This Weeks Readings

One of my favorite articles from this week found in Copyright's Paradox brought to light the extreme ambiguities copyright laws have created. For instance, in the case of Tom Forsythe's "Food Chain Barbie" in which Forsythe photographed barbies being attacked by household appliances. His artwork presented a critique on social acceptance of women as objects. I found the court's reasoning behind their ruling to exempt Forsythe extremely vague stating that his artwork "created the sort of social criticism and parodic speech protected by the First Amendment and promoted by the Copyright Act". I believe the "sort of social criticism" the court used to allow Forsythe's artwork should be defined by the court. How does the artwork fall under the Fair Use guideline that the copyright owner would consent to the use of the Barbie product? How does the artwork "promote the goal of 'the creation and publication of edifying matter?" There are many interpretations for the answers to these questions. It would be beneficial if there was a stipulation within the Copyright law at least outlining the "sort of social criticism" that is allowed.

Secondly, I enjoyed how the article brought into light how copyright has infringed people's freedom to speech. As noted in the article, authors of the past cold reference to other author's work without penalty. My favorite example proposed by the article is that if Romeo and Juliet were to be covered by Copyright laws, Westside story could be sued. This leads me to question how much creativity are we currently suppressing under current Copyright laws? What literary, musical, or artistic masterpieces have been kept from being published due to copyright infringement?

Last Weeks Reading

Two articles that I found particularly interesting were "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" and "A Rape in Cyberspace".

"A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was particularly striking because it highlights the tremendous amount of freedom it appeared the public once had on the internet. Making extreme claims such as people's "identities have no bodies, so...[they] cannot be obtained by physical coercion". This implies that on the internet people can literally do anything they please without having to face consequences. Throughout the article, Barlow (the author) continues to address the reader in the same tone of "radical freedom", that is to say, complete freedom from law enforcement. However, such a claim now seems quite absurd. People are regularly arrested for sharing music on the internet, and for pedophilia. It is quite easy for businesses like Google to track what a user has been doing on the internet. What I find interesting is that this article was written in 1996, meaning that just within over a decade the internet has tremendously transformed.

In "A Rape in Cyberspace" the article brought up serious questions about Internet safety. In the article, a man in a virtual chat room is able to control other people's characters and "makes" their character perform perverse acts. In the end, it is interesting how the group comes together to regulate to ostracize the man, Mr. Bungle, and cause him to leave the chat room. Obviously, in this instance the participants of the virtual chat room were adults. Still, some of the people were seriously troubled and hurt by Mr. Bungle's actions enough to ostracize him. Some would find their reactions a bit dramatic, and while I agree, I have to question if some sort of filtering process should become a part of the internet experience to avoid people like Mr. Bungle. I do not ask this in an effort to protect the general public, but rather to protect children who can technically gain access to these types of chat rooms. Should the government take part in protecting children from virtual sexual acts? Or is it only the role of the parent to protect the child? What about parents who cannot supervise their children on the internet because they are working full time in an effort to support their family? If aid is not offered, is the current law discriminating against those families?