Expository Beginnings

It's eerie, but the wordle cloud of my blog thus far accurately describes my state of mind with regards to my writing on this project.   All of these themes whirling around in this spinning conflagration of chaos, yet gravity is beginning to make some headway in pulling some of these larger concepts into place as my research influences its formation.

Foremost, there's the governing aspect of the Internet of course - which I'd approach from a capitalistic vs. communistic perspective in following with the major theme of Grapes of Wrath. Going along the lines of economic and social ramifications of these governments and their (r)evolving relationship in the Internet, I'm interested in the question of how communication technology shapes society.  Then there's the socio-cultural aspects to look into along with the idea of property rights and their influence on sense of online community interactions.

Now that it's all coming together, I think I'll be able to organize some quotes into this congealing idea tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Human/Intellectual Property Rights on the Web

In my previous posts I’ve brainstormed Stienbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in relation to Internet issues involving supply and demand of information, the evolution of the new media, and how groups can unite for social reform through means of media. This series of tangent thoughts has led me to examine the larger issue of intellectual property rights of the Internet.

But wait a minute. Didn’t I say in my last post that social activism was my main point? I did indeed. However, I’m now seeing that while these digital revolutionary movements have been the result, property rights have been the cause. It all gets back to the question of the human rights of use and ownership and the boundaries for containing those rights. So what are people exactly entitled to in terms of this digital age? Ownership of information? Certainly people deserve to be attributed acknowledgement at the least for their efforts and contributions to society, but do they really own what they publish as theirs?

 Once a conceptualized idea becomes public domain, does it really have an owner?

When the Joads were evicted from their farm in The Grapes of Wrath, it was because the bank had staked ownership on their land – much the way that Internet databases stake claim to their collective knowledge. Going along with a quote from Capitalism and the Internet: “Can the big corporations enclose the commons that is the Internet? If so, how? The jemmy they want to use to break in to the Internet commons is intellectual property law . . . they claim to own the software and won't let anyone else use it” (See marxist.com). Any comments?

I’m trying to get a hold of The Intellectual Property Renaissance in Cyberspace: Why Copyright Law Could Be Unimportant on the Internet by Eric Schlachter, but other ideas for sources to go to would be great too.