Schwartz and Thompson

In the first article by Schwartz, I think that the Supreme Court decision about virtual reality child pornography was the right decision from a legal standpoint; but in my opinion even though this form of pornography does not directly hurt children it may in the long run. If the Supreme Court says that this virtual experience is okay, then child predators may be worse than they were before there was a form of legal child pornography. The main point of this article is to point out the importance of drawing a clear line between what is a virtual experience and what is reality.

In the second article by Thompson, I thought that the hacker, Kevin Mitnick was very interesting, he seemed to want to obey what the courts ordered him to do but it was clear that he was only doing it to get by, it seemed to me that he wont stop hacking, because he seemed to like the attention. This was apparent by the examples of the inmate paying him 5 million cash for hacking, the Alias guest appearance, and the story he told of how exactly he could get your email password.

Thoreau

When reading this article and trying to relate it back to the past ideas I had trouble. I would have to consider Thoreau a cyber punk of his time, going against the current of society by telling his time that they only make themselves miserable. He says that people get trapped into labor and this is a mistake. He says that people are caught up in superfluous things so that the finer fruits cannot be enjoyed. The main quote I took out of the article was “For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.” Basically, I understood this to mean that as he says, we only need the basic things in life, and that everything else we consume our lives with imprisons us. For example, I worked this summer in order to buy a computer. It is this mentality that traps us as a people, as I could have used that time, instead of working to smell the roses. I guess I would disagree with his viewpoint. I personally believe in the idea that hard work makes you appreciate something more, so it seems no problem to me that I worked all summer to get something that I enjoy. The life of survival he talks about seems more in tune with an animal’s life, and one I believe not meant for a society. It is true that because of our lifestyle we have lost certain aspects, our necessities become more, for example his explanation of the people around the fire. But I still wouldn’t want to live a life he describes.

Where Music Will Be Coming From

In this article, Kelly explains how technology has changed music. When music was first starting to be recorded, artists were using much more detail on what they were playing than before. They wanted their recordings to be perfect, with absolutely no mistake and putting emphasis on every detail so the recorder could pick it up. "Musicians played the way technology listened." Then the article begins talking about how internet sites like Napster changed us into a digital age, where things are free, and away from the analog age where things were just simply cheap.

He then explains the 3 stages of copydom.
1. Perfection, which is that the copy is perfect and exactly like the original.
2. Freeness, which just means that it's free.
3. Liquidity, which is saying that the must is fluid. It can be changed in anyway you want and this is what is so important. Since a copy can be changed in anyway that you want it to, it becomes more of a part of you because it shows who you are.

The article then goes into specific technolgy that has changed music. But with all these advancements, what will happen to the musicians? Musicians are now going to greater links to make the recording you pay for much more special to give people the incentive to want to buy it instead of having a free copied version. This is what he says is the future of must: more choices.

Future of Literacy

While reading this article there were many interesting facts that caught my interest. When I read the first quote by Plato it really made me think. It is very true that people often need to write things down in order to remember them. People write a lot of things in planners, in their cell phones, and even on their hands so that they can remember it. Another part of the article that made me think was that 3/4 of the worlds population can not afford to buy their own books and reading material. This means that the other 1/4 of the world will control what they read. It is very sad that these people can not afford to buy their own books. These individuals will never be able to walk into a book store and search for books that interest them. Ray's post is horrible.

The Future of Literacy

Eco brings up a very interesting point towards the end of this essay about distributing books among Third World countries. The question is who decides what type of content these people will be reading. He also points out that three quarters of the world can not afford books. This means that there are a select few that have the power to distribute information and they are the ones who ultimately decide what these people are reading. This seems to be the reoccuring theme in a number of readings this quarter. Who has the right to decide the extent of the damage? Who decides whether stealing music from online is a serious crime? I can't even imagine the different scenarios of Third World individuals being fed political information, thinking they are receiving gifts in the form of reading material. This leaves three quarters of the world population to potentially take up communist beliefs, or three quarters of the world population to believe that there were nuclear war heads in Iraq. My point is that their should be some type of regulations on the material these countries receive. They are individuals just like us, and should ultimately decide what they'd like to read.

The Tyranny of Copyright?

