Saturday, April 28, 2007

Reading, Fan Fiction, Other...

Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and Digital Speech and Democratic Culture

John Barlow is a writer, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and extremely vigilant about the sovereignty of cyberspace. Barlow published online “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”, in response to legislation coming from the White House; Barlow declares that cyberspace is independent of national-external sovereignty. In favor of Barlow’s argument, the federal court system of the USA ruled that the Communications Decency Act’s content based regulation of the Internet violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment. For many people of the internet generation, cyberspace offers an area for ideas to exist freely. Unlike Barlow, I do not feel the need to create a Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. The internet, for me, is simply part of social culture, a tool for reference and communication. I approach cyberspace with a more libertarian approach, where and if a problem arises that demands fixing, a solution will naturally arise out of a common desire by the people to solve the problem.

Chapter One: Creators

For some time now I have been in the belief that original stories and original story tellers are a rarity in our world today. Every movie that has come to the big screens over the past 20 years can be related to some story or movie that has been previously displayed. Although I am a critic of originality, I too, have trouble thinking in original terms. How does a person develop a story outside of the frameworks of good and evil, man and woman, love and hate? The basic concepts of storytelling have been so thoroughly overworked by mainstream media that thinking outside of the box is a very difficult and confusing prospect. The media industry appears to be giving up on original screenplays and favors producing marginally profitable remakes, sequels, and formulaic stories. Consider the movie “Ghostbusters”. “Ghostbusters” took off in the 1980s as an original idea, but swept up in the success of “Ghostbusters”, “Ghostbusters II” came out and then cartoons came after that. Eventually the originality of the “Ghostbusters” floundered in the flood of spin offs that the media industry squeezed every penny from. It took about 10 years for the media industry to decide that “Ghostbusters” needed to be revamped and redressed; and thus we were presented with “MIB: Men In Black”, a seemingly original storyline for the new generation that did not live through the “Ghostbusters” craze.

Chapter Four: Pirates

Piracy, for me, is not an illegal act that ruins an original piece of intellectual property. Piracy for me allows for the proliferation of innovation and draws away from invention. While the interconnected media giants fight against piracy, they must recognize that they themselves are at least partially guilty of piracy. The 1970’s DJ scandals are a prime witness to the meddling of the media industry and the industry’s connection to piracy. In the 1970s, the media industry was initially against DJs playing an artist’s music over the airwaves, UNTIL the media industry realized that playing music over the radio allows for a dissemination of information—the way and advertisement promotes a product. The radio soon became heavily invested with the media industry’s influence and desire to promote their best interests. DJs were often bribed to play music from one company over the other. Instead of promoting free airwaves and the “good time great hits” of the radio, the radio was dominated by media interests. The media industry enjoyed the promotion of their music through the radio until technology caught up with them and recordable tape decks, then cds, then recordable cds, then mp2, and then mp3s took the advantage away from the media industry. While the radio is able to wash its hands of wrongdoing because of its support from the media industry, individuals who download and play their own respective radio station from their computer are considered pirates-outlaws. Instead of viewing people who use programs like limewire, azureus, bittorrent, and other p2p engines as pirates, I believe they should be viewed as innovative citizens. People who pirate media are simply finding new ways of doing old things. These pirates have developed a new method of distributing media content—at the cost of the media industry’s bread and butter. Finally, the pirates that the media industry vigorously hunts have only presented the media industry with the challenge of inventing a new and better product.

Fan Fiction:

Perusing through the fan fiction websites that scatter the internet, I found myself more attracted to the fantastical tales spun by the cartoons of my childhood. In particular, I found that additions to G.I. Joes, Justice League, King Arthur, He-man, Superman, X-Men, Spiderman, Batman, and other cartoons were abundant in fan fiction. Unlike the enjoyable cartoons that I remember, most of these stories were spin offs that lacked the feel good feeling of the originals and they added an unpreferable ethos to the cartoons that distracted me from the story. Instead of visualizing the story, I visualized the person who would write the fan fiction. Therefore, fan fiction for me is unauthentic and usually a portrayal of the original characters being out of character.

He-Man - http://www.fanfiction.net/l/806/3/0/1/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/
G.I. Joe - http://www.fanfiction.net/l/717/3/0/1/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/

Justice League - http://www.fanfiction.net/l/1681/3/0/1/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/

Batman/Superman Adventures - http://www.fanfiction.net/l/1094/3/0/1/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/

X-Men - http://www.fanfiction.net/l/716/3/0/1/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/

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