Do you really believe in whatever I describe myself to be in this blog? This is the question many have to ask themselves, while chatting or reviewing others’ online identity. Identity plays a key role in virtual communities. In communication, which is the primary activity, knowing the identity of those with whom you communicate is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction. Yet in the disembodied world of the virtual community, identity is also ambiguous (Donath, 1996).

The push factor for communicating in ambiguity is due to their reputation and online identity; that are often the motivating factors that push people to actively participate in forums and online communities. (Donath, 1996) However, due to the current widespread use of the internet as its many communication applications has brought the 'identity' factor to a whole new level. Along with this new freedom have emerged many unique issues and problems (Lackaff, 2003).

Having an online identity, one can include whatever they like on it. They can have fake names, fake pictures and fake profiles. But why did they fake up all these? To me, it seems like a privilege to set-up online identities, as no one knows who you are and that means you can type or chat about almost anything and everything. Creating false identities and masquerade are often present in online chat forums. One good example is the chat application called Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

In a Chat forum, it doesn’t literally means that people actually talk to each other and hear each other’s voices. Instead, it means that you hold live keyboard “conversations” with other people on the Internet- that is, you type words on your computer and other people on the Internet can see those words on their computers immediately. One can also hold simultaneous chats with people all over the world. There are a number of ways people can establish an online identity and start chatting on the internet- one of the most popular ones would be the Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

IRC follows a client/server model, which means that both client and server software are required to use it. Many IRC clients are available for many types of computers, so whether you have a PC of Macintosh, or Unix, you can use IRC. Each topic you join is called a channel. When you join a channel, you can see what other people on the channel type on their keyboards. You can also hold individual side conversations with someone. To me, this is the best time to use fake online identity. I am sure most of you have done that before. By distinguishing yourself as a female, when actually you are a male, to tap on girls online and relishing the conversation with another stranger. This happens very often! IRC is also a place for geeks to make friends. Why so? Probably they can find someone who they can really talk to online, be it personal problems or other issues, they will not know who you are unless they start asking a meet-up in person session. That is where disappointments comes in. The contents of the posting can reveal a great deal more about the writer. It may include overtly identity-related data: name, age, etc. More importantly, it provides a chance to get a sense of the writer's "voice'' and to see how he or she interacts with others in the on-line social environment. (Donath, 1996).

However much, there is a setback on the use of IRC. Other people or even your friends can use your nickname and hack into your account. They can simply tarnish and destroy your reputation in a second. This means a lot to some people; especially regulars who never change their nicknames and had constantly chatted or even made friends online. Furthermore, users can make people believe in what they said, when it is untrue. This can lead to serious outcome, depending on how much they believe in. Lastly, it is also advisable not to meet up in person with your online-chat friend. Because, you will never know what might happen if you met up in person. For example, you might be very disappointed in his/her looks and gets pissed on the fact that he/she did not live up to your standards as described over IRC.

The growth of internet usage in the past decade has changed both human society and the medium itself (Lackaff, 2003). In this modern era, it is so easy to create false identities. It may or may not be a bad thing- depending on what you are looking for. However, it is advisable that you do not reveal too much of yourself as the fact that we cannot prevent others to create false identities.

Work citations:

Donath, Judith (1996, November 12). Identity and the virtual community. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community Web site: http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Lackaff, D, (2003). A review of moderation regimes. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from Norm maintenance in online communities Web site: http://lackaff.net/node/20

E-mail Spam. (2007, February 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC
benbasket at 1:04 PM

Giving that ask for no returns

What confused me most when the topic, “Gift Economy”, was thrown onto me is do I look at it in a “layman” term, or do I look at it in-depth? Well, after reading ample amount of sources, I finally understood.

