Lecture 8 - Being a Digital Citizen

Today's lecture talked about the copyright.Through projects like Creative Commons the ‘middle man’ (Music and Film industry’s) who make profit from putting copyright on creative works. Copyright is a kind of policy which protect the sole's benefit by avoiding the others stole their works. In recent society, people overshare the information through the Internet, when one file be exposured, then millions of the same files can be found in short time. For example, the illegally movies and music dowland.

The lecturer also talked about the hacker. Hackers would commonly check to see which ports on a specified computers are OPEN or available to access the computer. We should use firewall and the antivirus software to protect our cpmputers.

Tutorial task 7 - Politics and the Internet

What opportunities can you find for political participation via the internet:How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

1. Sign an e-petition.
I signed an epetition for the "classification of computer games in Queensland"2.
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_QLD/CurrentEPetitions.aspx?lIndex=1

2.Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.
http://www.bloggernews.net/123204#comment-1460065

3. What is Barak Obama up to today?
The Jobs and Economic Growth Forum is taking place at The White House today.The President is hosting a Jobs Forum to hear ideas on job creation from across the board.
http://www.facebook.com/barackobama?ref=pdb

4.Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.
Local Representative: Gail Mcpherson
State Representative: Steven Robertson
Federal Representative: Graham Perrett

+ What do you think of the Australian Government’s plans to censor the internet (the so-called “Clean Feed”)???
In the wensite :http://nocleanfeed.com/ shows more information abou the "Clean Feed".

I don’t think that it would be a good idea. I believe that it’s up to parents to censor the internet and to keep it clean. Alot of information on the internet is good, however alot is bad. It’s a hard question to answer as some information would be good to remove, however doing that could also take away the good information. I don’t know. As for now though I think it’s up to parents to control what can and can’t be seen.

+What place does censorship have in a democracy?
The premise of a democratic society is directly contradicts censorship. The only censorship that should occur within a democratic society is one that the people elect themselves.

Lecture 7 - Political Possibilities

In today’s lecture, we have been taught something about the political possibilities.

Cyber Politics refers to the politics and political exchanges that go with the internet. This includes the politics surrounding the running of the internet.

eDemocracy represents the use of information and communication technologies by selected actors within political and governance processes of local communities.Other forms of democracy involve liberal democracy, representative democracy and the alternative to representative democracy – participatory or direct democracy. Participatory or direct democracy refers to all the citizens having the right and duty to be involved in all decisions made.

However, the increasing concentration, centralisation and commercialisation of the mass media appear to have foreclosed avenues for democratic participation in the current representative democracy. Free speech was also discussed in the lecture as it allows citizens to discuss the key attributes of democracy,without free speech we do not have a democracy.

Security breaches in the form of computer hackers was discussed.

Tutorial task 6 - essay research

I choose the 5th question which is "Creative Commons is both a solution and yet another failure to deal with authorship and copyright on the internet. Discuss and give examples. "

After my research I found following journals are related to my topic.

1. Fitzgerald, Brian and Oi, Ian, 2004, “Free culture: Cultivating the Creative Commons”, Media & law Review, 9, p.137.
Within this paper, the authors provide positive points of view about the Creative Commons licenses and also indicate the future impact of Creative commons to free culture. The author believes that the Creative Commons promote better identification, negotiation and reutilization of content for the purposes of creativity and innovation. It can well support the idea that CC is a solution for authorship and copyright.

2.Gordon-Murnane, Laura 2005, “Generosity and copyright: Creative Commons and Creative Commons search tools”, Medford, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 16-22.
This article firstly starts with the introduction of the traditional copyright law, and its development and limitations, then highlighting the Creative Commons is a complement of current copyright law by providing an alternative method for artists to “share what they want, keep what they want”, while publishing their works online under copyright. The content of this article includes supportive information on success of Creative Commons. It also contains detailed information on six main Creative Commons Licenses, which can be use as references for background description of Creative Commons.

