CopyRight and Politcs - Blog # 4

The average citizen being prosecuted for copyrighting?  The hard working artist loosing money from pirating of their work? Can government policies really help?

Expanding my weekly blog posts #4 and 5 on this topic.

Part 1

One must certainly appreciate the power of the internet. Through the spread of information and media which may very well benefit all of society; it has challenged our established constitutions, legal systems and international relations. It's always forcing us to recall what a revolutionary change it has brought to all of humanity as we had known it.

By it's ground-breaking spread of ideas, events, and media; America begins to question what form "Freedom of Speech" actually takes, the definitive form of intellectual property, and sets new laws constantly and dynamically as the internet continues to rapid grow and improve.


Media in the Internet

The media topic has been at the essence of much debate. The biggest being the spread of music, since there is so much of it, in such small and easily sharable files. Next comes motion pictures, movies, as they have been Americas immediate form of entertainment after the radio. Lastly, comes other forms of art, such as writing and visual art.

Big companies are loosing money as the internet feasibly compresses this media and rapidly shares it around the world. They are loosing money and desperately want this to stop; as they lobby and push their will onto politics, and laws get passed. Now anyone, by the click of a mouse, might be accused of pirating other peoples work.

Of course, as these laws evolve, people begin to panic and interject without fully understanding what this laws mean, as Catherine Fitzpatrick enlightens us in her article.
But now, in understanding that the average individual would not be so prosecuted, what about the mediums that serve this sharing purpose?

Sharing of the Media, Through internet mediums.

With big names such as LimeWire shut down for good, and MiniNova rendered useless by the courts; this companies are affective in politics.  Still such sites find loopholes at sharing this media. The ones who had been in under the scanner since early 2000's were the BitTorrent sites. Most Popularly, The Pirate Bay was the biggest torrent hosting site in the world.

This sites don't practically share the copyrighted media in their servers, but Torrents; mere shells of a movie or ebook being uploaded by others. Therefore exploiting the nature of the internet and intangibly engaging in illegal sharing of intellectual work.

That's the main reason why the individual cannot be so prosecuted for posting a link of a link of a link that links to a server with copyrighted material, in a sense.

Google, in all its hypocrisy, has definitely set  restrictions and limits on it's searches to such sites as piratebay.com. Google no longer yields suggestions and search results when typing up this sites on the search bar, until the full word is typed.

Laws, Restrictions, and Adapting

The American public certainly and surely do not take restrictions on their freedom lightly. The sound of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) causes mass panic amongst internet users. A group of lobbyist have come up with Demand Progress, which it's founders have been battling internet restrictions and raising awareness online, and the founders have even been arrested for it. Although a bit on the extremest liberal side, their urgency has proved effective in elongating and stopping bills all together.

So It's there hope? Apparently, yes. Any Armed Forces service member is aware of OPSEC. As a newly made United States Marine, we all take instructional courses on how to keep the Department of Defense free of Phishing, Malware, but most of all for the warriors fighting wars, to not give out any military intelligence over Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube while on deployments.

The use of computers was monitored and restricted to only contacting family through approved internet protocols, however that's now changing for the better.

LCpl. San Sim (RIP, Brother) enjoying some electronics in Country

My last year in the Marine Corps was 2010. Back in that summer, I remember a big movement happening. The internet was opened to us! As an Non-commissioned Officer I was a liaison to get the word out to "Tell the Marine Corps Story." That's right. We all know how the news makes us the bad guys and doesn't ever publish the good we did in country. Now we were taking it into our own hands.

We were getting our story out there. I had to do "Periods of Instruction" on how exactly to do this, to our newer Marines. Mainly because I was the Training NCO working in the offices, as it was my last year with the company--and active duty.

Purple Heart recipient, Cpl. Marcus Chischilly approves of this.

We could now use Youtube to post our videos and make Facebook pages of our company and the good we were doing. America and the world would now see our side and the good things we do.







If the strict, held-to-higher-standards Marines can adapt to the changes in cyber society, so can other policies.


Final Questions regarding Politics and Copyright:

1. What does SOPA Stand for?

a) Start Operating Protocols Act
b) Stop Occupying Places Act
c) Stop Online Piracy Act
d) It stands for people's rights to download media freely on the Internet.
Answer: C

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/11/geeks-screaming-about-internet-censorship-ought-to-be-ashamed-of-themselves-and-ought-to-actually-re.html

2. How does Google stop the spread of Piracy sites and Bit torrent usage?

a) By not showing any results for searches on Torrents.
b) By reporting those who search for these to the authorities.
c) By yielding no suggestions and search results before typing the full word.
d) By directing searches on Torrents and Pirate sites to proxies in different countries that allow such usage of the internet.

