fangiehenriquez009 has 15 post(s)

Angeline Henriquez

Digital Media and Society

September 27, 2015

Cultural Ownership

In chapter 5 “The Double Anchor” Taylor talks about traditional concepts of cultural ownership and how these notions are being challenged by digital media. Traditional ideas of cultural ownership emphasizes exclusive possession, meaning cultural works could only be used in their original form and context. However, Taylor states that this idea of cultural ownership is “fanciful” in this digital media era. “Online creative works are decontextualize, remixed, and mashed up. We surf, and skim, passing along songs instead of albums, quotes instead of essays, clips instead of films.” (p.145). Once an artist’s work enters the cyberspace, he/she has little control over it, thus the term “ownership” becomes very illusive.

However, upon discussing these definitions of cultural ownership as traditional versus non-traditional, my classmate Joyce and I talked about how the line between the two can get blurry. By Taylor’s definition, non-traditional ownership means that an artists’ work can be taken out of context, and that he has no control over how it circulates, but it so can happen without the aid of digital media. For example, if you read a work of literature and then lend the same physical copy to a friend, that friend might understand it in completely different ways than you did because that friend filters it through the lens of their own experiences and prior knowledge. And so if that friend then lends that same copy to a third person, their introduction and summary of the same book to this third person can differ greatly from what you understood the text was about, therefore affecting how the third person will understand it; again, the artists has no control over how their work circulates. Maybe they never really had control over it and digital media is just magnifying this occurrence.

Because digital media has prompted us to think more about ownership, laws surrounding this matter have become more rigid than ever. “Cultural commons are being cordoned off by private interest” (p.145) Taylor states, highlighting the contrast between the original intent of copyright laws, which was to serve as an incentive for the production of literary goods by recompensing writers and publishers, and the rigid structure that it has become today.

Group Members

Joyce Julio

Angeline Henriquez

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).

Angeline Henriquez
Digital Media and Society
September 21, 2015

Chapter 2 Definitions- “Social Production”

Social Production is a term coined by NYU professor Clay Shirkly and it refers to the creation of culture by individuals scattered around the globe using digital technology “for the pleasure of it and without asking permission first”. It emphasizes the decentralization of the previous institutional model that reserved culture production only for a few and embraces a system that is open for everyone, using the internet and social media as a platform that allows for collaboration. On this decentralization, Taylor states “Barriers to entry have been removed, gatekeepers have been demolished, and the costs of creating and distributing culture have plummeted” (p.46). Other similar terms to describe this phenomenon are “peer production”, “crowdsourcing” and “wikinomics”. All terms agreeing that the intrinsic motivation to create culture or collaborate on its creation, trumps the quality of cultured made by professionals that are paid to produce it. “If people are intrinsically motivated to produce culture, and technology enables them to act on this motivation effortlessly and affordably and without financial reward, then amateurs are less compromised than compensated professionals and thus superior ”(p.47).

Although Taylor admits that the professional class is not faultless as she mentions the barriers they impose through licensing and credentialing, she is not completely sold on the ideas of the “new-media utopians”. First, she highlights the fact that new-media utopians assume that amateurs don’t expect any monetary compensation and that fame, admiration, and social status are as much as a reward. Second, she emphasizes that this theory doesn’t take into consideration production costs, which disregards that a decline in industry profitability affects artistic production. Finally, she states that “it is deeply cynical to deny professionals any emotional investment in their work”. How can passion be measured? The truth is most individuals exists somewhere in between amateurs and professionals, searching for a balance between passion and career.

New Economy

According to Taylor’s text, the New Economy emerged during the late nineties and was based solely on the buying and selling of ordinary goods; taking material that was available offline and making it available online. However, in 2000 capital funds increased significantly and online shopping failed to keep up. The New Economy vanished but gave way to a “second bubble”, Web 2.0 which monetized our sociability. Taylor states “To put it another way, Web 2.0 is not about users buying products; rather, users are the product.” (p.14)

Group Members:

Janelle Figueroa
Deborah Markewich
Steve Jeannot
Angeline Henriquez

Hello class, my name is Angeline Henriquez and this post is in response to an excerpt read in class from Trebor Scholz’s Digital Labor. In this fragment Scholz talks about how websites used for social media make their money. He is specifically critical of Facebook, which sells their collection of user data to third party advertisers. He states “We, the user, are sold as the product” for every post and every like. Undeniably, Facebook makes a substantial profit from information that its users once considered private, or thought would only be shared to selected groups or friends online. This then proposes the argument that if there is a profit involved, then the leisure time we spend online could be considered as labor. This is where the line between work and leisure starts getting blurry.

The buying and selling of data turns our online experience into a business transaction but to us, the users, it never really feels like so. One because we don’t get a paycheck for every “like” (although I’m starting to think we should), and two because we are able to do so much creatively online without worrying about being sued every time we reference a franchise or corporation. Scholz makes an example out of the writing and sharing of fanfiction, and how it would not make sense to assume that the user writing it would view it as labor. I believe this is a good point that Scholz makes but I can’t help thinking if ultimately, this distinction should be left up to the writer and user to determine.