Reading Assignments Thoughts

Creators:
I found the mention of doujinshi very interesting in this article because of its link to our other assignment. Doujinshi is basically a more complex form of fanfiction - using someone else's characters in the artist's original or (more frequently) derived story. However, some of Japan's greatest manga-kas (manga artists) started out imitating others by drawing doujinshis - will the relatively new phenomena of fanfiction produce the world's next generation of successful writers as well?

As for the example of Disney, there's one fact that I found resonated particularly well with this story. Recently, a law was pushed through Congress extending copyright limits (so it takes longer for things to enter the public domain). The law's main sponsor? Disney. The company was fearful of other people using the highly recognizable character of Mickey Mouse.

How ironic.

Pirates:
Speaking of irony... it's funny how all these companies are complaining today of "pirates" taking all their money when in fact they were all pirates at one point or another. However, I disagree with the last line. ("Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last. Every generation--until now.") Our generation is perfectly accepting of the "pirates" - in fact, many of us *are* "pirates". It's the older generation that, unable to handle the growing capabilities of technology and the changing definition of property, is seeking to quash certain parts of the digital revolution whilst labeling the revolutionaries "pirates". We've reached the top of the triangle - people have gone from welcoming pirates of the old generation to welcoming pirates of the new generation - while the old generation's pirates are increasingly wary and unaccepting of the new generation's pirates.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:
Wow. This was a very uplifting, defiant piece of writing to read. I liked it a lot - it creates a great "us vs. them" mentality - which in a sense, does exist. The American government, in particular, has been ham-fisted in dealing with the Internet. Certain acts of trod upon the freedom of many people on the Internet. And recently, I read a troubling piece of news that the EU was seeking to ban "hate speech" on the Internet - a scary proposition indeed. If even the Internet can be censored, where does freedom exist?

Digital Speech and Democratic Culture:
I found the part about "the scarcity is now the audience" quite amusing. One of the main problems for people wishing to make themselves known on the Internet is separating themselves from the rest of the faceless masses. Thus, in order to do this, they often do ridiculous things or adopt personas that attract attention. The most common example of this is the perfectly normal person who becomes a complete psychopath online, engaging routinely in the "flaming" of people with even slightly differing viewpoints from their own. This behavior may not attract good attention, but any attention is attention - and this behavior also helps to differentiate them from others in attracting an audience. Amusingly enough, this behavior has become so common that it is now impossible to tell many "trolls" from one another as more and more vitriol and rage fueled people seek attention over the Internet - leaving people who are actually civil and even-tempered as the odd people out. This new differentiation causes the calm Internet user to be more successful in gaining an audience, while the angry trolls are relegated to obscurity.

This at least differs from real life in one aspect: radio. While on the Internet, trolls are commonly ignored, some of the most popular radio hosts (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage) are vile, hateful, and spiteful ignoramuses - and they continue to attract significant attention due to their angry rants. It's hard to find a calm and moderate radio host who has the same audience size that Rush Limbaugh boasts of. Of course, most of their listeners are probably not yet cognizant of this change occurring on the Internet (if they're even cognizant of the Internet at all), and if they were to discover the Internet, would quickly become one of the trolls most Internet veterans so despise.

Oh well, such is life.