what the authors of this same book, both trained in US Law, suggest: There's room for everyone to participate in resolving this mess. We propose five approaches. The other four suggestions they make include the creation of a new ethos in which technology companies act accountably, "not framing their businesses in such a way as to encourage unlawful acts by their users"; the law acting in such a way as to create a level playing field, enabling as well as constraining behaviour — they cite as an example Creative Commons which, they say, "makes it both possible and easy to give permissions to others to reuse content in creative ways"; addressing issues of royalties; and, finally, turning from negative educational campaigns to a new program of education in which "all aspects of copyright ... [are] taught — not only the part of the story about exclusive rights and control, but also the one about limitations and exceptions such as fair use, research and teaching exceptions, and the like. In an environment where almost everything is possible, but not necessarily legal, it's crucial we teach Digital Natives about their responsibilities, as well as about their rights. ... They will need this knowledge as they, too, increasingly become copyright holders as well as copyright users." Prep: 1) Find out more about Creative Commons. At least one person in each set has done a bit of work on CC already and summarised their findings for the group. Make sure you all know the answers to the following: When was it formed and by whom? What is its mission? What are the terms of a Creative Commons licence ? What do the different types of licence mean and how are they represented visually (link)? 2) Read any of the linked to material above which you didn't have time to discuss or look at in class. In particular, look at Facebook | On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information. Who, today, owns what you post there? Lesson 30 One area where there is an intense debate that involves copyright is news. Newspapers are having a very hard time of it: declining readership of their print editions, tumbling revenues from advertising, mounting debts ... Google's come under fire again recently for what newspapers perceive as its significant contribution to their problems. Here's a recent report: Murdoch threw down the gauntlet to Google ... accusing the search giant of poaching content it doesn't own & urging media outlets to fight back. "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?" Newspapers are finding it hard to make (much) money from their online sites. Meanwhile, Google does a brilliant job at enabling people to find the news they're looking for — but it's not clear what share of the AdSense advertising Google keeps. It looks as if News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's empire, will start charging soon for access to its news online, using some e-reader device they are building. One experienced businessman, the NYC-based venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, comments: Google is distribution. It is the newsstand. If Rupert or any other newspaper owner chooses to take its content out of the Google index, there will be plenty of content left that can take its place. ... Google is not News Corp's problem. Their problem is us. ... The explosion of "user generated content" has created some very compelling news services ... And there are a bunch of companies ... aggregating up the best user generated content ... and creating awesome news, information, and entertainment services. ... News and information content is becoming much richer and better. And that is Rupert's problem at the end of the day. It's not that he can't compete with Google. It's that he can't compete with us. Over the coming months and years you should be keeping a sharp eye on the debate about the future of newspapers, their relationship with Google and the question of who or what will take their place in culture should many of them simply ... disappear. ***** Let's look at some recent examples of how some news reporting, at least, may be shifting away from what is often now called "old media". Over the Easter holiday, the G20 summit was held in London. There were demonstrations and these were policed. Here is some material that you saw recently in an assembly. Go over it with your class teacher. How do we see news reporting going on here — who are these individuals doing the reporting or relaying news, what tools are they using and how might a reader have come across or deliberately found them do you think? 1) A blog post by Roo Reynolds: he works at the BBC, but is he a reporter? Read his report in full, in class or for prep.  How many are there today? 3) Collecting relevant news items, blog posts, etc using Delicious. (Where do you think many of these items were first read? On the sites themselves or in a news reader like Google Reader. Or perhaps a Google Alert was used?)  4) Using other people's eyes and ears, via Twitter — and, here, a reference back to "old media":  5) Hearing about a photo on Flickr almost at the moment it was posted — again via Twitter. The photo is all rights reserved, so can't be reproduced here without the author's permission, but you can view it on the site. 6) Also via Twitter, hearing about another aspect to this story, reported by C4 News on its website like this ...  ... and by Matt Jones who was there (but is not a reporter) like this (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share-Alike — Some rights reserved):  7) What role did photographic and video evidence play in the above? Who took these photos/shot the video? Here are some links for you to follow, now or for prep: Roo Reynolds - This is why we need more photographers at public events ***** There is so much to say about media, old and new, in the digital world you are growing up in and so little time to explore this that we can only hope to deal with a tiny sample. Here's another angle to consider as you work out, over the next few years, who will be your eyes and ears — to whom you will give your trust when it comes to news. When we looked at Wikipedia in Lessons 22 and 23, we saw that Wikipedia records the history of all the edits made to its pages and that this history is open for users to read and analyse. Now look at these two versions of a story about us that The Evening Standard ran with last November:   The top one was the first version: incorrect, it was amended the same day, after the school contacted the paper. But can you tell this from the paper's site? (In fact, when the versions were changed, the comments to the first version remained — as if they had been posted to the second version.) Another example, from the BBC News website:  Again, there's usually no way of knowing from the BBC News site whether a story's been changed at all and, if so, how often, by how much or how significantly. Enter, News Sniffer ("The News Sniffer project aims to monitor corporate news organisations to
uncover bias":  How can a site like News Sniffer monitor changes to stories, do you think? Do you think it matters? in the recent holiday, the acclaimed author J G Ballard died. Here's a snapshot of the news breaking on Twitter:   Wikipedia was updated to include the news that Ballard had died, but then was changed back. Look at this clip from the debate within Wikipedia: Already blogs and Twitters have been announcing that Wikipedia has "confirmed" the death, but we're in no place to do this - Wikipedia should source the news, it shouldn't try to break the news itself from lesser sources. This may well mean sitting it out and waiting for the Monday morning papers to confirm it. A sad afternoon. --McGeddon (talk) 18:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)  *****  Prep: 1) Look back to Lessons 22 and 23 on Wikipedia. In assessing the reliability of something from Wikipedia, what criteria do you use which overlap with, or are the same as, the criteria you use in assessing the reliability of a news source — in print or online? And what criteria are peculiar to digital, online material in general and to a wiki such as Wikipedia? 2) Again, read up on any of the links from this lesson you didn't have time to cover in class. |
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Lessons 29 & 30: Citizenship in a Digital World |