3.Berry, David M. and Moss Giles 2005, “On the ‘Creative Commons’: a critique of the commons without commonalty”, Free Soft ware Magazine, 5, June 2005.
The writers argue that the Creative Commons project on the whole fails to confront and look beyond the logic and power asymmetries of the present. The key message this paper wants to deliver to us is “the commons is based on commonalty” and the Creative Commons licensing model is still a commons without commonalty. It constitutes blockage in the flow of creativity. Obviously, the authors are holding a point of view against the Creative Commons, thus, this paper may be used as resources to criticise the copyright issues within the CC system.

4.Carroll, Michael W., 2005, “Creative Commons and the new intermediaries”, Villanova University School of Law Working Paper Series, The Berkeley Electronic Press, p.34.
This paper majorly focuses on examination of the disintermediating and reintermediating roles played by Creative Commons licenses on the Internet. A large amount of intermediaries based on the machine-readable CC copyright have begun to appear online as search engines archives, libraries, publishers, community organizers and educators, which indicates that the CC licenses are getting more and more popular in application. it can be used as an evidence that content owners have gradually accepted the CC as a best solution of their authorship.

5.McDonald, Ian, 2006, “Creative commons: Just say ‘CC’?” Copyright Reporter, 24(4), December.
The writer concludes that there are logical and practical problems both with the rationales behind the Creative Commons licences and with the way it approaches copyright. The entire paper clearly generalise the drawbacks of the CC licences into different subtitles. This article is really helpful to discover the potential disadvantages of the CC project. What’s more, it is also a good support material to prove that CC is a failure to deal with the copyright on the internet.

Lecture 6 - The Academic Study of Video Games

The topic of this week is video games. Video games is quite popular now, its a production of the new technology. To compare with the traditional ones, such as TV and newspaper, video games can be more animated and interactive with the players.

I just played them few times before, not only because its waste time also due to nearly all the video games have been used in commercial ways now. For example the World of Warcraft, the players need to buy the special weapons on line in order enhance the skill of the role. The game company owe money from the players and they pay salary to their staafs in different departments such as designer, IT, marketing… I should say a successful video game is a combination of all skills.

However, what attract the people a lot should be they can do what they can’t in real world and also be the kind of people they want. They also got a chance to meet the people around the world, talk to them and play together. Frankly, I should say that some video games need strategy to pass and can improve their ability of team work.

Tutorial task 5 – The Internet Field Trip

The task 5 ask us take an ‘Internet field trip’ to 3D chat room. Rather than a regular IM chat room such as MSN, we were encouraged to take part in a 3D chatroom such as ActiveLife or Habbo.

Personally,I prefer MSN more than chatroom. Why? Because MSN is very secure – meaning you can only talk to people if you add and approve them and ofcourse you can remove and block them if you change your mind.

I decided to give this “Active Worlds” chatroom a try.The main difference I noted between regular MSN and this 3D environment was having to personalise yourself. For example, in comparison to MSN where your name and display picture is displayed… In these 3D chatrooms, you have a characterised person who represents yourself in these chatrooms.

I guess one okay point about 3D environments is that if your really really bored and lonely and socially deprived, you could enter these 3D chatrooms and become someone else and do wierd things… and no one will know who you are – which clearly explains the mass of strange and very, very wierd people already present in those chatrooms.

I do feel that the 3D aspect makes a huge difference to the chatrooms, as it adds more “life” to the strange environments and characters present. There is something highly amazing about seeing the avatars who look very wierd walk up to you and begin a wierd conversation.

Lecture 5 - Virtual Philosophy

In todays lecture we looked at virtual philosophy. Virtual Reality is a system that enables one or more users to move and react in a computer-simulated environment.There are some types of VR: 3D simulation on computer screen, control generally by mouse or joystick, utilizes VRML or similar program to give the sensation of moving through an environment.

I believe that the virtual world has been part of of our everyday life. Everyday we use computers, mobilephones. televisions...The games in Facebook seem to be quite popular among younge people, I believe that is precisely because the virtual world is more lifelike. People even can do what they can't do in the solid world. Now, it comes up with the 3d games there more people will be struck on the virtual world.