There are actually two types of economy, a commodity economy and a gift economy. In a commodity (or exchange) economy, status is accorded to those who have the most. In a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others. (Pinchot, 1995)

A gift economy simply means, giving and receiving. Gift exchanges should not involve explicit bargaining or demands that the gift be reciprocated, but a relationship in which there is only giving and no receiving is unlikely to last. The contrast to a gift exchange is a commodity transaction, in which no obligation exists after the exchange is consummated – the bottle of water purchased at a convenience store does not create an obligation to buy something there again. A gift is also tied in an inalienable way to the giver. This is to say that gifts are unique: it is not simply a sweater, but rather the sweater-that-Bill-gave-me. (Kollock, 1999) The Gift Economy offers us a means to learn, to understand, to take charge, and to change our world. It is a natural economy, steeped in millions of years of pre-civilization human culture and the culture of all life on Earth. If enough of us embraced it, the modern 'market' economy, built on the faulty and inhuman foundations of inequality, scarcity, false quantification of value, and acquisition, could not survive. (Pollard, 2005)

When dealing with a gift economy, price is not the main concern. That means, when I give you something, I do not expect any financial return from you, also I do not expect any direct return from you. Indeed, gifts of information and advices are not just subjected to an individual, rather, to a group as a whole. Gifts of information might be offered to a group that has a clearly defined membership (a private discussion list, for example) or to groups that are more loosely defined. (Kollock, 1999) In contrast to a gift economy, the commodity economies are benefits that come from making improvements in the technology of production. Price is often the main driving factor in this case. To sum it off, It is important to note that gift exchange and commodity transactions are ideal types, and any economy will be a mix of these two types of exchange as well as many intermediate cases between them.

In this modern era, the World Wide Web is taking part in most of our lives- thus we must be aware of this wonderful online gift and make full use of it. Today, information and advices can be found in many different websites. They act as a gift to all of us and indirectly fulfill our needs and enriched us in many ways. Information may lose value over time, but it certainly has the capacity to satisfy more than one. In many cases, information gains rather than loses value through sharing. While the exchange economy may have been appropriate for the industrial age, the gift economy is coming back as we enter the information age. (Pinchot, 1995)

“Google” is the world’s leading start and search engine. To me, information is best received through “googling”. If I need information about shopping, sports and entertainment, instead of going to websites and try to find the most suitable website to browse through, I will just go online and fire up my Google and start searching. This Google Company was founded in 1998 and became the largest search engine on the Internet in 2000. This site is a relatively new phenomenon to many. The secret to Google’s speed and accuracy are the algorithms it uses when it searches. It uses many factors to determine which are the most relevant pages that match our search, including how popular the page is, where the search term is found within the page. Furthermore, Google does not stop at only considering the page’s popularity; it also looks at the quality of pages that link to that page. Google started out as a search engine, but it has become much more than that today! It is practically its own universe. It has its own sites that tells and help you buy things online (Froogle), a mapping site (Google Maps), an email service (Gmail)- bet most of you didn’t know that! New services are introduced practically every month. Adding on, there are also different languages/versions of Google that suits people from different country- example, you are a Chinese that only speaks and read in Chinese. Fear not, Google has it all! They provide a Chinese Google website to suit you. This is simply amazing! (Google, 2007)

In conclusion, the changing economies of online interaction have shifted the costs of providing public goods – sometimes radically – and thus changed the kinds of groups, communities, and institutions that are viable in this new social landscape. (Kollock, 1999)Therefore, like what Gifford Pinchot said, “Not all economies are based on maximizing personal gain, some are founded on giving.”


Kollock, Peter (1999). 'The Economies of Online Cooperation; Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace" Retrieved February 9, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm
Pinchot, Gifford (1995). "The Gift Economy" Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm
Pollard, Dave (2005). "The Gift Economy" Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/04/17.html
Google. (2007, February 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:40, January 26, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
benbasket at 12:36 PM

QOTW3: Sharing, Copyright and Creative Culture.

“Piracy is Crime”

Today’s internet is made up not just of text, but sound, video, animation and more. Every once in a while a new feature or application takes the internet by storm and not only changes the way many people use the internet, but, at times, even change the world beyond the internet’s borders.

So what is it that we should be concern about copyrights? It did all this by putting into effect a very simple idea- let people share their music with each other over the internet. Despite all the hype, technology and lawsuits, that is what it all comes down to.