Answer: C

http://torrentfreak.com/google-now-censors-the-pirate-bay-isohunt-4shared-and-more-111123/

Political Gossip

Would you believe the gossip on Democratic Rep. David Wu?

As a project for Computers in Society class we were assigned groups with a specific "Pop Culture" topic to be considered in the context of social media and cyberspace. Solid assignment!

My Group is "Gossip 1." The group was initially composed of six students, left to decide on what to work on. We figured to divide such a broad topic into popular categories. Movie stars, pop divas, etc. In the end I was left with gossip in politics as the most common were taken.


Quite a challenging task, as I came to figure that political gossip is much different than your average gossip topic...mainly due to the fact that politicians are in charged of responsibilities that can easily affect your own life! But also because these politicians are already well-defined public figures to be scrutinized and criticized in every speech and action they take; political or not. Their reputation is their profession's livelihood. Rumors and gossip are of the most harmful essence.

But first let's review what gossip is, and how it manifests it's self in our contemporary lives. As most sources agree, gossip is the spreading of negative and unverified information about an individual.

The Wikipedia page defines gossip as malicious in nature, and it is popularly regarded as such by popular opinion (that is, what we can derive from pop culture). I liked the definition that Wisegeek.com has to offer:

"In general, gossip involves the creation and repetition of rumors regarding an individual who is not present to offer his or her perspective on the purported events under discussion. Generally, gossip has little or no basis in fact and is sometimes intended to convey a negative image of an individual. This process of spreading rumors is utilized in just about every setting from reporting on the movements of public figures to discussing situations involving family, friends, and acquaintances"

I like how this definition included the fact that the individual the gossiping is being done about is NOT present to defend his/her self against the allegations. Thus, gossip is just bad in general and the more considerate individual will usually avoid it. One can perceive the correlation of gossip with teenage school girls. As much of a stereotype that is, it is only by experience that people learn the dangers of gossiping.

What ever gossiping has been trough out human nature, it is now amplified by the improvement of the tools humans have made. Now, the most useful tool is the internet. Gossip now spreads instantly around the world, with a filter on which gossip to read/watch about in the web. However this all applies to your average gossip. Everything gets weird when we introduce the Political gossip into the web.

Since politicians are already set to be criticized under scrutiny by every one, the news and reports about them are presented upfront by major news companies. Big names such as ABC and CNBC news companies present politician's current events right upfront. This reporting gets spread around by people, and as all gossip works, soon more opinions will be added to the facts, and thus a fallacious image of a political candidate is made.
 Here the First Lady is stalked at Target, forming a scandal with gossip:

People who are into this make their own political gossip websites, such as ObamaTwits.com and Cracked.com. Here the blogger/writer will present this political scandals with their opinion or bias.
But where is the line between these political scandals and gossip drawn? What ever gossip arises from political events will harm the politician's reputation. This collective bad image perceived and reciprocated by the people is the advent of gossip rather than the original factual scandal it self.

People, specially politicians, are prone to making mistakes. This mistakes continue to happen with technology, specially the internet. This is how Democratic Rep. David Wu of Oregon resigned from politics by accidentally emailing pictures of himself in questionable outfits. Yeah, the hilarious tiger outfit.

One of the biggest phenomenons in politics for me has been how the internet has crept it's way into our politicians smartphones: Twitter. Anybody who is somebody in the political world has Twitter. All their tweets can be found here, with each politician having their personal "@your_favorite_candidate."


Twitter is now the stage where most of the political dirt and gossip comes into play, in a hand held device near you! Mainly because it isn't just updated by their administrative counterparts--no--they personally write their comments and opinions on the matters at hand; specially during on-going speeches by their competitors.


Now not only is this gossiping harmful for the individual politician, but the biggest reason why political gossip is different than other gossip is that leadership capabilities or political competence in a candidate may all go to waste by  negative perceptions of this person formed through gossip. The good politician might have a scandal that could ruin his career forever, while the genuinely bad politician will get away into office and affect every ones lives negatively.

Bringing the internet and cyberspace into politics can of course be a good thing, as most political administrations like Obama's have a facebook page where he can reach millions of varying demographics using such websites.

Twitter, however, can be the downfall as the politicians' comments and opinions get recorded and spread faster than ever before, giving them much of a less change to defend themselves. As Rep. Wu showed us, politicians have to be careful on how they use their technology and present themselves through cyberspace.