Week 5. Opinion about copyright

 

 

As the World Wide Web was invented in 1989 and web browsers started to appear in the next decade, a new technology of information exchange was introduced to humanity. It gave people access to text resources, films, music that others have uploaded to the Internet, it allowed file exchange or sending of private messages to friends or colleagues. But as copyright holders joined the Internet, the problems have started. It is obvious that businessmen who possess copyrighted material would want to make more profit, especially in such a popular place, so copyright rules started to seize the freedom of the Internet.

In my opinion, copyright rules that exist today have failed to be fair a long time ago. I would like to point out that the ones that make copyright rules tend to protect only large companies - copyright owners, but never mention how fair those rules would be for everybody else. So, copyright rules are now oriented towards making even more profit for the ones who already makes a great deal of money. I absolutely agree with the Swedish Pirate Party members and authors of this book that copyright rules that we have now must be rethought and reconstructed. The use of private message exchange is now at risk as never. Governments and officials are on the side of the large companies and one day they may stop thinking of human privacy in favor of companies. In addition, making messages non-private would even attract governments as they will have a possibility to track criminal activity. I also agree that companies prefer to enlarge their copyright and other capitalist importance even if they do not have a foundation for such actions. And because of that consumers’ rights to use or copy works are becoming even more miserable. 

It would be nice to say that we need to fight with the breaking of human moral rights and make copyright rules more sensible. But I do not think that the idea would gain much support. After I have noticed the increase of copyright rules' importance on the internet in 2019, I started to present facts to the people I used to talk to and listen to their opinion. Unfortunately, most of them agreed with the copyright statements preventing individuals from using content and consumers from sharing it without permission of the owner. I do not blame people, but I think that they have already lost their freedom on the Internet because of the copyright owners and their bad intentions. Companies are not stupid, they study their consumers. And they make everything possible to extract profit and to keep doing the same for a long time. So all their steps are careful, sometimes left unnoticed, but in the longer perspective, their actions bring total destruction to human freedom on the Internet. For example, they study how much people earn and how much people are ready to spend on services. If YouTube would have proposed its premium subscription back in 2010, people would not have accepted it. But with the years, YouTube started to increase the number of advertisements and enforced more and more copyright restrictions so that now it is impossible to watch a video without terrible 30 seconds of ads, download anything from YouTube or use copyrighted materials without spending money first. All other services have also caught up with this trend, some of them are making money out of literally rubbish. The internet becomes a big playground for the capitalists and a jail for any individual endeavor. Therefore I am very pessimistic about any changes in copyright rules for now. I think people have to rethink their usage of the internet, and it will come after some time when people will get tired to pay so much for nothing. People must understand that copyright rules are not rights of justice and equity. They lead us astray and will continue to do so.

 

 

Used materials:

(The book itself) http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/uploads/large/The%20Case%20For%20Copyright%20Reform%20(2012)%20Engstrom-Falkvinge.pdf

Christopher McFadden. (July 03, 2020). “YouTube's History and Its Impact on the Internet”. Interesting Engineering website. (Access date: 27.02.2022). https://interestingengineering.com/youtubes-history-and-its-impact-on-the-internet

“Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States”. Association of Research Libraries. (Access date: 27.02.2022). https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/

 

 

 

 

Week 3. How social networks are influencing the news media.

 

At present times, people often use social network platforms as a news source however, it was not so 10 years ago, people would visit news sites to stay informed about local and global occasions. In this blog post, I would like to talk about how social networks are influencing traditional news resources.  As the US Reuters Institute statistics show, Facebook and YouTube are the leaders in usage as the news resources amongst other social networks. More news groups and channels are created and more messages are being sent on those platforms. But it does not mean that news channels are left with no readers, as they are also creating pages in social networks and sometimes gain even more views as they would have on their separate news sites. 

 

Diagram of news source usage by age. Source

 

The first influence that social networks brought is an increase in the importance of the authenticity of the information. In Facebook, any human can fake the news in their posts and no one restricts them to do so. They spread rumours and may deceive thousands of people in no time. And because of that traditional news channels receive more trust as they hire well-educated people and therefore give more official information than the one users may post.

