Technologies of Text (S12)

I’m going to keep this post brief, but I thought I should write while I had the time.

I was cruising around my Twitter account when MentalFloss enticed me, as it is prone to do, with a title to an article that I simply couldn’t ignore.  This time it was “The Insidious Cost of Ringtone Piracy”.  Many former blog posts have included individual takes on piracy, each dealing with a differing point on Copyright usage — The most recent one being on the effects of  YouTube and Copywright.  This TED talk on “The Insidious Cost of Ringtone Piracy” is about 5 minutes in length and takes those seemingly random fines which organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America places on pirated material, and puts them into a delightfully humorous perspective for anybody willing to listen.

Rob Reid, the author of the talk, proposes the idea of “Copyright Math”.  In even more basic terms, taking the arbitrary numbers that organizations like the MPAA apply to pirated materials and realizing what that amount ACTUALLY IS.

$150,000.00 is the precise amount of harm that comes to companies per pirated copy per pirated song according to the 1999 Copyright Damages Improvement Act.  Reid makes the point that when the law passed, the most advanced mp3 player could hold roughly ten songs.  By those 1999 figures alone, that mp3 player has the capability of holding $1.5 million of pirated material.  With the advancement of technology, the average iPod can hold 40,000 songs, which is the equivalent of $8 billion of stolen music.

It’s no wonder that we need such aggresive copyright laws.  Without them, the entire country would collapse and we would be forced to barter cigarettes for Billy Joel cassette tapes if we wanted any music.*

At any rate,  if you are prone to the holiday, happy Saint Patrick’s Day and may the best of your today’s be the worst of your tomorrows.

Cheers,

Jerome Palliser.
[*note: Somebody should seriously create a sarcasm font...]

As a pre-law student and also a business major, last week’s discussion was especially interesting to me. Johanna Blakley’s TED talk highlighted some important topics affecting many industries – copyright law and its affect on innovation and sales. It made me interested in how it connected to our discussion topic of the internet and its impact. Luckily enough, there was another TED talk similar to this. Margaret Gould Stewart runs the “user experience team” at Youtube and provided a lecture on Youtube’s approach to dealing with copyright issues.

Youtube looks to manage copyright with a progressive rights management approach. Due to the shear amount of video uploaded each day it is impossible for Youtube to go through video by video. Every minute there is 20 hours of video uploaded. To address this they developed an automatic system that compares the videos uploaded to reference files. It can detect videos that just have a portion, slowed down, or bad audio of something copyrighted. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the video is taken down. Youtube provides the owners with a few choices. Owners can have the videos blocked, they can track them, or monetize to receive ad revenue. Margaret Gould Stewart believes that often companies choose to keep their material online because they will benefit from having that increased exposure and as a result, linked sales. She believes this leads to four important elements:

1) New art forms

2) New audiences

3) New distributions channels

4) New revenue stream

However, this can often get complicated. There are many instances where a video contains multiple rights owners. Even with these complications, Youtube is in a much better place then it was before.  YouTube has relied on the fact that they believe they are protected by the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It basically means that if they don’t know of the copyright infringement, they are released from the liability. Before this system of finding copyrighted content, they had many issues and they faced a $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom over copyrighted content. Viacom’s feeling was well summed up in a quote from their lawyer, Paul Smith:

“YouTube not only knew there was rampant copyright infringement on the site but welcomed it, these people made this kind of money on somebody else’s property.”

However, the impact of the internet opens up a new problem, expressed by Judge Roger Miner: “How in the world can damages be computed here?”

So will this lawsuit be the end of YouTube’s problems, will this new system work? The system has worked to detect 100 million videos. It has allowed both Youtube and copyright holders to make a large amount of revenue. For YouTube, they earn a third of their revenue through copyrighted material. One of the faults that people recognize deals with fair use. They have not incorporated anything into their system to account for what is allowed under the fair use doctrine.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/17/youtube-content-id-faq/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-10-18/viacom-google-youtube-lawsuit/50817760/1

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/margaret_stewart_how_youtube_thinks_about_copyright.html

While visiting Twitter I came upon a tweet that a college student named Christina Reed posted, which stated, “Biggest Copyright Jerks Ever (Reed).”  It really caught my attention, because we were just talking about copyright in our last class period.  The article is a summary of an original article written by Robin Wauters, of the Next Web Reports.  The summary article is written by Kate Rinsema, which is the article I will be writing about, and is entitled, Biggest Copyright Jerks Ever.  You can find the article by clicking the link here.

