The New World of Surveillance

            As mentioned in my blog last week, the dangerous dystopian future of surveillance is no longer based on the Orwellian or panopticon-style. The government will never pay to watch every corner of the Earth and every room. Instead, the real danger of oppression is from citizens themselves. As cameras continue to grow tiny, and assuming people begin wear cameras on themselves, as in Google glass, the threat of a rolling recorder may become omnipresent.

            While the rise of the autonomous car should vastly cut down on the 30,000 yearly road deaths, every running car will likely become a 360-degree, always-recording camera. There might be an “off-switch,” but most drivers would probably want the ability to record every accident for insurance purposes. Furthermore, the watchful eyes of a camera would likely prevent car jacking.

            Ultimately, the result could be a public sphere where everything could be recorded. Daniel Solove considers the potential problems with this type of world in The Future of Reputation. He mentions that every little mishap in public could potentially be put on YouTube if one is unlucky. This is epitomized in the case of the “Dog Poop” girl, where a rude public gesture became the bane of one South Korean woman’s existence. Or, perhaps more tragically, in the case of the Star Wars kid, where a private, fun game of imagination accidentally became a YouTube sensation. This ultimately resulted in a student’s dropping out of high school and seeking psychiatric care.

            Not only does the Internet provide a spot to put up embarrassing content, it also provides a spot to comment on it rapidly. Dr. Alice Marwick and Dr. Danah Boyd comment on this in “The Drama.”  Social networks provide researchers a more permanent record of teen bullying, and they also display some of the worst teen antics.

            The worst of Internet bullying and gossip can be seen on anonymous cites, such as collegiateacb.com. With the freedom to insult their peers without the risk of peer disapproval, such sites become virally hateful.

Jeremy Bentham's panopticon...

Google!

            In The Googlization of Everything, Siva Vaidhyanathan argues we are at risk of an overwhelming influence from Google. Under its precept of “Don’t be evil,” Google has led us to stop questioning the good intentions of the company. Whether its attempts are good or bad, however, its effects are monstrous. Google has changed the way we think about problems “by crowding out other alternatives” (6). Every time we search on Google to solve a problem, we are subject to Google’s perspectives, and ““Its process of collecting, ranking, linking, and displaying knowledge determines what we consider to be good, true, valuable, and relevant” (7).

            Furthermore, Google’s massive collection of information has put our privacy at the whims of Google. Vaidhyanathan argues that Google will make us behave in a manner similar as to under Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, where the possibility that we might be watched will alter our behavior to fit in with that which we think is expected of us. Only instead of a single viewer at the center of the Panopticon, or simply Google’s employees, we will soon fear the entire world is at the center of this Panopticon.

            Great Britain currently has 14.2 million security cameras set up right now, or one for every fourteen residents. While this is somewhat frightening in an Orwellian sense, what is scarier is what is to come. If Google Glass catches on and becomes widespread, everyone will have a camera strapped to there head at all times. Conceivable, there could come a time where we might never know whether we’re being recorded. The risk of this is our potential to all have a Panopticon-style of thinking, which could result in Orwell’s concept of “group think.”

Piracy:sometimes it really is just black-and-white

            Media piracy has been a major issue for years. One only needs to watch the “Don’t Copy that Floppy” video (below) from 1992 to see the battle-taking place over two decades ago. The issue is one that has affected me from an early age, as a result of my being born at the dawn of the personal computing era. Despite being an avid music fan, I did not buy a single music album until I bought Kanye West’s My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy out of a sense of loyalty to the artist at the age of nineteen. I had no need. By the time I was old enough to walk into a store and buy something, I had access to 20 GB of free music, and soon I would have the ability to acquire whatever I wanted. I also copied dozens of DVDs upon the release of DVD burners with DVDxCopy. When video streaming advance, I watched bootlegged episodes of The Walking Dead online.

            Many of us conceive the arguments on piracy as a simple battle between the copyright holders and those who want to pay less for their media. In R. Lobato’s “Six Faces of Piracy,” however, he suggests that we must have a more dynamic understanding of piracy. According to Lobato, theft is only one aspect of piracy, and it is only part of a constructed idea on piracy that results from the relatively recent idea of intellectual property. Lobato argues this aspect has received far too much focus, when there are five other aspects of piracy that exist: free enterprise, free speech, authorship, resistance, and access.

