Blog Five: Lessig's Piracy in America

After watching the video in class regarding piracy in our music industry, I agree that it is wrong for music artists to use copyrighted material for their own profit schemes. On the other hand, if one’s usage of copyrighted material does not garner them any monetary benefits, what’s the big deal? Lawrence Lessig discusses these issues and how ideas about piracy have changed over the years. Lessig notes that piracy has now gone past the physical stealing of copyrighted material. While this is an important issue in and of itself, piracy taking place through other avenues besides physical stores that sell copyrighted material that one physically grabs is left up for debate. Of course the recording labels and the movie industry advertise against this “new age” piracy, while others do not find a problem with it. The MPAA has an advertisement on many DVDs that explains “you wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a movie”, so why isn’t it ok to download copyrighted material? They say “downloading pirated films is stealing.”

Even Jack Black, a famous actor, pleads for piracy to stop.

But will it stop?

Lessig argues that international piracy could provide benefits for American companies. He argues that Chinese consumers who steal Mircosoft’s Windows program will eventually have the means to buy the program later on as China’s wealth improves. Although this could happen, most companies or rightful owners of copyrighted material are not worth billions of dollars like Mircosoft and cannot afford for piracy like this to take place. Lessig also contends that piracy does have its place in society. He writes, “…even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all ‘piracy’ is. Or at least, not all ‘piracy’ is wrong if that term is understood in the way it is increasingly used today. Many kinds of ‘piracy’ are useful and productive, to produce either new content or new ways of doing business. Neither our tradition nor any tradition has ever banned all ‘piracy’ in that sense of the term.” The remix artist Girl Talk is a great example of this accepted piracy. Girl Talk has became famous for his mash-up style of music. His songs rely solely on copyrighted music samples. Never once has he gotten permission from any of the artists’ samples used in his remixes. He posts his remixes online free of charge on his illegal art record label website.

However, Girl Talk has concerts all across the country for which he is paid for using these samples. Girl Talk even had a concert here at Lawrence University in May of 2009 for which he was compensated for.

One could provide the argument that Girl Talk has re-popularized some of the songs he has sampled as it is easy to find which songs are used in his remixes online.

Blog Four: Learning and Using Flickr

The Flickr project for our Introduction to Digital Cultures class was a fun opportunity for my group members and I to get to know one another. Interacting with my classmates in this fashion is a unique atmosphere that few schools can match as well as Lawrence University. Initially, our group contacted one another via e-mails, Facebook, and Twitter to arrange meeting times. Our group met one day to conceptualize an actual story for the Flickr project. Upon choosing the idea of Grand Theft Auto among other inspirations, our group collaborated on when and where to have our photo shoot and who the characters would be. Other necessary items in this meeting included deciding who had a camera and our transportation for taking pictures photographed on location. The second meeting we had the photo shoot, which consisted of the majority of the photos seen in our Flickr project. Each member of our group willingly and cordially helped in taking photos and suggesting logistics for the photos themselves. The third and final meeting our group took the first and last pictures seen in the slideshow. In addition, we edited all photos while adding the GTA graphics from my ownership of the GTA 4 game.

Our group felt as though having only five to ten pictures to tell a story was short. We wanted to include more elements from the actual game play itself but in the end we felt that we captured the most vital characteristics from the game and probably also the lesser risqué ones too. Basically, the story starts in the real world with Sydney. A world that includes many stresses and real life pains of school, family and life in general. Grand Theft Auto is a video game that provides an avenue of living in a fantasy world that is not revolutionary for its time but is very entertaining for the adult user. Essentially, the user is allowed to commit serious crimes without having to face the repercussions found in the real world. I myself play as the main culprit in the Grand Theft Auto: Midwest City version. A unique aspect of the GTA games is that many users find fulfillment playing the game without completing missions. Many like to find the first vehicle in sight. Carjack it by any means necessary whether it is parked or has passengers in the vehicle. Killing random people in the streets, robbing banks and committing other various crimes, while also finding and using an array of weapons on the map. So I find the first car I see to steal. I kill Dyllan with a crowbar after pulling him out of the car. I always found it amusing when the passengers in the passenger’s seat of the jumped out while the car was moving. After driving around looking for the Chase Bank, I enter with my handgun and rob the establishment. After a whole night’s worth of committing too many felonies, Sydney realizes she must end her fun for the time being and finish her homework.

