technoculture203-09

At work I have the task of fixing the photographic machine, which most of the time involves simply changing the paper and ribbon to make it work again. This got me thinking back to my first 203 tutorial and the discussion of whether or not ‘analogue media’ would disappear. I can agree that with the rise in digital culture that there was certainly a decrease in the consumption of analogue media such as buying records. However this does not make me conclude that analogue media has disappeared.

As a nostalgic ideal I do not believe that analogue media has been forgotten or indeed will be forgotten. For example chemical photography is still being taught at most schools along side digital photography. This brings me back to fixing the photographic machine, as even though the machine is a digitalized process it still requires a mere human to fix it.

Looking toward to the future, I do not believe that analogue media such as chemical photography will be forgotten as the basics of the photographic process are used to develop new photographic machines. Many people prefer the tangible photograph to a computer file, however it is debateable as to whether tangible photographs may also be on their way out.

Today's digital technology and the computer have changed how the average consumer can acquire information and entertainment. This means there is no wait in release date of an album to hear a new song, or wait to watch a movie. The technology is available easily at home computers. But, there is this question of infringement on ‘copyright’. This includes the rights of artists, authors, producers, or actors. This also raises questions about the advanced technology impacts in peoples' livings. With today's technology consumers (as examined in lecture, 95% of students have downloaded something illegally) can download almost anything from their computer and copy it onto a CD Rom or to an MP3 player. Pirated copies of songs from CDs that are not yet released or movies that are still in cinemas.

Music Copyright is a very important aspect in the music industries. The Copyright law preserves the creativity and rights of authors, composers, performers of expression. It protects the property rights of the creator of the original work in a fixed tangible medium. A fixed tangible medium is substantial like copying lyrics on paper or putting a song on tape or CD. Copyright can be seen everywhere in the music industry. Many music artist of our culture today have been involved in copyright issues and the copyright law has become an important legal aspect to know our music generation.

Copyright

Individual content such as UCC is spread rapidly on the Internet. However UCC has one of the biggest problems of media--copyright. Nowadays most of UCC are parodies of advertisements, films, music videos and other mainstream broadcasts. Because UCC is delivered through the internet, the ease of downloading can possibly cause a problem of copying and remaking of the original media text. If UCC is in form of real video or photo, the rights to one’s portrait and the right of publicity problems can also appear seriously in terms of unauthorized copying.

The commercial purposes of a program can be lessened if there is an infringement of illegal replication. For example, the music record market opposes illegal Internet downloads. When people download illegally, the producer of the media text will not get as much benefit. Then the investors who supported the producer will also be negatively affected and the industry will eventually decline as investors will be reluctant to invest.

The copyright problem in UCC cannot be solved easily. However when the UCC market gets bigger, it will have to face the complexities of the laws surrounding copyright.

Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul of the world is campaigning to end free online news. In his latest bid to make this bizarre idea even a small possibility, Murdoch has threatened to charge Google for presenting his newspapers’ content in their search engines. Google argues that “it presents links and teasers, not content. And it sends more than 300 million clicks a month to newspapers”. What right does the mogul have in saying – ‘nope you have to pay for those 300 million clicks that you sending at no cost to me?’ Personally it all sounds like a tight-arse mogul being just a little too tight with his money and just not getting with the times.

The mogul explains: “quality journalism isn’t cheap”. He’s right – must have cost TV3 thousands to send Samantha Hayes and a film crew to I-don’t-know-what festival in some exotic country, but then I bet they made it back capturing male audiences far and wide in NZ by featuring the colourful shots of Samantha looking o-so-sexy in the ad campaigns for the ‘serious news’ show. We have had the Internet for over a decade; it has become engrained into our daily lives to log on to news sites to see what is happening right now all over the world. My internet logs at work are jammed packed with nzherald pages.* My expectation is that I can surf the site for free; if they started charging then I would go elsewhere. Its not the logo at the top of the site that makes me read a site, it’s the content. And let’s face it the content is going to be generally the same everywhere because it’s the same events being reported on.

The mogul did actually attempt to enter the free news market by launching the free newspaper, Londonpaper, which also ran online, and after consistent losses the paper had to be shut down. Upmost failure. This whole issue sounds like what would happen when a very rich man, used to getting what he wants, suddenly doesn’t so he wants everyone else to do what he is already successful at so he can win at his own game. Wake up Murdoch, its 2009 and the people expect websites to be free.

