Curation & Copyright

Another week in the books, another tool added to the Web 2.0 toolbox. I signed up to try several tools this week: Pearltrees, Diigo, Wakelet, Pinterest (okay, I was already signed up for Pinterest) but as in previous weeks, this was just barely scratching the surface of what is out there. I did not immediately take to Diigo or Wakelet; perhaps I didn’t give them enough time to win me over. Waklet’s interface seemed rigid to me and the process for adding items to a collection was clunky and limited. Diigo I think has potential with the ability to search tags and the suite of tools available to add content through the Google Chrome browser extension was impressive, but the interface was cluttered making it difficult to use. I’m sure given more than a few days of playing with these tools their better features would shine and their limitations would feel, well, less limiting.

As I mentioned in my last post, there are tons of tools out there that are trying to solve the problem of information glut. I think two quotes from Wakelet’s about page sum up the current predicament rather well:

"The web is filled with disconnected pieces of information and it’s growing all the time."

"Perfectly good content gets buried in no time at all."

It is impossible to keep pace with the amount of information generated online every day; heck, even every minute presents an insurmountable mountain of stuff that we may never even see. Social bookmarking and digital content curation tools are two ways that we can harness the power of social networking to tackle this problem. Even with these tools, there is no way to see everything, but we have a better chance of seeing the right things, the things that are important to us.

What I found interesting from the article on Diigo use in an online graduate-level class was the sort of trickle-down effect of the curated content (Im & Dennen, 2013). The knowledge didn’t just stay within that group of students but rather spread to others that were connected to those students and presumably to others connected beyond that. The act of collecting, aggregating and cultivating the disconnected pieces of information on the Internet greatly extends the reach of this information as it piggybacks on the network of connections between users.

The other issue we dealt with this week was intellectual property and copyright. Kirby Ferguson had a very convincing argument for why he believes everything is a remix and there is no doubt that both the volume of content available on the Internet and the ease of appropriating it has significantly complicated these ideas. Social media is built on a foundation of sharing, so I was curious about the fate of this continuous stream of content. Do we still own it or are we giving up our rights to it when we click post? Turns out, buried in those terms of service agreements that 99.9% of people blindly accept without so much as a second thought, you still own the content you post on social media; but...by using the service you are granting Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whoever pretty much carte blanche to use your content without compensation.

In her article titled "User Data on the Social Web: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation," Jessica Reyman (2013) draws an important distinction between content and data and while you may own your content, social media companies make a fierce claim over ownership of your data. Some may ask what’s the difference? Data includes a wide range of information like status updates, friends and groups you belong to, the things you like, your browsing history and information (metadata) embedded in the material you upload. Most of this stuff is invisible to the end user and that’s the point Reyman is making. People may not be fully cognizant of what data they are implicitly agreeing to give up and more importantly, how that data will be used. This data appropriation by social media companies is viewed as an acceptable cost for the privilege of using the platform.

Reyman cites examples of how Facebook mis-appropriated this data in ways that were unexpected and certainly not welcomed by users and resulted in considerable outrage. The problem I see as social media continues to grow is that users are unable to give their informed consent to these data use practices. Technical settings in many of these applications give the appearance that users are in control of their data, but are they really? Do they know and understand the implications of turning a setting on or off? I would say that most people don’t and the majority of people trust that the default settings will be adequate and provide them with an appropriate level of security and protection. But whose interests are those default settings designed for? The user or the company?

In many ways, the Internet is still the Wild West, with new technologies emerging every day that require us to renegotiate how we interact with this evolving medium. Social media is the current trend in this evolution and with it comes valid concerns over the ownership and use of our content and data. As digital citizens, we need to be aware of these issues and be active voices in the discussion to ensure a fair and balanced distribution of rights.


References:

Im, T. & Dennen, V. P. (2013). Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning. In T. Bastiens, & G. Marks (Eds.), Proceedings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (ELEARN) (pp. 794-797). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Reyman, J. (2013). User data on the social web: Authorship, agency, and appropriation. College English, 75(5), 513-533.

Copy, Transform and Combine...a Recipe for the Digital Age

Is there any originality left in the world? Is it naive to think that it ever existed in the first place? These are the questions I’m pondering after viewing Kirby Ferguson’s four-part video series Everything is a Remix. I highly recommend that you check it out as it is well worth the 37 minute runtime. Or, if you’re running short on time, you can check out his related TED talk on creativity.

In these videos, Ferguson cites example after example of supposed original works that can trace their roots back to previous creations, some of which were themselves built on even earlier works. From songs and films to the lightbulb and the personal computer, there is no shortage of examples it seems.

Part four of the series explores how our legal system is at odds with a creative process that builds upon the works of others as it views these creative works through the awkward lens of property. Ferguson points to the rise of the market economy as a source of the problem, wherein a distinct competitive advantage is enjoyed by those who copy as they are able to avoid the costly price of development associated with the original. This dilemma gave rise to the introduction of copyright and patent laws whose intent was to secure a limited period of exclusivity for the originator where copying would not be allowed. Afterwards, that work would enter into the public domain where it could be built upon in order to spawn new ideas and new inventions.

This was the original intent of these cornerstones of creative protection and was directly reflected in their subtitles. The Copyright Act of 1790 was an act for the encouragement of learning and the Patent Act of 1790 was an act to promote the progress of useful arts. I was a little surprised to learn that these pieces of legislation were so focused on growth and provided protection for the individual but at the same time recognized the importance of the common good. Interestingly enough, I found another TED talk by Lettie Ransley that discusses the Statue of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act of 1710, as it relates to written works in the digital age. Passed 80 years prior to the US copyright act, this British legislation is coincidentally also described as an act for the encouragement of learning.

Today, copyright and patent laws are discussed almost exclusively in terms of protecting the owner’s rights from infringement. The video introduces two new species in the opportunistic litigation ecosystem: sample trolls and patent trolls, companies who make their living off of suing over intellectual property rights infringement, no matter how small. What benefit do these companies provide to the public? How do these self-serving practices live up to the original intent of these legal protections? There is virtually no discussion about the common good or the proliferation of new ideas built on the work of others. Perhaps now is the right time to remix the current distorted notions of copyright and intellectual property in this digital age and get back to our roots.