The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality – New York Times
David Pogue’s informal experiment on differences in perceptions of what types of copying are “wrong” is a good, quick summary of how younger folks more permissive views. Pogue attributes the difference to the “generational divide” where “the customers who can’t even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*.”
The divide he describes between younger people are more accustomed to technologies that make copying easy and those of us who are used to rules bound to traditional media certainly plays a part. But this isn’t really anything new… young people have been making mix tapes and trading records for years. It might be that wanting to share media is something that is a part of the growing up, personality forming process. How many mix tapes have you made since you were 20?
Business Week (of all places) tipped me off about another way cellular phone carriers are exerting their control over the network. I have only a cursory knowledge of “short codes,” which are quick ways to dial for a service (like dialing 1234 to subscribe to weekly ringtones). What’s funny is that even the US Administrator of short codes admits up front that they’ve been “long popular in Europe.” That we’re behind in this technology (one might argue because it’s being too tightly controlled) is mind-numbing… especially considering that 2D Barcodes have barely made an appearance in U.S. communications, outside of snail mail.
Good stuff from Google and their employees today…
The Canadians Again Show us how to do things
William Patry offers a great summary of the sentiment of the Canadian public in the outcry over their version of the DMCA. While I had heard that Michael Geist had been speaking out to a great degree against it, I did not realize how much public support he generated.
That the public would become so involved in the issue, especially under the direction [too strong of a word, I know] of a public intellectual like Geist, really has me thinking. I wonder things like: what was more influential in forming these opinions against the new law, what the law actually said or what Geist said the impact might be? Would there have been such an outcry without some specific person leading the cause?
Today: TV static. Tomorrow: broadband.
The Google policy blog also announced their membership in the “Wireless Innovation Alliance,” which is made up of a variety of familiar names. I had not yet heard about this group, but it’s nice to see that they are basing their arguments, at least in part, off of research into what the technology might be capable of.
The founder of Wikipedia is claiming that it’s being miscast as a poor tool for education, and that “young students should be able to reference the online encyclopaedia in their work.”
Mr Wales said the site, which is edited by users, should be seen as a “stepping stone” to other sources.
As long as an article included accurate citations, he said he had “no problem” with it being used as a reference for younger students, although academics would “probably be better off doing their own research”.
I he might be missing the fact that many teachers worry about their students blindly turning to a big-name online provider without learning to first weigh the reputation of the source. With the recent stories questioning how Wikipedia grants rights to create and edit articles. And this is the point on which everything turns: who gets to be the editor?
When you think about the role of the editor in other media, it frequently emerges as what gives something its flavor. It’s the editor selecting songs and DJs that draws you in to a particular radio station, not its corporate parent. It’s the editor dictating how a news story should be framed that makes TV (or any other) news something you enjoy watching, or something you despise.
On Wikipedia, the editor is everyone. Wales and others might argue that this is a powerful way to arrive at “the truth,” but I believe it’s just as likely to cause content to loose much of its focus–that being the voice that an editor usually brings to a story. Learning to spot the impact that an editor’s voice has on information is an important part of developing information literacy, and with Wikipedia’s democratic editing, that lesson might be lost.