*I must add: I can’t get onto Facebook at work.

This was one issue I followed most avidly specifically because it concerned 'me, you and all of us' as users of the internet who have engaged in illegal downloads at some point in their life. But most peculiar was how the section in question completely ignored the fundamental tenets of law procedure, most importantly that of presumption of innocence (innocent until proven guilty) and the right to a fair trial. Guilt by association law completely does away with those archaic formalities as the video above outlines.

If anything, it seems intent on repeating the Tenebaum saga: they want to threaten the mass, by making an example of a few. Not only is such a practice "draconian" but also giving the ISP's which stand for the corporate carte blanche to accuse citizens is just not fair.

As a law student, I recognize that illegal downloading is not right. But I do it because I have an urge to listen to my favorite music as it comes, rather than waiting weeks for it to get to the market. But once they are out, I do buy them having an affinity for originals. Perhaps if the NZ music market was on par with the American or European ones I would not have had to resort to such "criminal" means. The onus then is on the record companies here, don't you think?

Instead of reworking draconian laws that are biased in favor of the economic powers-that-be no matter how many times they have been refashioned, New Zealand should work with the entertainment industries to keep up with the real-time demands of the kiwi music lovers which has hitherto been satisfied most clearly only by downloading illegally.

After hearing the story of Joel Tenenbaum and how the RIAA sued him for $675,000 after he illegally downloaded music off of Napster, it’s safe to say I’m a little scared. As confirmed by class participation, downloading illegal media is a popular crime. ‘Popular,’ actually might be an understatement because I cannot recall anybody who isn’t part or has never been a part of a file sharing network. However low the percentage of getting caught, I can’t help thinking about a program on the Discovery Channel showing huge amounts of fish herded together and then getting completely massacred by dolphins. It just shows that safety isn’t always in numbers. It scares me to know that, like Joel, I have used Kazaa in the past. I came across a website talking about another person, Jammie Thomas, who got hooked with a huge fine after using Kazaa: http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/10/08/jammie-thomas-plans-to-pay-riaa-fine-on-her-own
I felt a little reassured when Luke talked about how the RIAA had recently switched its strategy, because prosecuting individuals was an investment black hole, to targeting or working with school and other public networks to prevent the operations of file sharing networks. In this past week’s lecture, it made sense to me that crimes ten years ago and before aren’t comparable to today’s internet crimes because of the change in our generation’s culture. Downloading something illegally isn’t the same as stealing out of a store; instead of taking something, we are duplicating something. . Even so, this still doesn’t help Joel, who is still in serious trouble. I came across the website http://joelfightsback.com/ which talks about Joel’s ongoing battle with the RIAA. I found out on this site that Charles Nesson, a Harvard Professor of Law, and students are helping defend Joel, which is reassuring. Still, I don’t think this will stop me from file-sharing, but I know I get a sense of relief after successfully downloading something without receiving some kind of threatening message.

As discussed in a lecture a few weeks ago, the internet has opened up opportunities that allow citizens to become journalists, disseminating messages and news via internet tools such as social networking sites.

One example of this is the Iran Election of 2009, and the following protests and violence that sprung up, with Iranians turning to Twitter and YouTube to post their own eye-witness reports, photos and videos. This was particularly important because foreign media had been banned from reporting from the streets of Iran.

Using Twitter and YouTube to post information allowed the citizens of Iran to organise rallies and protests, and make clear to the world the violence that was occurring within and being hidden by Iran. This is just one of many examples of a Twitter account that has been used to post reports from the streets of Iran during June of 2009.



Videos like the one above are easy to find on YouTube. What is important about such videos is how they bring certain issues to light - it is fair to say that if no one posted on Twitter, or put videos on YouTube, the world would have much less knowledge about what is happening abroad. The situation in Iran is just one example of how the internet opens up a way for citizens to become journalists; taking the media into their own hands, and showing their situation to the world. It also provides a form of the digital public sphere because they allow for comment and discussion, such as through the comments section of YouTube. It's not hard to see that this is only the start of the internet's potential as a forum for citizen journalists.