fsglover000 has 17 post(s)

“access content and distribution networks”

According to Drupal.org, Content Access is a module that allows you to manage permissions for content types by role and author. It allows you to specify custom view, edit and delete permissions for each content type. Optionally you can enable per content access settings, so you can customize the access for each content node.  After reading Taylor’s chapter, my understanding of access content is when Capitalist are able to manage data online and regardless of permissions and content types, are able to change the content and delete permissions for each content type.  Therefore giving the Capitalist the ability to customize the access for each content type and putting a person’s information or property in an unsafe realm where property is unprotected and vulnerable to thievery.  In other words, data is shared, stolen and sold to the highest bitter, and the person of the property is unaware and ill-informed about rights and protection. A distribution network is a form of sharing this unsafe, unprotected information to big business that would use your data to market and sell.

Taylor breaks Access Content and Distribution Networks in two different groups of Capitalist who make money by selling, and those who make money by controlling.  She explains in the chapter that those companies are like Google and Facebook are the Capitalist that control what people are distributing and make their money by this format.  Where the content sellers are so vulnerable and not fully protected under copyright laws, but are in the business of selling products like music and perhaps movies

This topic particularly is intriguing to me because I aspire to be an entertainment attorney who specializes in Intellectual Property Law.  I believe that digital media is complicating our relation to copyright and bad things are happening to intellectual property because the laws have not yet caught up to the ever growing world of technology and digital media that exist today.  There are so many copyright infringements that are happening today with digital media, and laws are not protecting the authors of the property because there is so much “networked amateurism” that prevents the laws from protecting the property of those who are unaware.

In Chapter 5: “The Double Anchor”,  Taylor explains how; “we are moving from a creative economy of scarcity to one of abundance”, which simply means that creativity is null and void and that everything that is posted online is copied, sold, exchanged, traded, and duplicated for capital gain and profit.  Taylor also explains that “creative work is available without limit, freely accessible; it tends also to become free of charge”.  Therefore, it is unfortunate for the creator of works such as photos, literature, art and song, if the work is used freely and liberally without protection.  Digital media is complicating copyright laws because of the gross infringement of works that are not protected because laws have not been set in place to protect the author.  It’s unfair and unjust because works are being bought and sold while the creator gets nothing in return.

In an article posted for “Wired.com” by Vitalli Soldatenko entitled: “Copyright and Intellectual Property: Change is Coming” Soldatenko explains that “Our current intellectual property system benefits corporations by complicating the process of protecting the rights of content creators. In an era where opportunities and innovations abound our system is almost a tragic comedy.”  He also thinks that we are moving in the direction where authors’ works will be protected, and we can move forward as business and consumer without the complications of creator content being compromised.  However, today while the internet has made our lives easier, it certainly has made it a lot more complicated because big corporation benefits and we are lost in this paradox of having things made easy without looking at how and why.

In my hybrid assignment #3: Chapter 2, I defined “Networked Amateurism”.  My understanding of “Networked Amateurism” is that as a generation, we are all connected, as we network through social media and through computer platforms.  However, we are so unaware of the bigger picture, and amateurs at this game called Capital Strategy; that we fall short in knowing how the game is being played.  Therefore, we are deprived of the benefits that we think are actually gained by using the internet.  We are actually not the ones benefiting from what is being done online.  Capitalist are the skillful manipulators of how content is being seen and heard, while we (the amateurs) are the unskillful members of a world that is using us to network in ways that we are unaware of and being used for the purpose of profit and gain.

Taylor argues a valid point because the fate of creative people in this so-called new world order has been compromised by a Capitalist society.  When it is all about “Buy and Sell”, a creative person, in a Marxist world, can’t be creative when limitations are placed on one’s ability to free their minds and bring productive innovative ideas to the forum of an environment that prevents an independent expression.  Therefore, the fate of creative people, in the new economy, is to “exist in two incommensurable realms of value and be torn between them”, because they are torn between creative expression for the purpose of art and culture, and then are caught in a consumer based world where products are manufactured and sold.  In a Capitalist society, products and services are considered more of an asset than that of the creative expression delivered as talent and freely expressed in an autonomous environment.  As a result, the creative person is torn between the two worlds and is caught between the values of the talent vs. the value of the product.

In addition to the creative person such as artists; there are the teachers, activists and others who view their work as serving “the public good”.  They too are caught in a similar catch 22.  These groups of people are in positions to have strong voices in order to change a situation and circumstance, and teach those who are unaware.  However, when there is no platform for creative expression and the learning forum is compromised because of bureaucratic commercialism, these groups are also torn between selling goods for labor, and are not able to be creative in expression for the purpose of being free to communicate without being compromised for capital gain.

After reading this chapter, I’ve taken a closer look at the purpose of it all, and I start to question, just how free am I in this capitalist society?  When I think further, I realize that this is a kingdom of Capitalism perpetuated by Dictators who look at us as peasants who will use us to help them to gain more power.

The Internet is an information highway in which a person can access a vast amount of information by way of a computer, phone and tablet, to retrieve valuable data, evidence, facts, news, and socially interact with people around the world.  It is a democratizing way for the world to connect with one another and be free to do so.  In Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in a Digital Age, Chapter one’s “Peasant Kingdom” , Taylor gives us the beginning of the spot lighted take on how we are not as free as we thought in the new age of technology and information sharing.  In fact, Taylor explains that the democratic audience of the information highway is nothing more than a repressive state of people who fall in the scheme of things by Capitalists endeavors, without any knowledge of it.  A Peasant Kingdom starts to explain how we are pawns of Capitalists schemes, which use us as for capital gain.  It was interesting to me how Taylor explains how “The online sphere inspires incessant talk of gift economies and public spiritedness and democracy, but commercialism and privatization and inequality lurk beneath the surface”. After reading this chapter, I’ve taken a closer look at the purpose of it all, and I start to question, just how free am I in this capitalist society?  When I think further, I realize that this is a kingdom of Capitalism perpetuated by Dictators who look at us as peasants who will use us to help them to gain more power.