Week 7: Creative Commons & Open Source Software

Week 7's lecture on Creative Commons and Open Source Software, was a follow on from week 6 and the discussion of ownership rights over the internet.

The main idea of the lecture was to research the variations of Copyright laws on the Internet and to gain an understanding of these laws in relation to material that individuals view, manipulate and create specifically for the web.

Many people have heard of Copyright laws and regulations, but what about other licences that allow the general public access and manipulate content freely. Yes, there are such laws and these are known as Creative Commons and Public Domain licences.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that, 'makes available standard licences and tools that enable creators to make their works available on more flexible terms.'

Initially this means that any work on the internet that lies under a creative commons licence, in certain terms, can have its content used again, manipulated or expanded by others. In other words, compared to a Copyright Licence a Creative Commons licence has 'some rights reserved' as opposed to 'All rights reserved'

Following the Creative Commons licensing is Public Domain content. Content that comes under Public Domain is not covered by intellectual property rights, which means its content can be manipulated and recreated without breaking or coming under any laws or reserved rights.

Where did Creative Commons initiate?

Creative Commons and the relaxing of copyright laws came from the Free Software Movement.

The Free Software Movement is a movement that was created by Richard M Stallman, which allows individuals the freedom to copy, study and improve software.

Stallman founder and creator of the Free Software Foundation had a goal and this goal was to provide 'A completely free Unix-like operating system made totally from free software.'

This free software was allowed for sharing and changing of software codes in order to improve program reliability and succ

essfulness. Thus, open source programs were born.

In addition, this movement and creation of open source software comes under 3 principles.

0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.

2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.

3: The freedom to improve the program, and to release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

What is Open Source Software?

Open Source Software is initially 'free software'.

Open Source software is usually created due to lack of interest or successfulness of propriety software programs. For example Internet Explorer is a propriety software program, it's Open Source software competitor is Firefox, a free internet browsing system.

The difference between Open Source Software and Propriety software is that Propriety software's contents is disclosed and not available to the general public. Whereas, Open Source Software is openly available to the public and unlike Propriety software the source code is freely shared.

In conclusion, without the introduction of Creative Common licensing and Open Source Software, the ability for individuals to have a choice, to share and to collaborate would not exist in the world of the World Wide Web and computer based age we live in, in society today.

Week 7: Tutespark: What is better?

The Tutespark this week following the lecture of creative commons was to download and explore free software.

In order to do this students were advised not to use generic computer software such as, Internet Explorer and Garage Band, just to name a few and instead were instructed to replace common software with competitive open source software, which was to be used to three days.


I choose to use Firefox and Audacity in this trial and was surprised with the results.

Firefox compared to Internet Explorer and Safari seemed to have a faster downloading speed, with easy to use functions.

Usually I use Safari to browse the Internet, but when I replaced this with Firefox, I found that there were less downloading errors, a quick connection speed and no annoying updates popping up on the screen.
Overall I believe that Firefox is a great open source program that proves to be more successful than Safari and Internet Explorer.


The second open source software I used to Audacity, a free music editing program.
I compared Audacity to the Mac music editing software known as Garage Band.

These two were hard to compare. I found that Garage Band was better for making songs and music featuring lots of different instruments. Whereas, Audacity was good for making sound art and 'out of the normal' music complications.

Audacity unlike Garage Band does not have the feature of importing instruments, I can see many sound editors not taking to the structure of Audacity as much as Garage Band.

Although, I did find Audacity easier to use with its simple layout and editing techniques.
The better software I found was Garage Band because of its ability to make professional sounding songs.

In concluding, I believe that all people who use generic software should take on the test of using open source software. Many would benefit from using these unfamiliar programs and in addition may even save money.

Week 6: Tutespark- Who owns it?

Who owns what we post on the Internet?

It is a question that many do not think about and with the ever growing amount of users on the internet, everyone should know who owns and controls what they post and the rights they have to the content they put on the internet.






Who owns your Facebook content?

Facebook states that,
"You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition: For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook."

So in a way we partly own what we put on Facebook, we can choose specific privacy settings but any content that is covered by intellectual property rights, is the ownership of Facebook.

Who owns blogger content?

Much like Facebook, Blogger states that you are responsible for what you post on your blog, although Blogger in relation to intellectual property rights state that,
" You acknowledge that Google owns all right, title and interest in and to the Service, including all intellectual property rights."

MySpace ownership:

MySpace ownership is adversely different to that of Facebook and Blogger. In Myspace's term and conditions it is stated that,
"you own the Content posted by you on, through or in connection with the MySpace Services, or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this Section 6, and (ii) the posting of your Content on, through or in connection with the MySpace Services and/or Linked Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person or entity. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person or entity by reason of the use of any Content posted by you on or through the MySpace Services and/or Linked Services."

Although many users of the Internet think that posting a Facebook status or sharing a blog is a harmless act, the reality is that they really don't know who has the rights to the internet content they post. It is purely a simple act of viewing the terms and conditions of the site that is being used, in order to view this information and have the knowledge of the ownership rights granted to your work.

URLS:

http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/16/facebook-owns-literally-put-facebook/
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
http://www.blogger.com/content.g
http://www.blogger.com/terms.
http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/TermsConditions.aspx

Week 6: Media, New Media & Social Media

Week 6 lecture was all about media and media types.

The lecture was taken by Adam Muir, who explained the many in and outs of the Internet, media and the adverse worlds they create for individuals.

Media and the internet:

In the twenty first century the Internet is considered a necessity, many individuals rely on the Internet as their primary source of communication. These people are known to belong to a virtual community and in addition due to their reliance on the internet, as a primary source of communication, form an individual identity that allows them to express who they are through the web.

Writer and teacher Howard Rheingold explains a virtual community to be, ' people carrying on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships.'

The creation of virtual communities is very common in Internet social communication today. Take Facebook for an example, one status can produce a mass amount of feedback that can transform into a discussion, lasting a long period of time. In adding, blog posts such as this one can have the same effect, sparking a large amount of viewer interest that can easily hold the characteristics of the creation of a virtual community.

In relation to virtual identity the same principle applies, through an individual’s use of the Internet and the way they communicate, comment and portray themselves, they can adversely recreate themselves to form a virtual identity. The creation of a virtual identity can be as easy as changing age, gender or ethnicity on a social networking site.

Social Media:

Social media is a significant part of the World Wide Web and always has been. The early Internet allowed for people in different geographic locations to communicate with others over a larger amount of space.

Though primarily this is still happening, the focus from groups of people has moved away and allowed for the individual to become the, 'common thread', sharing and consuming the content of the Internet to create Ego-Centric Social Network.

Without the Internet, where would communication be?

It is a scary thought that the virtual world we have all become accustomed to might not have existed only some decades ago.

Week 6: Media, New Media and Social Media

Week 6 lecture was about the internet, media and technology in conjunction with it's users, to create a virtual community and identity.

A virtual community can be explained as, a group of people who communicate via the internet. This includes

To be completed...

The Culture Jam

This is the video for week 5 culture jam.

When planning the culture jam, my group partner and I (Hayley) decided to focus on an issue that is close to many of our fellow students hearts. This was the issue of poor university students and the effects of not being eligible for Centrelink.

Though this issue is very realistic, we used creative licence to employ certain strategies that 'stretch the truth' of the effects of not receiving Centrelink.

We have also uploaded our Culture Jam to Youtube and CNN iReport, to see how effective the world of citizen journalism really is.

CNN Ireport link:

http://ireport.cnn.com/people/Kirstcherie?numResults=10&view=documents

Youtube video below: