Sunday 22 January 2012

Intellectual property, DRM and Creative Commons



Inetellectual Property allows people to own the work that they have created, for example, Brand, invention and design can all be legally owned, of course the owner is granted certain rights. Intellectual Property actually goes back as far as 1867 with the founding of the North German Confederation, who allowed legal power over the protection of Intellectual Property. The rights that come with Intellectual Property allow owners to certain rights and allow you to claim ownership and protection over your own creation.




Copyright is promotion of learning education and arts. "Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright




With copyright you basically have the right to prevent others from creating copies of your own work. However in such countries as the USA you can give your rights to someone else, for example say your a singer you may want to give your rights to the producer so he can duplicate your music and sell copies and finally give you some percentage of the finances afterwards. However usually you will find that copyright expires, therefore anyone can use it without expenses.




Various moral justifications for private property can also be used to argue in favor of the morality of intellectual property, such as: Natural Rights/Justice Argument: this argument is based on Locke’s idea that a person has a natural right over the labour and/or products which is produced by his/her body. Appropriating these products is viewed as unjust. Although Locke had never explicitly stated that natural right applied to products of the mind,[23] it is possible to apply his argument to intellectual property rights, in which it would be unjust for people to misuse another's ideas.[24]
Utilitarian-Pragmatic Argument: according to this rationale, a society that protects private property is more effective and prosperous than societies that do not. Innovation and invention in 19th century America has been said to be attributed to the development of the patent system.[25] By providing innovators with "durable and tangible return on their investment of time, labor, and other resources", intellectual property rights seek to maximize social utility.[26] The presumption is that they promote public welfare by encouraging the "creation, production, and distribution of intellectual works".[27]
"Personality" Argument: this argument is based on a quote from Hegel: "Every man has the right to turn his will upon a thing or make the thing an object of his will, that is to say, to set aside the mere thing and recreate it as his own".[28] European intellectual property law is shaped by this notion that ideas are an "extension of oneself and of one’s personality"


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











But lets not get theft mixed up with copyright, if copyright was anything like theft would it not be dealt with properly like theft by the law? Therefore copyright would never exist as much as it does today. I can guarantee that if you put a group of people in the room who are regularly using their computers, almost all of them would admit do downloading music illegally.




Tim Berners-Lee who created the World Wide Web and also made it free, when it became free the web grew and become a lot more popular. It was free for people to share and enjoy.




A video that you often see at the start of DVD's or in cinemas, works in an effective way too hopefully stop piracy and people filming movies in the cinema. It also gives messages out that should shock the audience watching, trying to explain that piracy is just as bad as another other criminal activity.

http://youtu.be/R2S70Wl80Zc




I begin to wonder, if in the future there will ever be such things as CD's and DVD's, you can easily watch films for free on the Internet and download music illegally.

A story I found online explains that you could find yourself in jail for 10 years for illegal downloading.

http://rt.com/news/acta-uk-illegal-downloading-jail-753/




http://youtu.be/wc0BCVTvjXg

The link above is too a video which will slightly shock anyone.



Monday 16 January 2012

Virtuality, Immersion, Simulacra and Avatars

Virtualy is a computer simulated world, "An aspect of reality that is not material" - Wikipedia, 2009.
You may find that many teenage boys are sucked into the world of XBOX 360, where they dissapear into their bedrooms for hours on end to play virtual games accompanied by the avatars they create online. This fantasy world takes you through pixular adventures, a community based on dishonesty, acting as people we can  only imagine really being. It is a world that exists through peoples imagination and dreams, fiction and fantasy.

In our lecture we created postcards which were sent from Mars, obviously not really sent from Mars but created from using our imaginations, being the crazy Enrique Iglesias fan, mine included Enrique sitting on Mars with a santa hat on... It showed a world of virtuality and dreams, dreams that are for obvious reasons, never going to come true.

Immersion exists purely through virtual reality, being within the virtual reality world. In the late 1980's aned early 90's goggles and gloves were used in order to show and be within a virtual world.
The first state of immersion is marrative immersion, this is an experience which humans commonly do, for example reading a book/magazine, taking them into another world of the imagination.
The second state being stragetic immersion which incorporates gaming, many people that have bought a game close to their own imagination and dreams, often getting to be someone they idolise may find themselves playing on it more than they do spend time in physical reality, totally closing our minds off of everything.
The third state is tactical immersion, to do with being in a trance or day dreaming, a common thing within students.

Simulation is usually an immitation of something real, for example at many arcades you may find a rocket or airplane simulator. Simulation can often be used for such things as training or purely due to entertainment giving a lifelike experience.

Take a look at Sims, a game where you can create a Avatar surrounded by your own family and friends which you decide to design, you decide what happens between relationships, and even life and death, your completely own world. I am one of the victims of Sims, still playing it at the age of 18, its an enjoyable time waster. However if you look at it properly its nothing like the reality of the world at all, and this is perhaps why alot of people enjoy playing these games in there spare time, getting away from everything into a world where they make the decisions.

The video I have posted above shows just how much video games are not like how reality is, how we are letting ourselves enjoy a world which is nothing like our world.

Sunday 15 January 2012

Community, Participation and Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a community on the World Wide Web, with various websites where the public can share information and stories via videos, blogging and chat rooms on websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Youtube.
These are all websites where you can interact between different users online, you, the public are bassically the people that keep the website going.
However, lets not mistake Web 2.0 with the World Wide Web, Tim Barnes was originally the creator of the World Wide Web, but that doesn't mean the World Wide Web was our first interaction with the Internet. 'Mud and Moo' was a text based online virtual reality where people could interact.

Nowdays, we can access the web through devices that our constantly in our reach, such as mobile phones and laptops, where we can scan our Facebook pages regularly, updating our socail statuses, letting everyone know excatly what we are up too at all times. Now with Iphones we also have access to Apps which have a bigger impact on the sort of websites we can scan.
With websites such as Youtube people are able to upload home videos, talking about there concerns on issues, or just messing around. Alot of people that we see as "Famous" now would not have become celebrities without such websites as Youtube, for example, and new singer Lana Del Ray has just come on the scenes after uploading a selection of videos on youtube. I will upload two videos of hers, one from before and one recent video.

As you can see in the first video she had created it herself with various clips, but over time she has been seen on Youtube and is now on the uprise to become extremely globally famous.

Lets not forget the famous blogger Perez Hilton, who would deffinately not been known today without Web 2.0. Perez Hilton posts blogs online with critical celebrity gossip.

The way that Web 2.0 works is very clever, we, the public are the creators of the web pages, we upload the information and keep the website moving with new stories and fun activities, take Facebook for example, what would it be if we didn't post statuses constantly online?

The internet has become a community where everyone can now interact together at any time, good or bad, atleast now we can keep in contact with old friends and new friends. I am right now contributing to Web 2.0 by writing this blog.