The second large influence is the fast changes that prevail in social networks which made a good competition for news channels such as CNN, DW or BBC that joined the social networks. They had to make their content more attractive, more trustworthy and overall give up the conservative television style. For example, a traditional format of news broadcasting would not suit a trivial YouTube user. But using the short video format with highly concentrated information, and an attractive or provocative topic would change the result completely. For example, it can be easily noticed on the BBC YouTube channel page when switching the filter to the “most popular” and back to the “newest first”. There are tens of millions of views on short, catching content, but mediocre interviews and reports are left without even one million of views. With all the fast changes in the world and fast accessibility to information resources, people get tired of long articles and reports, so a new format of news would suit people better.

And finally, the third change that social networks made is a good connection with the reader and publisher. News posts on Facebook can receive comments, be reposted thus being actively discussed and judged. That means people may express their opinion in a fast and easy way, share their experience and tell others if this post is real or fake. That also makes a higher competition for the news publishers and forces them to think about the audience.

In a conclusion, I would like to bring up the second point again. I think that the biggest change social networks made to the news are people’s expectation of different content from the news resources. It must be short, fast, tempting and stand out from others so that more people watch it. Unfortunately, some news channels prefer unhealthy competition to achieve popularity but we can hope that their indecent methods will start playing an opposite role after some time.

 

Used sources:

Alina Blackwood. (March 23, 2021). “Social Media Impact On News”. IO Technologies Blog. (Access date: 13.02.2022). https://blog.iotechnologies.com/social-media-impact-on-news/

Nicole Martin. (November 30, 2018). “How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News”. Forbes. (Access date: 13.02.2022). https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2018/11/30/how-social-media-has-changed-how-we-consume-news/?sh=4ae01d4d3c3c

Ruth A. Harper. (2010). “The Social Media Revolution: Exploring the Impact on Journalism and News Media Organizations”. Inquiries Journal. (Access date: 12.02.2022). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/202/the-social-media-revolution-exploring-the-impact-on-journalism-and-news-media-organizations

 

 

 

 

Week 2. Two technologies one of which has become obsolete and another survives to this day

 

Today I will describe the technology of using floppy disks as storage that became obsolete after some time and technology that is still in use - a keyboard.

Became obsolete - a floppy disk

First of all, a floppy disk. It is an obsolete way of storing something on your computer which was invented in the late 1960s. Its principles of work are based on magnetic recording when data is stored on a magnetized medium. The first development of floppy disks was performed by IBM  and it made them quite big: disks had a size of 8 inches in diameter. But later on, their format was reduced thanks to technological progress. However, they still had a small storage capacity and low data transfer speed which decreased their popularity in 21 century as optical disks and flash drives had better qualities. Nevertheless back at the time floppy disks were a really common phenomenon, so the software developers decided to use a symbol of a floppy disk for a save button. This symbol is still used in most of the programs.

Floppy disk. Source

Survives to the present day - a keyboard

A modern keyboard has not changed a lot since the 19 century when it was used in teleprinters. Of course, the keys now cause a digital response of the machine instead of a mechanical one as it was in teleprinters, the key location has also changed, but the technology overall didn’t suffer any big changes. We still use button pressing as a primary way of an input in modern IT 

A flexible keyboard. Source

A keyboard is a flat computer input device with buttons located on its surface to type into the computer specified information. As I have mentioned, they were first used in typewriters and evolved into a modern computer keyboard in the late 20 century. A set of characters that are represented on keys of a keyboard is called a layout and it is standardized. However, some minor parts differ depending on the language peculiarities. In addition, some of the keys on a keyboard represent characters, but not all of them. There are keys that are used for system commands such as Alt, Shift or Enter. Keyboard producers are experimenting with developing new types of keyboards for more flexibility and ergonomics however, an original rectangle-shaped keyboard remains the most demanded one, making this technological invention in demand.

Sources list:

“The Floppy Disk”. IBM website. (Access date: 05.02.2022). https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/floppy/

“Floppy Disks”. Computer History Museum. (Access date: 06.02.2022). https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/261 

Abbad Liberman. “Keyboard standards”. TDIL website. (Access date: 06.02.2022). https://www.tdil-dc.in/index.php?option=com_vertical&parentid=12&lang=en

Iris Lee. “ History of a computer keyboard”. (Access date: 06.02.2022). https://www.sutori.com/en/story/history-of-a-computer-keyboard--kBQp4fKPzop4ryV5CcdH6xtN