Ethics and Law in New Media : Week 10

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015?

Write a short predictive analysis

The development of software licensing and software market in general has been growing exponentially over the last decade, so I might say that it is hard to precisely predict its development in 5 years. However, there are some undeniable trends in the market that cannot be ignored. There are various types of software and the licensing landscape would look different for each of them.

There are big players in the software market, mainly professional well known software such as AutoCad, MathCad, Adobe Photoshop and CorelDraw. This kind software is well known for its superior quality, good brand name (reputation), they are leaders in the sphere the program in operating in. The licensing for this kind of software wouldn’t change much in five years, because the users (mostly corporate clients) wouldn’t be able to give up the benefits they can get obtain by using it. Substituting this king of software with its freeware equivalents would need an investment to educate company’s employees how to work with the new software and also would significantly ruin company’s brand name.

Well known and widely used software, for example, Microsoft Office, would even more than now suffer from many cheaper or free substitutes entering the market. Microsoft has already started the best possible strategy and will probably continue it – provide its existing and potential clients with different types of program bundling. Microsoft currently offers several Microsoft Office versions, starting from a relatively cheap one that is meant for students and has only the basic features and ending with a huge and expensive Microsoft Office Professional edition for business clients. In order to cope with the expanding competition Microsoft would probably offer the basic edition of this package for free after 5 years.

In my opinion, the market for small and non-business oriented software will be completely overwhelmed by proprietary software in 2015. People won’t be willing to buy such software, and, if we assume that the illegal software downloading will be reduced by that time, we will all be using legally downloaded free software.

Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.

The idea of copying restrictions is in line with the concept of copyright. Copyright is used to protect original creative works, published editions, sound recordings, films and broadcasts. It exists independently of the recording medium, so buying a copy does not confer the right to copy. Limited copying (photocopying, scanning, downloading) without permission is possible is some cases, e.g. for research. Publication of excerpts or quotes needs acknowledgement. Copyright is not registrable because it arises automatically on creation.

If we put the formal definition aside and look at the real cases, we can see that the wonderful idea of copying restrictions doesn’t work in many cases. A perfect example for that is a software market. The illegal downloading of all kinds of software has become a part of the society already and it might be very hard to change this habit. The access of illegal software is amazingly easy. Even a person with basic computer knowledge can dig a bit deeper into the results Google gives him/her after typing “ProgramWhatever crack” or similar phrases and get the copyright protected software for free.

Of course, one can argue that there exist free alternatives similar the software we need to pay for. But again – why to download less fancy software if I can just download a desired one illegally and don’t be punished for it? It might sound inadequate now, but to my mind the only solution for this problem had been preventing it before the illegal downloading even started. Currently fighting with this problem seems like a fight against windmill, because the change in people behavior in such big issue requires changing people’s thinking and beliefs.

There are many attempts where illegal using of software is tried to be reduced, for example, there exists software that is available free of charge for academic, non-commercial and educational purposes. I think this idea is really valuable, because it helps the society as well as improves the software company’s brand image. Also there are new forms of licensing such as Copyleft and ShareAlike (used in Creative Commons), where author can give bigger freedom to the users of his/her than as Copyright protection was used. In this case the author himself can determine the extent to which the creative work is protected. I personally consider flexible licenses like this to be a future image of different kinds of intellectual property protection.

Task 9: exploring activity theory as a framework for describing activity systems

Put out a post summarizing your understanding of activity theory and its potential for describing activity systems

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), further here named just as activity theory, is a theoretically-based conceptual framework that helps to understand the relationship between one’s mind and actions, and other relevant factors that influence one’s actions. It was firstly introduced by Soviet developmental psychologists Alexei N. Leont'ev and Sergei Rubinshtein. Afterwards, this study was expanded and adapted in different fields, for example a study of human computer interaction in Scandinavia, also called as Scandinavian Activity theory.

To see how the activity theory works we need to build up the activity system:

Figure 1. Activity theory graphic explanation. Source: http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/edpy597mappin/images/bigtri.gif

The subject is a group or an individual person that performs and examines the activity to the object. Instruments (also named as mediating artefacts) are the catalysts of the activity. Rules set and regulate the possible framework for the action, community helps the subject to carry out the action and division of labour corresponds to the horizontal (between equal members) and vertical (power division) communication in the society.

The theory of activity systems can be broadly used in the real life. This powerful tool just needs to be transformed and adjusted to the particular circumstances, for example, to design a business model, test a new computer technology, help human resource managers to monitor their departments, or explain a complicated social process.

Task 8: From mass media to personal media

Marika Lüders in her article Conceptualizing Personal Media explores the concepts of personal media and mass media from many perspectives. It is very comprehensive and is based on various theories about this field.

I liked the way author tries to answer the question and draw a vague line between the two types of media. She argues that many previously valid perceptions about both mass and personal media are outdated, for example, the perception that mass media is associated with asymmetric one way communication and personal communication is mutual between individuals. It made me think: what really is a mass media in the 21^st century? It is clear that the mass media communicational has become more symmetric than before. We have different kinds of interactive mass media, such as interactive TV, possibility to post our comments and feedback in almost every website and call to radio and television and express our opinion. I personally tend to treat internet as a mixture of mass and personal media, because it has never meant to be and isn’t private. There are many technologies that are used for individual and mass media purposes, for example Facebook is a huge social network that is used for personal communication between friends and acquaintances; however, it is also a very successful business tool for many people that can advertize their products via social media channels.

I agree with the author that one of the most successful ways to draw an ambiguous borderline between the two types of media is to look at the person’s purpose of using it. But again – a blog can be both personal and a mass media product, and sometimes it is very hard to distinguish where the particular case belongs.