Grand Theft Auto: Midwest City Flickr Project

Flickr is an easy to use social medium and tool that enables Internet users to interact with pictures. Much like the social media seen in websites like Facebook and Twitter, Flickr is a website that is structured through Yahoo! and only requires an easily accessible and commonly used Yahoo! account. The content and usability of Flicker is user friendly and self-explanatory. I was exceptionally impressed by the ease in editing captions and tags. They are easily edited by clicking on the actual text which brings up a cursor to re-type. Uploading the pictures was also simple as our group was able to upload the pictures from Sydney’s computer desktop to the site itself. The tags in our slideshow can help users of Flickr find photos by searching Grand Theft Auto themes. Although the game itself is popular, other examples like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings contain a much larger fan base of creating user generated content.

Star Wars Flickr Example

However, one can find a few examples such as ours.

Grand Theft Auto Flickr Example

Flickr is absolutely an effective tool in creating user-generated content and sharing that content with others. This past summer, my mother and my sister were using the Internet to help plan for my sister’s wedding. Besides using e-mail for obvious reasons, both my mother and sister used Flickr and sights like it to find wedding pictures that Flickr users have uploaded. These pictures include examples of trendy fashions and show examples of good and bad designs of wedding outfits of the bridal and groom parties. An example shown below is a picture of the outdoor gazebo where my sister got married. She was able to use this photo as a means of getting a picture of what her wedding day might be like at Woodlawn Manor.

Flickr User Picture Upload of Wedding Day at Woodlawn Manor

This picture is of her husband standing in front of the same gazebo from Woodlawn Manor.

Rebecca Blood’s standpoint on the use of Flickr identifies the rising concept of photojournalism. I like to think that the way Blood illustrates the idea of using tags in Flickr is like using the hashtag in Twitter. She provides an example of the power of photojournalism. Footage of the French employment riots provides internet users with breaking news. Once word got around about these riots, one could search on Flickr and find eyewitnesses views of the action. While these photos can be found in the interesting category of Flickr photos, my sister could find ideas related to her wedding. The interesting photos provides the latest trends. However, I felt as though while the slideshows created by my fellow classmates told fictional stories and that they could be interpreted as ideas of photojournalism, these slideshows can also be used for fun in creating stories and providing fan support for our interests like our group found commonly in playing Grand Theft Auto video games.

Blog Three: R.I.P. Gavin's Job at Wendy's?

In American culture, our way of life is self-defined for its uniqueness, individuality, independence and freedom. Freedom is really a loose term today when we consider many of the restrictions that do not hold when bearing in mind the first amendment in the Bill of Rights of our U.S. Constitution. For those reading this blog, I hope and pray that the reader knows what the first amendment is or at least knows what it means.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

When Americans self-define our culture, their explanation of freedom usually starts with the first amendment to the Constitution.

Today, Americans have the ability to express their “freedom of speech” through several different avenues especially with the popularity of the World Wide Web. Many users of the Internet write about what they want, show pictures publicly, deliver propaganda and also make videos. Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, questions the fact that copyright and permission issues in America that exist today are far more extreme and unwarranted comparatively to the days before the World Wide Web. While Lessig gives his reader examples pertaining to instances in culture that were believed and practiced to be free, his main argument is based on the idea that technology over the course of the twentieth century has affected American culture’s freedom and has turned into a more “permission culture.”

