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å Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

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% Yesenia Williams completed

In Taylor’s chapter, “The Double Anchor” she describes how digital media continues to cause a problem when the intentions to protect your creative works arise. Copyright laws are in place to ensure that original works are safe from being taken. With the expanding influence of the Internet, we are constantly seeing “original works” replicated and reproduced in numerous ways. Taylor defines this sweeping trend to blur the lines between creators producing work that is being considered free knowledge while having the creator lose out on a profit.

The copyright debate is one that Taylor speaks of with regard to having the rights to finished products. Artists might draw inspiration from previous work to make a film, write a book, or compose a song, however they should be considered as their work to claim. She poses the question of who can claim knowledge and whether it is free. the notion of “free” and ownership is a topic she discusses. With works being shared, the concept of owning anything has changed and many artistic industries have been largely affected. Essentially not all creators find the exposure to be such a negative thing, while others find themselves losing out with the rise of this new digital age.

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% Yauheniya Chuyashova completed

          In chapter 5 “The Double Anchor” we talk about digital media and copyright and how they are related. Copyright is a right made by the law that allows the maker of the unique work have an exclusive rights for sharing and using. This right usually has a limited time. “Copyright, from day one, was designed to be both, an impediment and an incentive, a mechanism of enclosure and catalyst of sorts, a structure to stimulate the production of literary goods by rewarding writers and publishers for their labor”.

          In our digital time people have their own vision of this situations. Many of them think that stuff like movies, music and etc. have to be free. For example, in Taylor’s book we talk about the documentary “Examined Life” which after the premiere was found online right away. Person who made this movie needs copyright because he spent a lot of money, energy and time to make that movie. Of course in return he wanted to have some profit. At the end he doesn’t get any of it or just a little bit because his work was sharing online for free. After something got posted in the Internet, you can’t control it anymore. At the same time it doesn’t belong to that person and it become free: “Free can mean something that no one can own, that belongs to all”. The information goes from one computer to the Internet, than from network into another computer and this process keeps repeating and people don’t stop sharing information. “When creative work is available without limit, freely accessible, it tends also to become free of charge. This tendency leads us straight to what” long been called the “paradox of value”, or the diamond-water paradox. Diamonds are valuable for being scarce, but water, which we need to live, is comparatively worthless”.

 

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% Marisa Chung completed

Marisa Chung
Hybrid Assignment # 3
09/22/15

Digital media has been complicating our relationship to copyright in many different ways and it has been affecting us tremendously even more now than it ever has before. I believe that it all begins with having no “in-between’s” when trying to make a successful living through digital media, or even make a living at all. It seems as though it’s either you make it extremely big, or the years of hard work and dedication goes unnoticed due to the work being spread across the internet in fast speed with just a click of a button. The work being spread across the internet comes with a catch; that the information that is being shared is free. As Taylor mentions in chapter 5, “free” can mean something that no one can own, that belongs to all. That alone is a big dilemma for the creators.

Another problem mentioned in chapter 5 is that making movies is not cheap. Taylor states that even in this age of digital video, and support for many different projects, everyone comes with high expenses. How can an artist create work with their own knowledge and creativity or even with their team and not be given what they deserve in return? What would be the purpose to begin a hard project if the goal is to have the work float around the media for free? This should be something that the creator gets to have a say on; how their work should be distributed. Unfortunately, it seems as though the complications between digital media and copyright will continue to exist unless we fight for change.

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% Angeline Henriquez completed

 

Angeline Henriquez

Digital Media and Society

 How Digital Media Complicates our Relationship to Copyright

Originally, copyright was meant to serve as an incentive to prompt the making of literary works. Through the preventing of unlicensed printing, these works were made less accessible and thus commodified; owned by a few with the power over their distribution. But can anyone claim ownership of knowledge and ideas when creative work derives and is inspired by our collective experiences?  Taylor states that “knowledge cannot be owned and we have a responsibility to share it” (p.142). With the arrival of the Internet came a platform for sharing creative work limitlessly, thus posing a contradiction to what copyright originally meant, “ the Internet…is nothing if not a copy making machine, a place where replicating things and passing them along are effortless and essential” (p.144). As an example, Taylor highlights that every time “we surf and skim, passing along songs instead of albums, quotes instead of essays, clips instead of films” is in direct contradiction to the notion of copyrights. How can anyone claim the right to owning a piece of creative work when said work circulates around the globe in ways the artists cannot control?

As it is, copyright laws have not caught up with digital media. “The copyright regime cannot be considered fit for the digital age when millions of citizens are in daily breach of copyright, simply for shifting a piece of music or a video from one device to another” (p.149). With this change in the concept of ownership, the capitalist interest then shifts towards selling the access to content such as streaming services. In this way the aim is to purchase archives of what already exists, the danger in this however, is that only a handful of individuals or companies dominate the cultural field. “Driven by profit, not the public, interest, they have become the custodians of our collective heritage” (p. 145).

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% Giselle Lopez completed

Digital Dimes, is referred to the replacement of print advertising into online advertising. That is to say that when the Internet entered the market “ content started circulating freely online, print sales began to decline”(Taylor, Loc 1216). Digital advertising came as a replacement from regular advertisement; for example, craigslist serves the audience as a free website to publish, sell, and advertise, whatever is desired by an individuals means. One could easily find or post for free at speed of a few clicks. Meanwhile, printed advertisement is considered as the “analog dollar” it cost more, it requires investment and planning before going out to the public.
Thus, for an online advertisement to be profitable there must be at least thirty clicks to be equal to an online subscriber. The consequences of online blooming will continue to encounter new ways of turning the analog dollar into digital dime, which later on will evolve to pennies “trading analogue dollars for digital dimes for mobile pennies”.