Kate’s article is about a group in Belgium called SABAM (a Belgium association of authors composers, and publishers).  This group is attempting to charge libraries in Belgium for having volunteers read the libraries children books to children.  The group believes copyrighted books that are read out loud should require money to do so (Rinsema).  As stated in the article, “The library rep calculates that it could cost them roughly 250 euros (which is about $328) per year to pay SABAM for the right to read books to kids (Rinsema).”  A De Morgan reporter contacted the group to confirm if this was indeed true.  The group released a formal statement indicating that they believe public libraries do in fact need to pay up to have the right  to read their books to kids (Rinsema).

I find this copyright idea in Belgium to be very extreme.  I do not believe libraries would agree to pay a fee to read to kids.  Even if books are copyrighted, upon purchasing the book for library usage, I do not believe reading the books to young kids should require an additional fee.  Libraries I feel will not be willing to fork over $300 a year to allow volunteers to read books out loud to kids.  Volunteers are trying to help kids and the community when they read books to them and libraries should not have to pay such a great amount of money to have the ability to do so.  I hope that this does not continue to develop more in other countries  and across the world, because I believe this could be very detrimental to libraries and the copyright system.  I find it crazy that a library would have to pay extra money for such a simple service.

Christina’s Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/#!/Kris10sL8

Original The Next Web Article written by Robin Wauters: http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/03/13/belgian-rightsholders-group-wants-to-charge-libraries-for-reading-books-to-kids/

Summary article I wrote about written by Kate Rinsema entitled Biggest Copyright Jerks Ever:
http://holykaw.alltop.com/biggest-copyright-jerks-ever?tu3=1

Rinsema, Kate. “Biggest copyright jerks ever  – Holy Kaw!.” Holy Kaw! – All the topics thatinterest us. N.p., 13 Mar. 2012. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. <http://holykaw.alltop.com/biggest-copyright-jerks-ever?tu3=1>.

Cathy Davidson recently published a new blog post, titled Are You Smarter Than a Teenager?, that caught my attention.  She touches on the fact that there are so many articles published about “teens today” that are written by those who haven’t taken the time to really investigate this generation.  You can read here blog post here: http://www.cathydavidson.com/2012/03/are-you-smarter-than-a-teenager/

The most recent article she refers to that bashes this young generation is “The Go-Nowhere Generation” that was published in the New York Times (Read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-go-nowhere-generation.html?_r=1).  Todd Buchholz, author of this article, calls the Generation Y of young Americans the Generation Why Bother.  He says the generation is going nowhere and lacks ambition to strive for better things.  He also points out how there are fewer teenagers with their driver’s licenses.  He thinks all of this is stems from teenagers being too happy staying home checking Facebook.  Cathy brings up another piece published in the same issue.  “The Science of Hanging out” is about a young 17 year old girl, Danielle Goldman, who is nothing like the teens depicted in Buchholz’s article.  She, like many teenagers, uses the many technologies of her generation.  She texts, emails and uses Facebook, but she is far from lazy.  Besides normal schoolwork, she also worked on a project that studied neurotransmitter levels in adolescents with mood disorders.  All of her hard work has earned her a spot as one of forty finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search,  which has a very large prize for the winner.  She obviously is not lacking ambition.  She has desires and goals and she has the motivation to reach them. (Read this article here:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/nyregion/on-sundays-danielle-goldman-17-studies-the-science-of-hanging-out.html?scp=1&sq=the%20science%20of%20hanging%20out&st=cse)

Are there lazy teenagers who sit at home spending most of their time on the internet? Yes, there are.  The point is, most articles focus on the unmotivated teenager rather than showcasing those who are active users of social media that are very successful.  Is it good to try and bring awareness about laziness?  Of course. We don’t want to become a society filled with unmotivated people, but we shouldn’t just focus on the bad.  There are students who participate in social media who further their education by going to college, possibly even attend graduate school,  who will then do something important in the world.  I think all generations have those who are lazy and don’t have ambition, but you shouldn’t condemn an entire generation based on those without goals.   Maybe each generation is getting worse and becoming lazier.  The question is whether or not new technologies are to blame for the current lack of goals and interests.  This is an ongoing debate, as we know from our discussions in class.

