Mark Zuckerberg’s comment on sharing

Start it at 0:26 and stop it at 0:39. Alternatively, you could watch all 3 minutes of it, but those 13 seconds are probably enough.

I prefer the term information liberators

In accordance to the Net Communcations lecture discussed this week, the idea of piracy v.s copyright came up.

piracy: Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works covered by copyright law, in a way that violates one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.

copyright: Copyright is the set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. These rights can be licensed, transferred and/or assigned.

I guess there are advantages to Piracy that don’t necessarily outweigh the ‘negative’ connotations associated with ‘stealing’ music. In my opinion, the idea of piracy is a way that, along with the Internet, connects and educates individuals around the world with a plethora of “free” information from the Internet.

Why is that there is a negative correlation between free information and piracy? Sure it’s a little unfair to those who have paid and contributed to its creation, but in the scheme of things, I believes that it benefits more than it harms. As aforementioned, it allows people to gain access to information in a way that would have been otherwise difficult/costly. We would rather download music rather than buy it because, according to Chris Anderson, Author of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”, we are fundamentally attracted to things that are free because we don’t have anything to lose from it, yet we gain something of value.

However

What we don’t realise that it isn’t ultimately free, we pay the price through advertising and the ‘free’ awareness it generates so that when we respective company/organization does correlate this previously free commodity with a price, we are more willing to pay for it in the end, this was prominent during the lecture when Radiohead’s and Girl Talk’s decision to upload their albums on their respective websites for ‘free’. In a way, this could be perceived either as a marketing ploy or as a way to “stick it to the man”.

I guess it could be said that there is a delicate balance between the “information liberators” (piracy) and “The Man” (multi-national corporations) and that each are needed to keep the other in check. As mentioned before, we are attracted to “free” things, and as a University Student, we know this all too well. Anything free holds an instant appeal to our “greedy” persona, and the reason why websites like Piratebay generate such online traffic is because they act as a personification of “liberation” and in a sense, the essence of the Internet where information is a right, not a priviledge.

Of course, there are people who believe in paying for information over the internet, and this is also why the Apple App Store raked in an estimated 2.4 billion dollars in 2009. There are people who hold the belief that by paying for products/information, they are getting a satisfaction guarantee, they know that what they are purchasing has been rightfully bought from a reliable company etc. whereas the road of pirated goods, such as DVDs, movies and music is paved with the chance of viruses and crap quality.

So, I believe that in the argument of piracy vs. copyright, it’s all a matter of personal opinion, whether you believe that you hold the right to obtaining information at your leisure without the risk of prosecution, OR, that if you want information, you have to pay for it like anyone else.  I mean, we don’t go around stealing food, clothes or electronics, do we? So why is the Internet any different?

Popping my wordpress cherry

– What features can you identify in WordPress that define it as a Web 2.0 application?

1) Users add value: That is to say that the website itself doesn’t necessarily produce any of it’s own data, users contribute through the formation of blogs and posts, which thus, add value to the entirety of the “Web application”.

2) Data is the next Intel Inside: Because the users produce the data, as aforementioned, it is an extremely unique and hard-to-create source. Therefore providing a competitive advantage.

3) Some Rights Reserved: The intellectual data produced by the writers/producers are protected by intellectual property laws that prevents it’s replication and re-use.

 

4) Software above the level of a single device: since the PC is no longer the only device to access the internet with, the applications limited to a single device (PC. Phone, ipad) are less valuable than those which are shared.  Therefore, devices that can be integrated with different devices ultimately gain favour and popularity with users for its convenience.

5) The Perpetual Beta: Applications are no longer static, instead they are constantly evolving to suit the ever-changing needs of the internet. Therefore, instead of having just one version, they are updated/added on a regular basis as a constant feature for users. This engages your users as guinea pigs to observe the success of the feature/application.

 

– How does it manage to be a sustainable model while also empowering “producers”? Discuss as a group.

The beauty of WordPress is that because it focuses its attention primarily on the “producers”, they are the main driving force of the Web 2.0 application. By having thousands and millions of “producers”, WordPress has access to a completely unique and “hard-to-create” source of data, which in turn allows WordPress to keep producing batches of applications to suit the ever changing needs of both the producers and the users.

WordPress manages a sustainable model while still empowering producers as suggested by Herz as it ‘harnesses the hive’.

WordPress involves care for community concerns.  These concerns can be public issues, political issues or even household issues, all which are relevant to the wider community. That is to say that the product usage community is able to produce their own content.  This content is likely to gain interest from the bigger community and therefore encourages more users who want to view the content. This ultimately increases the utilisation of WordPress who provide the service.