I definitely agree with the 'Copy Left' that copyrights have gotten out of hand. The idea that record companies have settled out of court for thousands of dollars with 12 year-old kids is absurd in my mind. So there are large corporations suing young kids for downloading music, and at the same time, the man who wrote the “Happy Birthday” song is asking for royalties for his work, because he copyrighted it. Does this seem ridiculous to anyone else? I download music through limewire, and I see nothing wrong with it when used in my private collection. I am taking a few songs to play on my mp3 player, that I can just as easily download from their website, a cd, or their myspace page. The only time I have an issue with downloading music or any other material, is when someone then tries to sell the music or material they have taken. When I publish my photographs online, they are immediately copyrighted to me, and that stays embedded in my photos. If someone were to copy that image to put as the desktop of their computer, or use it in a paper, I wouldn't care. If they were to try to make copies and sell them, I would have a problem because they are making money on something I did. When a musical group covers another person's song, they only need the permission if they plan on selling a cd or dvd with that song on it. If they are just to perform it once at a concert, they don't need to pay the royalties because they aren't making funds off someone else's material. Another idea mentioned in the article for 'pro-copyright laws' was called micro payments. This is where people would pay a fee to download music, and then pay another fee to upload it to an mp3 player. I don't think that would work, because for every new copyright law, there is another person or another company finding a way around it. With the way they are pushing copyright laws, what will come next? Will we need to pay a fee to authors for citing their books in a paper? Will we need to pay royalties to our professors when we cite their lectures in our papers? It seems to me that people are just becoming money hungry, and are finding every possibility to make a dollar.

Literacy Technology and Money Capital

In Ohmann's Literacy Technology and Money Capital he talks about the use of the word literacy and how technologies, and more specific, computers are bringing change to this concept. He argues that the computer has done little to change our social class structure, and if anything has given the capitalists more tools to increase their monopolistic power. While his view is on the far left of political theory, I do believe that to some point computers have changed our societal class structure and definition of literacy. For one, what is computer literacy? I strongly believe that you cannot use the word "literacy" to define being a person skilled with a computer. Literacy denotes that if you do not obtain it, you are of a lower class than others who are literate. Yet, if someone doesn't use a computer are they really of a lower social stratum, are they less of a person, are they less intelligent? I read once that former President Clinton only sent a few emails during his entire term in office, and he had a secretary write them for him. Yet, he is obviously of an older generation, I believe you would be hard pressed to find a CEO of a large company who doesn't use email today, but as Ohmann points out, his computer literacy may be far lower than someone working in the engineering department as a technician.
Also, he does have a valid point in stating that computers and technology are the products of corporations and monopolies. So, as true with anything else we must question their statements such as "Computers will change your life" for these corporations are profit driven. Although I would argue that the benefits have outweighed the risks with the usage of computers. For one, the ease of communication has improved, and the media world, once a monopoly is currently undergoing a huge transformation with the onset of blogging and youtube. It has changed so much that the very definitions of traditional worlds like media, literacy etc are being called into question. I myself believe that while it is true corporate and government organizations have been allowed to probe deeper into our social lives, we ourselves have been able to see deeper into these organizations as technology has highly increased transparency in almost all stratus' of society.

Crime and Puzzlement

While reading the essay by Barlow, I was sympathetic to the individuals who were put through so much trouble by the government. The crackers were probably wrong on some level, but they were definitely taken advantage of by our government. Today in class I was surprised that John was the only one standing up for the "criminals" talked about in the essay. I know he is the prof and has to be the devils advocate in most situations, but where was everyone else? I think that the rights of those involved were highly violated. Our constitution guarantees that we are not held without being charged. We did not really focus on this point, but I think that it is very important. In my opinion the issues of rights violation is the biggest issue. Whether or not a crime was committed, the crackers were not treated up to the standards of US Law. The fortune 500's of the country were scared and had the power to influence the rest of the country into fear along with them. The essay talked about FBI agents being very poorly informed. Because of this crackers, in most cases, knew far more about the subject then those who were doing the questioning. I think that fear consumed the government and this caused the accused to be taken advantage of. Civil rights thrown out the window because of fear, is that where we want to take this country? Not that this was written recently, but there are cases were you can see similar action. Today in our country there are people who are held without charges brought against them. Is that truly what our country stands for, is that fair? What do you think, is it fair to flip flop on the Constitution like we have seen from time to time?