The reason I bring up Cathy Davidson’s blog post is that she makes some very interesting points.  One being that you should spend some time with actual people of the generation you are writing about.  How can you make a conclusion about such a large group of people without meeting with any of them.  Just because there are young teenagers who are lazy and spend all their time wasting away on Facebook does not mean that you can categorize all young people as this.  Even if this young generation is lazier than the last, I don’t think we should take Buchholz’s “why bother” attitude and ignore the whole generation.  There will be some individuals who will do some amazing things in the world and they shouldn’t be ignored.

So while perusing Twitter, I found that Tonya Howe was the most influential tweeter (is that a word?) for the week. She reposted this article http://nytsxsw.tumblr.com/post/19145988299/getting-a-decent-data-connection-at-sxsw-can-be-a

that explains this project called “homeless hotspots”. In a nutshell a company recruits homeless people to wear a t shirt that says “I’m a 4g hotspot” and people will come to them and pay them (the people decide what to donate) to leech their wifi. First of all the company is USING homeless people for marketing. I understand that the homeless may profit from the arrangement but this is far from the healthy intervention that they may need. So you could view this situation from multiple perspectives but let’s keep it simple. Some may think it’s a win-win because the company gets a creative new way to market and the homeless people get some cash. Some may view is as unethical and potentially dangerous. As David Gallahger states, “When the infrastructure fails us… we turn human beings into infrastructure?”. So what do you all think? Inventive or insane? I found an informative news article on “homeless hotspots” on Yahoo if you are interested. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/turning-homeless-4g-hotspots-sxsw-184200290.html

I know that this post is not as long or contemplative as my last couple posts but I feel compelled to show this to the class because I think it’s important to remember that despite the bombardment of technology in our lives we have to remember that it is a tool for people to use. Also, according to the yahoo article, the homeless haven’t gotten paid yet. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness around half of all the nation’s homeless suffer from mental health issues and 46% report having an alcohol use problem in the past year. I know that everyone is sensitive about employment recently but at what point does an initiative like this turn into exploitation? This seems to be something for people in the “technological age” to ponder about as we are becoming forever engrossed in technological consumerism.

I was really interested in our Skype chat about Walden Pond. After reading the book I had this enchanted image about what it looked like and probably a naive hope that it was preserved just as Thoreau had experienced it. I was excited to hear he often travels to Walden Pond because for me that gives his knowledge on the book more credibility and he proves how passionate he is about the work.
I was impressed by how much time he had put into creating the edition because I can barely spend two days working on a paper much less two years! I liked hearing his side stories about Thoreau’s life outside of what we hear in the novel like his jail cell mate or his experience with the underground railroad. It helps me to visualize Thoreau as a real person. Below are links to how I pictured Walden Pond and how after our Skype discussion I presume it looks now…

http://www.rainydaymagazine.com/RDM2006/RainyDayTrips/WaldenPond/RDT_WaldenPond.htm

http://www.delsjourney.com/images/news/news_01-07-23/1-4342-Walden-Pond.jpg

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The last few weeks have been irritatingly busy for me.  It wasn’t until Monday morning when I woke up at 5:30 am (for no apparent reason) that I remembered to read the remaining chapters of Walden.  Sitting on the back porch of my house, overlooking the inter-mural field and smoking my pipe, I came across this passage:

“At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, …cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rolls and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.” – Walden. 294.

It was at this moment that the sun rose and the birds started chirping more energetically.  Sometimes life is funny like that.  Thoreau’s experiment into the woods has striking similarities to being the first person up on a Monday morning.

1. Silence is a wonderful thing
2. Nature should be marveled.
3. You can get more done when nobody’s around.

… Okay, maybe he didn’t say this things explicitly, but they’re most certainly implied.  Thoreau finds the perfect words to describe his surroundings and that is a gift.  The knowledge that both he and the Jeffrey S. Cramer (editor) must have on Thoreau’s world is awe-inspiring with a hint of jealousy on my end.

It’s generally a cliché to talk about the weather in a personal conversation, tweet, or blog.  So may the cliché  gods enact their revenge on me if they must, but the weather this week has been fantastic.  Finishing Walden this week could not have worked out any better with the snow thawing out as we reached 60°F today.  As I write this now (on my back porch once again) the rain is starting to fall.  It brings to mind Thoreau’s passage in “Solitude”.  “Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their careless roar and pelting when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves.” – Walden pg. 128.

