Technology Changes Rapidly; Humans Don't This last section of Dr. Howard's book discusses four important points that social communities can learn from the past. These are: copyrights and intellectual property, disciplinary control vs. individual creativity, visual, technological, and new media literacies, and decision-making content for future markets. Another important point to learn from communication technologies of the past, is that literacy rates are drastically affected by the cost of any given communication technology. The lower the cost the higher the literacy rate because the more readily available content is a larger amount of the public. I really enjoyed the anecdote of the Gutenberg press and what it did not only to literacy rates, but to the entire structure of the religious, economic, and social structures of the middle ages. This anecdote translates very well to digital social communities of modern times, although it might be difficult to notice. With on-demand publishing more and more people are able to get their thoughts and writing into print. With the invention of iTunes more and more people are releasing their music online for purchase. Also with the invention of Youtube more and more people are recording their own movies and posting them for the world to see. However this does not come without problems. One of the most prevalent, and the one I will choose to focus on, is the issue of copyrights/patents/trademarks. The issues here, in regards to social media, are quite different than someone downloading a song from Napster or ripping a DVD movie they rent from Blockbuster; the problem is much more complex. Although those issues are a problem (and pirated eBooks as well such as Kindle) social media communities, and the companies that run them, create complex problems. For example social communities (digital ones at least) can contain members from all over the globe. These members, from around the world, exist in countries with drastically different intellectual property regulations than the US. So are they allowed to post similar content as US citizens? Is the US social networking company responsible for foreign members? For example, can China come after Facebook (a US based company) for allowing a Chinese citizen to access content or contribute to content that would normally be ban in China? Does the IP system protect the company (facebook, twitter, etc.) or does it protect the individual who produced the content?
Historically the IP system has protected the publisher, simply because it was the least vague of the options. Like Dr. Howard states a newspaper highers a journalist to write something, if that content pushes someone to take legal action it would be against the newspaper not the journalist. It exists as a protection system against individual authors. However in the opposite way it also inhibits individual from getting the rights to their? Or does it? For example a person becomes famous because of Youtube and gets a job in Hollywood making millions of dollars. That person deserves all of what he/she earned right? But it is safe to say that if Youtube did not exist this person would never have "made" it. So should Youtube get a cut? You see where the complexities exist. I say these things not to express a certain opinion in any single view, but rather to show that it is much, much more complex than people think. It is also strange for anyone to think too that their video on Youtube, or song on itunes, or their twitter account will make them famous or rich. But it does happen and it is happening even more as the corporate world invests more and more into social networking and the communities people are involved in. I apologize I know this was haphazard and random but I do have a lot of thoughts where intellectual property is concerned and I think it is one of the most important and difficult topics facing our global economy today.
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