People nowadays can make digital copies of their CDs by using piece of ripping software that turns CD tracks into digital files (Windows Media Player, I tunes. Etc) – most of these commonly files are in the mp3 music format. With the evil heart of some, copies of these CDs where made repeatedly and sold throughout the whole nation on the verge of being catching and prosecuted. Yes, so what if you are being caught? Thousands and thousands of copies had already been sold and distributed around the globe. If this goes on, what will happen to content creators? Music industries and moviemakers? This has to be stopped! If you want to make copies of your own, follow the rules and oblige the law.

The music industry were badly affected because of this. Remember the Napster case? Napster went to court on copyright violations. The court cases dragged on for a while, but ultimately Napster lost and was put out of business. It may resurface as a legal, for- pay music sharing service at some point. However, despite the lawsuits, the genie is out of the bottle. Other software and file-sharing networks enable people to do the same thing. (Ares, Limewire. Etc)

The first important thing that people cannot forget is that: copyright is important. Initially, the creation of copyright is to give creators of new music, video etc. special rights to their creation for a limited time. The purpose of these copyright laws is to ultimately benefit the public by promoting “the progress of science and useful arts;” that is learning and knowledge. With these laws being implemented, creators can benefit from their creation and earn themselves fame and money-, which is a form of incentives towards them. On the other hand, the public’s interest is also being taken care of. The public benefits because the authors and inventors continue creating original works that these creators may not have otherwise developed and because these creations are freely usable by the public once the limited time has passed. It is important to strike a balance between both the interest of content creators and public good. (Ovalle, 2005)

It proposes that we adopt a legal architecture that encourages but does not compel copyright owners to make their works available for widespread sharing over digital networks, and that we incorporate into that architecture a payment mechanism, based on a blanket or collective license, designed to compensate creators and to bypass unnecessary intermediaries. (Litman, 2003)

One important thing that can be done, which is mentioned by Jessica Litman from her article, is to encourage music file sharing, as a distinguish from merely tolerating it. To do that, it should incorporate some licensing mechanism that can cut through the thicket of overlapping and conflicting rights. In addition, the legal defaults of such system need to be reset to “share” rather than “hoard”. So long as shareable is the legal default, we do not need to make sharing compulsory. We can allow creators who would like to prevent their music from being shared to make an election. The system should allow customers, computers and software to ascertain, easily, whether music is being hoarded or shared, and thus encourage the design of computer software allowing the sharing of shareable music while making it difficult to share hoarded music. (Litman 2003)

Another way of treating this matter is to let the public know and understand the set of rules behind sharing and copyright related law issues. For example, letting the public know what a “Fair use” is all about; that is, doctrine that allows certain limited uses of copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission. While there is no bright line test defining the scope of Fair Use,states four general parameters that must be considered: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including the commercial or noncommercial nature of the use; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount of the copyrighted work that is used; and (4) the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the copyrighted work. Fair Use commonly provides for educational and non-profit entities (i.e., schools and libraries) to disseminate copyrighted material. It allows students and teachers to copy reasonable amounts of material from books and other publications. Fair Use also allows journalists to use certain portions of copyrighted works in their reporting. However, keep in mind that the fact you are using the material for educational or journalistic purposes by itself does not give you carte blanche to use whatever you want. All four of the above parameters must be considered and the determination of what fits within the scope of Fair Use is complex. (Brady, 2004)

There are more of these set of rules that can act as a guideline for us, so as to not violate the law and remain a good public user.

A whole new application has sprung up recently: business peer-to-peer software. The most notable example is Microsoft-owned Groove software that enables people in corporations to create their own private workspace where they can share files, messages, and software. Multibillion-dollar corporations have already signed on and using the software. This could another alternative to accommodate both public and content creators’ interest. In addition, businesses also use Bit Torrent as a way to more efficiently distribute software. So ironically, a technology that started as guerilla music- sharing software might find fruition as a corporate mainstay.



Citations:

Ovalle, C. (2005). What is Copyright? Retrieved on February 3, 2007, from http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/3.php


Litman, J (2003). Sharing and Stealing. University of Michigan. Social Science Research Network. Retrieved on February 3, 2007, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141#PaperDownload


Brady, K (2004). Copyright FAQ: 25 Common Myths and Misconceptions. Retrieved on February 3, 2007, from http://users.goldengate.net/~kbrady/copyright.html
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