Greek Software Pirates: And You Thought Americans Had No Morals

Using Academic Search Complete from the TAMU website, I researched “software piracy”, the topic I am considering for my research paper. The article I chose for its scholarly attributes was called, “What do computer science students think about software piracy”, and was written by several Greek intellectuals. The first clue that it was a scholarly article was that the journal in which it was published, “Behaviour& Information Technology”, is intended for a narrow audience, and has the sound of being quite professional even though it does not come out and describe itself as peer reviewed.

This article contained an abstract and a long list of references at the end. The four authors were named, and the fact that there were four of them indicated that it was a group effort, which conveys that the information found must have been double checked in the writing process.

The content of the article concerned interviews in which the authors had asked Greek computer science students questions like, “How do you morally evaluate the use of pirated software?” and so forth. The results of this article seem a little worrisome, because although students generally admitted to knowing that pirating software was illegal, they did not seem concerned. The most common reason for using pirated software was the high expense of the “legal” software. 

This article was interesting to me because it took a very narrow subject (the way computer science students in Greece feel about software piracy) and did a very thorough investigation concerning it. The fact they interviewed 56 different students shows their dedication and their intent of presenting a fair representation of Greek computer science students.

Oh. And the article is ten pages long, which was another tip off used in ranking its scholarliness.

All jokes aside, though, I feel like this section of evaluating sources has been incredibly important. A lot of Americans have started to take information for granted, and will believe (mostly) whatever they read, both on the internet and in print. How do you feel about sources? Did you have a good feel for “credible” and “incredible” sources before we covered the section in class, or was this as big of a help for you as it was for me?

The Great Firewall

My group's research during class on China's internet censorship sparked my curiosity. Although it does not seem to be tied to the subject of piracy and creativity, I will do my best to link the two together.

Firstly, though, a little background. According to an "Electronic Frontiers, Australia" website, China first started its censorship of internet access in September of 1996. At first it was only about 100 sites, censored for offensive material or Western news sites. In 2002, Associated Press ran an article covering the extent of internet censorship in China, and the results are serious. If you google "Tianamen Square" or try to find any sites that "hurt China's reputation", you will not find them. China's censorship is known by the nickname "The Great Firewall," a reference to their famous landmark, as well as the solidness of their internet blockage.

Chinese blogger Michael Anti has seen firsthand how this censorship can affect both bloggers and the audience they address. Several times, Anti's blog was removed, not by the Chinese government (although the Chinese ISPs still blocked his blog from being read by other people in China), but by MSN, according to an article by Rebecca MacKinnon on her blog.

Ironically, the only way to get around internet blockage is by illegal means. While it is not illegal to use a "proxy server" (an handy way of getting around the government's censorship) to access legal sites, it is illegal to use it to access sites like Youtube. That doesn't seem to be stopping many Chinese citizens, though. As a Chinese man was quoted in an article on Time's website, "It is like a water flow — if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or overflows."
The great thing about living in the U.S. is our right to free speech, and our ability to access the internet freely. The Chinese government may have intended their censorship for good, blocking only porn sites in the first few weeks of business, but I believe that freedom of speech must be total or it is pretty much useless.

What are your thoughts on censorship? Would you expect it to increase or decrease internet piracy and illegal activities online?

Good Hacker, Bad Hacker

A dark room is lit only by the glow of a computer screen. A pale, nerdy-looking youth bends over the keys, tapping away frantically. And there you have it: the stereotypical hacker in modern America.

A “Hacker” is described as a person who accesses a computer system by circumventing its security system. This sort of thing is seen as highly illegal in America, because many hackers use their skills with computer software for evil; breaking into private computers, stealing information, and sometimes planting harmful viruses. However, the connotation of the word is slowly beginning to change. Instead of “criminal”, many people think “genius”.

According to an article called “When Is A Web Hacker Good For My Business?” on Forbes.com, “An emerging trend to ensure your website, business server or database is secure is to hire a professional hacker and have them target you for an evaluation”. If the hacker manages to find a break or flaw in security, they report it to the company, who fixes the error, and the system is stronger as a result. This sort of hacking is not illegal, if the company has hired someone to hack their system. Also, the Washington Post reveals in an article, “the NSA is looking for a few good hackers”. The article remarks that the U.S. government is heavily in need of good computer coders to fight the “cyberwars” that are threatening national security.

However, there are also people who believe that hacking, even hacking for the purpose of stealing information, is all fair and above board. “Hack this Site” is a website that offers opportunities for people to practice their hacking skills. Their “Philosophy” says, “We believe everyone should have free access to all information.” This seems to be the mindset of the last generation or so—because information is not only public and available, but also easy to access, there is little sense of privacy or decency among people who can hack.

And that, my friends, is a pretty scary thing.

Occupy Wall Street and Toulmin

Political movements are hot topics just now, what with the 2012 presidential election just around the corner. The “grass roots” Tea Party movement seems to be copied, in a way, by the recent development by “Occupy Wall Street”, a group of left-wing protestors who are against Capitalism in the United States. The article I decided to analyze using the Toulmin method is called “Occupy Wall Street: The Right Focus”, and uses a pro/con approach to analyze both sides of the argument.