Thoreau’s favorite season is the Spring.  He writes and extensible amount on the particular season.  I was wondering why he enjoyed this season in particular.  Then during Tuesday’s lecture, Marissa brought forth a very interesting point:  “Walden ends in the Spring simply because Spring is a new experience, a new season, and maybe a new life.”

That was my “EUREKA!” moment.  I realized everything that Thoreau was trying to convey.  I quite possibly might speak for myself in this class when I say that I enjoy camping.  Not necessarily camping in a tent like the Boy Scouts (though I did have my fair share at a younger age), or building a cabin by myself in the middle of the woods (The Wisconsin Division of Forestry would not approve), but rather the simple ability to leave society.  If I can work it into my budget or work schedule, I rent out a cabin with some of my closest buddies and we go “off the grid” for a weekend.  And it occurred to me why we schedule it in the Spring:  We are officially out of the darkness and life begins again.  Like Marissa said, Spring is a new experience, a new season, and maybe a new life.  Maybe the old one wasn’t necessarily bad, but there’s always an opportunity to start over.

As a kid I always got a story before bed and it was also a classic fairy tale such as the Three Little Pigs or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There has always been a long list of fairy tales that everyone knows of and has heard at one point or another. I do not recall ever hearing about new fairy tales coming about until I stumbled across a link in a post by Bethany Nowviskie.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-fairytales-discovered-germany

500 fairy tales, myths, and legends have been released by a historian from an archive in Regensburg Germany. The fairy tales where gathered by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth from 1810-1886 in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz.  Von Schönwerth traveled to different areas talking to all sorts of people taking down notes about habits, traditions, customs, and history. He later recorded them all in a book called Aus der Oberpfalz. The book was released to the public but never became popular and was soon forgotten.

While looking through some of Von Schönwerth’s work curator of the Oberpfalz cultural archive Erika Eichenseer found the 500 fairy tales and released them in a book. The collection of fairy tales includes versions of classic fairy tales as well as new fairy tales never heard of. The fairy tales are not all for children or younger people. Some of the fairy tales are more of a guide for people to follow.

The fairy tales will be translated into English so we may start to see some of them make their way into our storybooks. I was happy to see a collection of stories like these shared with the public so we can all enjoy them. It would be great if more archives shared their collections in this way.

If Henry David Thoreau was born in modern times, his final thoughts in “Walden” would classify him as a digital humanist.  This is a broad statement, but after class discussion I believe that the final chapters are at the heart of what digital humanities is all about.  Perhaps Professor Cordell brought out these aspects of “Walden for a reason, or perhaps I took something and stretched it.  Whichever it is, I connected a few things about the definition of digital humanities and Thoreau’s thoughts while living at Walden Pond.

From our discussion in class I took away that Thoreau meant to end the novel in spring rather than any other season in order to show the renewal of life.  Digital humanists use the same concept by renewing the life of historical texts, pictures, and artifacts.  One of the digital humanities main objectives is to take old texts and bring them into the internet age.  This process can be seen as a renewal for the archaic texts.  The same is done with old pictures and artifacts which are photographed and then posted to the internet with a set of meta data.

Another similarity between Thoreau and digital humanists came up while I was listening to class discussion, the ship metaphor.  Thoreau uses the metaphor of “living before the mast” or choosing to work his way through life rather than live off of his wages.  My image of digital humanists is that they work hard on advancing the total amount of digitized human knowledge in order to allow future generations to access the knowledge even if the original copies are destroyed.

However, this concept of advancing the total human knowledge is challenged by Thoreau as saying modern persons are not as intellectually apt as the ancients, who had to remember all the knowledge.  I beg to differ.  I believe that human knowledge is ever increasing because we know how to access all of this information.  The human population would not be as advanced if it were not for the ability to access other people’s work.

Maybe human brains have decreased in the amount of terabytes we can hold in our brains.  But the sheer amount of the internet sources that we have access to only needs for humans to have the ability to index those sources in order to access them when need be.  In this way human kind has advanced further than ever thought possible.  If I had to remember everything I ever learned without a storage medium, be it paper or hard disk, schooling would take forever and I would likely have less to offer society.

For those of you who wonder how much data the internet can process; I found a neat link on what happens in one day of the internet.  It proves that humans would be at a significant disadvantage if someone had not invented computers and the internet:

http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-that-happens-in-one-day-on-the-internet-2012-3