Everyday it seems as though we hear about another instance of copyright violation pertaining to illegal usage of songs or illegal usage of copyrighted video. Many make the argument that one’s usage of script such as books or magazines, songs, photos, and video is for small and personal use and should not violate copyright or anti-trust laws. It always seems though that we only ever hear about these violations when big money is involved. Who cares about a violation if it does not hurt a brand or its apparent company regarding future sales? Take for instance a friend of mind, Gavin Riley. Gavin is just like any college student user of the World Wide Web. He has a Facebook, he tweets, but more importantly he uses YouTube. Interestingly, Gavin was the first person that introduced me to YouTube as he was showing me a home video that he was now easily able to post online. However, a video that Gavin made recently pertains to Lessig’s idea of “permission culture.”

Basically, Gavin decided to make a humorous rap music video about the death of Sean Paul. The music video is creative and funny, but that is beside the point. In the video, Gavin is seen in a Wendy’s restaurant uniform behind a Wendy’s restaurant counter in Cockeysville, MD. Obviously, one can make the assumption that he was an employee at that establishment. A few weeks later Gavin received a letter from Wendy’s banning him from their restaurants and firing him in the process.

The video to date has about 7,000 hits, but compared to others videos online that is a relatively low number. Does Wendy’s really think 7,000 people is enough to slander their brand name as a popular fast foot restaurant? Last time I checked, they still seem to be in business. Is it right that Gavin was fired because a small segment of the video contains him in a Wendy’s restaurant as an employee? Only in society today would something like this happen. Think of all the Saturday Night Live skits that mock American brand names and products. There are too many to list! This TV show is seen by millions of people yet they did not face the repercussions that Gavin did. Wendy’s is a private enterprise and they can do as they please, however the company should have asked him to remove the video instead of firing him for a small issue. Lessig is right, “There has never been a time in our history when more of our “culture” was as “owned” as it is now.”

Blog Two: Reno Air Races Crash and Citizen Journalists

Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur” discusses the concept of “citizen journalism.” His extreme displeasure pertains to the idea of citizen journalists, who are not even remotely trained in the field of journalism by experts, are constantly a negative presence online. Keen’s feelings of disdain for these everyday normal people who contribute to millions of online articles and blogs are not only blasphemy, but also a hindrance in the professional field of journalism. He writes, “Professional journalists acquire their craft through education and through the firsthand experience of reporting and editing the news under the careful eye of other professionals. In contrast, citizen journalists have no formal training or expertise, yet they routinely offer up opinion as fact, rumor as reportage, and innuendo as information. On the blogosphere, publishing one’s own “journalism” is free, effortless, and unencumbered by pesky ethical restraints or bothersome editorial boards.”

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110916/EVENTS05/110916036/Complete-first-day-coverage-Reno-air-race-crash-killed-least-9-injured-more-than-55

Reno Gazette-Journal coverage of Reno Air Races 2011 crash

The YouTube user slicker0492 uploaded a video on September 16, 2011 of a plane crash in Reno, Nevada at the Reno National Championship Air Races. The video shows footage at the air races of a pilot whose plane went out of control crashing near seated fans. Although the footage does not show the fans who became casualties as a result of the crash, the quality of the footage more than likely means that the photographer was using a camera video application on his cell phone. In addition, no other footage as vivid as slicker0492’s has been released or discovered since the day of the accident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNePeKn3Tg

YouTube video footage of crash

While Keen criticizes citizen journalists, mainly for their presence in websites like wikipedia, without them, internet users cannot view news stories in the same light like the Reno Air Races accident. One of the biggest examples (and perhaps the first) of accidental video turned into lucrative footage is the JFK assassination. The JFK assassination is two fold. Firstly, the assassination itself was caught in a home video camera that was clearly confiscated by the U.S. government. Secondly, Lee Harvey Oswald, the first and only suspect that was to be charged in JFK’s assassination, was murdered on national TV. Today, we live in a new age where the assassination footage that was caught could have been uploaded onto a site like YouTube. In addition, persons all over the world can take apart in delivering the news with their cell phones and video cameras.

Although Keen argues against the validity of citizens writing news and rumors, how can one not be fascinated with the concept of providing news with real footage. One can also make the argument that video footage can be provide bias too. However, footage of the Reno Air Races crash does not create controversies other than people’s ideas about censorship.