            I will examine these arguments, going from most effective to least effective. In my opinion, the arguments for piracy are valid, but most of them apply to cases where lawsuits do not occur frequently. The major lawsuits that do occur apply to blatant reproduction of mainstream media to get the same materials for free.

            The argument for piracy as expression makes sense, so long as it actually is expression, and not just reproducing the exact same content. The remix culture that has formed in the last two decades relies heavily on the ability to copy content, but alter it creatively. There is a large grey area here as to whether the material has been altered enough, but that will be a battle for the courts to decide. Ultimately, however, one may argue that if the material is being used as a means of original expression, it is not piracy at all.

            Piracy as access is a solid argument. There is a lot of material that has not actually been published online, or is impossible to access legally in remote regions. Still, the major lawsuits are not on the unheard of little materials or in the small countries, they are mainstream, and easily accessible.

            The argument for free-enterprise argument is intriguing. This argument is based on libertarian ideals, that interfering through legal means actually ends up hurting the market. In the end, however, most of the legitimate reasons for free enterprise are to allow remix culture and free enterprise., then use piracy for that which is not protected by copyrights

            Lobato describes the argument for piracy as authorship as a “poststructuralist critique of authorship.” This is a difficult side to defend. According to this argument, all language and experience is learned from society, and therefore creative content belongs to society and not the individual. Taken to an extreme, this philosophy would lead to the destruction of intellectual property, and a massive slow down in innovation.

            Last, there is the argument for resistance, as a Marxist critique of the media industry. Perhaps the laws are outdated, but one does not try to revise the law by breaking it, but rather using the democratic systems that all legitimate governments have to alter it. If one is offended by the corporate media industry’s attempts to profiteer, then one should select the art that is not copyrighted.  

            Intellectual property is not something that exists solely in the media. We can examine other industries to see the importance of defending intellectual property. Historically, pharmaceuticals have primarily been created because of the help of patents. The creation of pharmaceuticals requires unfathomable amounts of time and research, which is only possible if investors are confident their idea will not be stolen when it is produced. The arts are no different.

            Those who deny the financial losses of piracy are simply enjoying the benefits of the difficulties of calculating the effects of a black market. (Black markets are, by nature, difficult to model.) Perhaps the MPAA has misrepresented the figures of losses from piracy. But in their defense, there is no legitimate way to measure piracy: No one can track the exact number of thefts or how many copies would have been purchased had the theft not occurred. Still, a 2012 review of academic literature at Carnegie Mellon University reveals that the overwhelming statistics show piracy, both from material and file sharing, harms sales in a statistically significant manner.

            Piracy is not just disrespect for the law; it is disrespect for the artists themselves. If the artists did not want to protect their material, they would not have gone to the trouble of purchasing a copyright.

            There are many ways people falsely rationalize their piracy. One of the less reasonable reasons is that lawyers and a whole new business is being created. Indeed, robbing a bank is probably going to require many extra hours for law enforcement officers and attorneys. Still, the fact that other people may benefit from illegal activity is no argument to do so.

            Also, the perspective that only the corporation executives and the lawyers get paid from lawsuits, be that actually true, is one of ignorance. This anti-establishment argument is one that refuses to accept the business structures of the arts themselves. Artists who do not want to be involved in corporations have the right to choose whichever company they want, or none at all. Also, the idea that many in the corporations already have enough money is illegitimate. (If you think the Kellogs’ CEO makes too much money, that does not give you the right to steal a box of cereal.)

            Lobatto’s essay is one that provides some intriguing views of piracy. Still, it such should not distract anyone from the fact that most piracy is theft. Some aspects of file sharing are reproduction, such as the remix culture, are in a grey area that still must be assessed. But the majority of piracy is not in a grey area, it is black-and-white. It is illegal and unethical.

            Another absurd argument is that for those who do not have the means to purchase a product, theft causes no harm. There is a good article by Rob Hart on how people rationalize piracy. As Hart states, "An eBook is a luxury, not a right. If you can't afford it, too bad, but that's life. If you go to Target and they have a flatscreen television you like, but you can't afford it, can you just take it? No.”