To my mind we are now in a transition process between the separated parts of media to a one hybrid part with different subdivisions. Personally I think that the digital communication will have more mass media features than it does now. So we can wait and see what new types of businesses will arise based on this developing tendency.

Ethics and Law in New Media : Week 8

Study the Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP

Write a short comparative analysis

The intellectual property rights differ in common law (Anglo-American) and civil law (Continental Europe) countries. In order to explore the differences in this particular field of law, we first need to compare both systems in general.

The main feature of civil law system is that the laws are written and codified and not determined. It is a Roman heritage. Common law is legal system developed through decisions of courts and similar tribunals (called case law), rather than through legislative statutes or executive action. Common law is law created and refined by judges: a decision in a currently pending legal case depends on decisions in previous cases and affects the law to be applied in future cases.

The legislation in Europe and other developed countries is advanced enough so that we can say that the area of legislation that concerns intellectual property rights would converge soon in those two types of law systems. A good examples for that are EU Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. However, the Anglo-American school of IP is historically considered to be more materially-oriented and put a greater emphasis on the possible tangible outcomes of the intellectual property. In contrary to that, Continental European school of IP concentrates more on various moral aspects on the intellectual property rights. The concept of copyright or a patent in USA is more profit-oriented that in Europe, where it is considered to be more as a tool to preserve an intellectual property rights.

Ethics and Law in New Media : Week 7

Read Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property", write a review and comment on his strategies for change.

In the chapter “Against Intellectual Property” Brian Martin explores the problems that face the security of various kinds of intellectual property and proposes solutions to this complex issue. To his mind, information should be freely accessible to everyone without legal barriers and the privacy related issues, for instance, copyright and patents can be easily avoided and it wouldn’t harm the authors of the creative work.

The question about the privacy of intellectual property and the attempts to secure it lie far back in the past, starting from the invention of the first copy machines and patents for evolutionary inventions, such as, telephone and radio. Many aspects of the intellectual property rights are controversial, for example, the ownership of government information and person’s biological information. The real life cases as well as frequent disputes about intellectual property issues make us think that the secret aim of protecting one’ s intellectual work is not the question of promoting the creation of new ideas, but rather is a cruel way of power division.

Author also closely examines the concept of the marketplace of ideas. This theory compares the economic perception of a free market with the freedom of speech and expression. The concept of this metaphor is not fully approved by the author, because there are too many restrictions in real in real life to make this comparison plausible. The inequality between different members of society denies the same access to information and right to express oneself for everyone. This violates the idea of a market being free and self-regulating.

Brian Martin proposes various strategies that would change the situation in this complex field:

• Change thinking – increase in social responsibility in the society, spread of the idea of freedom of speech

• Expose the costs – the costs of having a sophisticated system of intellectual property rights are often higher that the benefits of it

• Reproduce protected works – think of plagiarism as stealing, very often the root of this problem lies in the governmental level

• Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property – challenge the society, spread the message and see who will follow

• Promote non-owned information – for example, use public domains, free software instead of stealing the one that is not for free. Copyleft – opposite of copyright

• Develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work

  All these strategies are very good guidelines every modern and socially responsible person should follow. The long lasting period of intellectual property rights are about to change soon due to rapid changes in human lifestyle in the last couple of decades. In the times when everything can be downloaded very fast from everywhere int he world, the concept of intellectual property needs to grow to anew level, otherwise the current conditions would make it disappear completely.

Task 6: Operationalising interactivity

In the article Interactivity: a concept explication Spiro Kiousis discusses interactivity and its role in new media and communication channels. The main aim of the work is to create a common and comprehensive definition for interactivity. To do this, author has been exploring the topic by conducting an extensive literature analysis and came to conclusion that the concept can be explained in from different points of view and that all the ideas need to be merged together to obtain the ideal conceptual and operational definitions of the interactivity. Author stresses that interactivity is a very broad concept that is used both as an independent and dependent variable in different analyses.

Based on the literature review author has divided the concept into two perspectives: intellectual, with subgroups communication and non-communication, and object emphasized, with subgroups technology, communication setting and perceiver. Three conditions need to be fulfilled if we want to observe interactivity: at least 2 human or non-human participants are required, there must be technology meant for communication (everything, for example, telephone, laptop etc.) and the participants need to have a change to modify the mediated environment. After accomplishing the literature review, author creates his own conceptual definition of interactivity by blending all the dimensions together: “interactivity can be defined as the degree to which a communication technology can create a mediated environment in which participants can communicate (one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many) both synchronously and asynchronously and participate in reciprocal message exchanges (third-order dependency). With regard to human users, it additionally refers to the ability of users to perceive the experience to be a simulation of interpersonal communication and increase their awareness of telepresence”. We can see that Kiousis has included different aspects of interactivity, putting the greatest emphasis on technological and communication.

Author uses this conceptual definition to derive an operational definition of interactivity. The theoretical side of the research is matched with practical implications of the definition. Operational definition has three main components of interactivity: structure of technology (speed, range, timing flexibility, and sensor complexity), communication context (third-order dependency, social presence) and user perception (proximity, sensory activation, perceived speed). Also it is stated that interactivity is both media and psychological variable and one must keep it in mind when analyzing the social impact of interactive media.

To my mind it is unambiguous that interactivity is about new ways of communicating and engaging society to participate in mass media action by giving them the right to express their opinion. But such correct definition of interactivity is very important, because many people tend to use the word interactive knowing only a small part of its real meaning and using it just a catchy advertisement slogan.