The first claim made in the “Pro” side of this article is that “Economic inequality has been growing steadily for three decades”. This statement is backed up with evidence in the form of statistics collected by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. The warrant is pretty obvious, and is one that the American audience does generally share, and that is that economic inequality is not something we want to encourage. However, the next claim the article makes, that “before the late 1970s, inequality had been falling for five decades”, is supported with less evidence than the first (although it is mentioned that the years during which economic inequality dropped were the Golden Years of Capitalism), and the warrant is unclear. Perhaps it is that capitalism can economic equality are not mutually exclusive.

This was in interesting article, but not one I found to be terribly convincing. Perhaps if the author used stronger warrants and evidence to back up his claims, it would be a more convincing argument. However, this article is posted on the website for “Bloomburg Businessweek”, a website that focuses on the information and relevance to the world of business that stories offer. Since this article is written to provide information rather than to convince, I think that strong warrants are not necessarily needed, so long as the evidence is there to support the claim.

Opening Pandora's Box

A new wave of popular sites have spread across the internet. Pinterest is one, but another is a “make your own radio station” site called “Pandora”. By signing up for a free account, you can type in your favorite combination of songs and create different “stations”. I have one for Celtic music, one for Disney songs, and one for Reliant K.

However, my question is this: Why is P2P (peer to peer) considered illegal, while Pandora is not? Both allow you to listen to your favorite music at absolutely no charge, thereby costing the artists by not compensating them whenever their material is listened to.

I think the difference is the ownership of the music—you cannot download the music from Pandora. Instead, there is an option to purchase the song on iTunes for the regular 99 cents. With P2P sharing, you get the song free of charge. 

Also, as mentioned in my post last week, studies in Europe show that streaming services like Pandora seems to be decreasing the amount of internet piracy and illegal downloading. “54% of those surveyed said that streaming music made them stop illegally downloading songs”, the article on Radio Industry News Blog reads. It still doesn’t change the fact that people are technically enjoying the music free of charge, but if making listening to one’s favorite music for free legal cuts down on the taking/sharing of music for free, then I guess everyone will profit in the end.

Rhetorically Analyzing Piracy Posts

I analyzed two blogs talking about digital piracy (big surprise, yes?). The first one, from Read Write Web, was titled “All-You-Can-Stream Music Services Reduce Piracy, Says Study”, and talked about how Sweden’s use of music streaming services (somewhat similar to America’s “Pandora”) has reduced piracy in Sweden by 25%. The second article from Science Codex was called “Removal of restrictions can decrease music piracy”, which talked about how DRM (digital rights management) was actually causing piracy because of their strictness with protocol concerning downloading and backing up CDs, and so forth.

Of the two, the Science Codex article was more professional. Their information came from Rice University and included a quote from the late Steve Jobs (an appropriate sense of kronos, or good timing), which gave it plenty of logos, however I found the Read Write Web (RWW) article more interesting, since it gave us a look at the way Sweden is dealing with internet piracy, rather than just telling us more about America. The RWW website has a lot of ads, and does not look very professional. The color red, however, draws readers in. On the other hand, the Science Codex site is all light blues and browns. There are a few ads on this site as well, but it still pulls of a more professional look.

In a nutshell, I would say that the Science Codex article is more professional and scientific, however the casual RWW article is creative and explores some new territory.

Fanfiction: Legal, or Not Legal?

If any activities on the internet could be termed “pirating”, they would probably be the sharing of music files, pictures, and other such media without the permission of the author. However, there’s another aspect of slightly illegal use of other people’s property that often escapes the spotlight because of its fuzzy and  unclear nature: use of someone else’s work used to construct something new and original. Examples of this might include fan fiction, fan art, wallpapers of TV show characters, re-mixes of popular songs. As with piracy, these things use the original artist’s work without permission.
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But are they wrong?
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I, myself, am a writer of fan fiction and an artist of fan art. As a lover of “the Chronicles of Narnia”, I found myself longing for more than just seven books...so the idea occurred to me, why not write another one? To my surprise, lots of other people have had the same idea. The most popular website for fan fiction, “Fanfiction.net”, boasts over 2,680,000 members. That’s 2 million people who are reading (if not writing) stories about characters and plots that legally belong to someone else. Personally, I think that fan fiction is a good thing because it allows young writers who may not have enough practice with creating characters and worlds to hone their skills by using already existing characters and worlds. Eventually they will reach a point when they feel confident enough to branch out and create “original fiction”, but until then, I think fan fiction is a great opportunity for growth as a writer while expanding the fandom you love in the process.
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The downside of these things are the rights of the original creators. Often one hears stories about an author who was sued because her latest book sounded too much like a fan’s story that was posted on a site like fan fiction. To combat this, many authors prohibit the public creation of fan fiction for their stories.
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This is an interesting dilemma, though, and one mentioned in our textbook “Born Digital”. There is little information being created on the internet today (pictures, stories, music) that is actually original. However, I’m not sure that is a bad thing. By using someone else’s creation and adapting it to fit their purposes, people are becoming more adept at changing and molding what already exists into the form they have in mind for it to become. That doesn’t sound like piracy to me.