            Piracy is such an interesting ethical case because you are so far detached from those you are hurting and also so safe from prosecution for illegal activity. Personally, I find piracy so fascinating to me is how my views on it have changed growing up. When everyone else does it, or you have older siblings, such as myself, it’s hard to decide against it. Not until you start to think independently can you really start to question what you’re doing. If you do start to ask these questions, however, I think it is important not to rationalize your way out of the truth. When you bit torrent that Taylor Swift album for free, you are committing theft.

My cousin, Snoop Dogg, and Convergence Culture

            My first experience with convergence culture was in 2006. My cousin and a friend made a music video to rapper Snoop Dogg's song, “Drop it Like it’s Hot.” The video made by two bored teenagers living in a suburb near Green Bay, Wisconsin combined the professional, cool, and obscene culture of rap with an amateur, silly, and suburban culture. The video successfully illustrates Henry Jenkin’s thesis in his book Convergence Culture. Jenkin’s argues that a new type of culture has evolved, one that involves the mingling of the amateur and the professional, as well as old formats of media with the new.

            Jenkin’s thesis is best shown in my cousin’s video when Snoop Dogg raps of “killers in the street. ” The video switches to a picture of my cousin sitting on an empty road, listening to “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers on a boom box. With this pun, we see music of one professional shown through the means of amateurs to relate to that of another professional.

            Jenkin’s argument is one that has become increasingly relevant every year. Indeed, the way I access much of my culture is through the means of social networks. I choose to watch YouTube videos and shows based on the comments of my friends and I select which songs to listen to via their playlists on Spotify. I have watched on YouTube the commentary on a separate commentary of someone playing Mario 64.

            Recent years have also proven Jenkin’s argument that the “black box” will not exist. . (Although Microsoft is trying as hard to build the Black Box as they can by adding broadcast TV to the upcoming next Xbox.)  It seems there will always be a demand for tangible media, because of its permanence and inability to be erased. There will also be portable types of media and types meant for the home. Thus, no single “black box” will ever dominate the media industry.

            One aspect of Jenkin’s argument that is most interesting is how it directly conflicts with Andrew Keen’s argument that democratization of media is killing culture. Keen presents the rise of the amateur as something that detracts from the professional's work, whereas Jenkin's portrays it as something that adds. Jenkin's mentions that the earlier adopters were "white, male, middle class, and college educated," but that this seems to be changing. It would be interesting to hear Keen's reaction to this, but I think it would be negative, for most of Keen's argument seems to be founded on elitism.

Keen's elitism? (revised)

            When Andrew Keen released The Cult of the Amateur in 2007, many believed his theory that the Internet’s democratization of information distribution would damage American culture. Indeed, in the earliest days of the Web 2.0, the idea that the average computer user could competently help spread the news and knowledge may not have been intuitive. Keen latched onto this fear, and lamented that a world had been created that ruined the efficacy of Adam Smith's division of labor by allowing amateurs to have major effects on our sources of information.

            When Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia, however, he took this fear into account. By requiring the user to cite sources and by allowing for the constant reediting of a page by the community, Wales created an Encyclopedia more extensive than any previous one. Then, in 2005, a major study by a respected journal showed that Wikipedia has the same reliability in its content as the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Millions of users, together, created a site of information larger than any known to man. Therefore, many people without the supposed authority to write on such topics, in fact, did so successfully.
            Keen's argument is one of extreme pretention. He assassinates Jimmy Wales's character by noting that he was a graduate school dropout, a gamer, an Ayn Rand reader, and a creator of a peer-to-peer site with links to female celebrities. Keen writes:
       "What Keen had learned as an adolescent playing video games, and relearned from his experience      
       with Bomis [the peer-to-peer website], was the power of the network, the value of what to became
       known as 'distributed technology.'"

            This is not to say that there does not a high rate of mistakes, negligence, and ignorance throughout the Internet. In the case of Wikipedia, however, a system that requires citation of published sources and the constant fact checking by thousands of contributors. Thus, there exists a meritocracy within cyberspace to weed out bad writing.

            The last decade, however, helped reveal that knowledge exists outside the academy and the pressroom. The path to positions of status, such as a doctoral degree or a journalist, is not just one of intelligence and motivation, but also a talent in navigating a system. Partially due to this change in understanding of knowledge, Keen’s book rings with the contemporary reader as one of elitism.