I don’t know about any of you, but I saw this on one of my dear friends facebook statuses today and it caused me to get a little nervous:
In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention).
For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!
(Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place
them under protection of copyright laws.
By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook’s direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).
Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates.
Being an artists, graphic designer, and photographer, I know better than to post any of my most personal info and artistic content on Facebook. Having a healthy caution of putting things on the internet is the first step to being a responsible patron of the online community (and respect of yourself). However, whenever I heard of things like this I always tend to get a little paranoid. So, I do what I do best, and take a little peek at the online news to see if I can find enough reliable resources to validate or refute the statements. Turns out this whole thing is a hoax and honestly, you cannot refute the contract via facebook status. That’s not how the law and copyright works friends (and if anyone seriously thought that it did then you’ve been seriously uneducated). Also how can you refute facebook’s ownership with a status when they own the statuses you put up?
If you are interested in legally putting your work under Copyright then please visit the U.S. Copyright Office website for more information on going through the proper channels. For more info on the Hoax and facebook policies read your Facebook Terms of Agreement, and view these helpful articles:
The other day a friend of mine posted a video from a pretty neat YouTube Channel called Vsauce which is dedicated to technology and peaking the interest of those around the world about their world. Upon further inspection of the site I found several other creative, informative, and interesting videos that anyone interested in technology and human interactions, simply couldn’t live without.
Here is a video I found on there that takes us thorough the things we do in a day that ordinarily we would do in reality, but now have the capabilities for on the internet. All the links you could want ( should you want them) are available in the description section beneath the video. Trust me, you won’t regret seeing this.
Ever walked into an interview and been asked for your facebook username and password? Apparently this women has. To get the full original story click here.
Big controversy over employers asking for full access to prospective and current employee facebook accounts. As I understand this was recently voted down in the House as reported on March 28th (due to a few holes in the proposal as well as other arguments), but there is still legislation that can be made within states wether or not to allow such information to be available to employers (click here for more info). It’s not a wide spread practice, but one can’t help but be unnerved. We’re not obligated to give our e-mail and zipcode to stores for marketing reasons. So why should we give our employers our private and personal information? They have our Social Security numbers for heaven’s sake! As if that isn’t unnerving enough.
I understand the desire to check personal information and make sure you’re hiring a quality employee, but what does a Facebook page have to do with it? Sure there are privacy setting people put up, but usually those are specifically to prevent undesirables from contacting you and knowing where you live. What could you possibly be keeping from an employer that they couldn’t see my looking at your facebook profile? Personal and professional lives are meant to be separate aren’t they? Have we lost the art of switching hats? Are we that desperate that we need to have constant access to our workplaces?
I usually try to remain objective in my posts, but things like this friggin’ irritate me. We should have some kind of protection under the law that allows us to ask the same of our employers if we’re not able to have protection to keep it to ourselves. If I were ever asked to do such a thing, I’d ask them for their passwords so I could figure out if they’re the kind of person I’d want to work for. I as an employee have to protect myself too right? And how do I know my boss is a trustworthy person? How can I look for red flags if I don’t come into contact with them often (an issue with large companies)? I feel if employers want to ask high standards of their employees they should also be held to the same standard to their employees. A “Golden Rule of Private Information” if you will. I’d bet if something like that were to happen, very few employers would ever ask for Facebook passwords ever again, much less have anything good on there to begin with.
As usual I highly recommend to you read the provided links in this post completely so you can fully understand the extent of these potential laws.
There has been much controversy lately about Google taking liberties in their privacy statements and altering their ability to access information. However, many people don’t know how Google really works and in what ways they access your information and what that information is used for. In this particular case, the content of your writing or blog posts is the subject of search information. Here is a simplified version of how Google tracks down, processes, and saves information.
Recently there has been an online uproar sweeping across college campuses, airwaves, and the world wide web. An Act called the “Stop Online Piracy Act” has been the subject of continual controversy causing many sites to even “black out” or “censor” themselves in protest, including our very own WordPress and beloved Wikipedia. But what’s up with all this SOPA business? What the motherboard is it?
I commend Wikipedia for doing the right thing and continuing to inform us of both the pros and cons of SOPA despite their already known personal feelings on the subject (as show by their 24 hour blackout). Thank you Wikipedia for continuing to give accurate information to the public. To find more information about SOPA click here. I also found this FAQ about SOPA that might give some insight into the reasoning behind the Act. To read them click here.
As usual feel free to respectfully leave your opinions.
In todays society, our toys are what seem to set us apart. Who has the newest, biggest, smallest, best, brightest, and most revolutionary tech makes us the big man on campus…or the popular girl in school. But what direction is technology hoping to go? We’ve seen the flux between bigger and smaller phones. We’ve seen the revolution of touch screens. We’ve seen the beginnings of being able to share information wirelessly from one device to another. But, for what? What is the potential future of technology, and is it really something we want to continually have access to?
Apparently there is a debate about a 10 strikes law that Congress is considering. Any streaming material that is copyrighted is the target, which would make nearly every video on youtube pretty much illegal from what I understand. Everything form background music in videos to videos where your friends are singing a great Top 40 song could be considered a felony to share on the internet. I’ve not had much time to research this particular piece of information, but you are welcome to let me know what you’ve found out and what you think of this whole ordeal.
With all this digital media floating around it’s hard to know what’s safe and what isn’t these days. People continually put media online for others to have access to… perhaps too much access. Putting your thoughts and artistry online can be a risky business to the point where many just keep their media locked away hoping no one gains access to their information. But, did you ever stop to think that perhaps big name actors, musicians, directors, and other members of Hollywood and pop-culture would have the same fears and issues? There are many suggestions as to how to deal with such issues and fears concerning online media one of them is with Digital Rights Management (DRM).
DRM is used to restrict access on software, music, movies, and various types of media as well as to protect digital intellectual property which encourages buying their product legitimately so as to make more profit. Because digital media is something that can be copied perfectly (compared to copying media off VHS or cassette tapes, where the quality of the media is diminished) DRM is considered especially needed. But does DRM really protect the product from piracy?
There are opposing organizations to the use of DRM such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) or the Free Software Foundation (FSF) who think that companies who use DRM are “trying to dumb down technology to serve their ‘bottom lines’ and manipulate copyright laws to tip the delicate balance toward intellectual property ownership and away from the right to think and speak freely” (https://www.eff.org/about). Many people even label DRM as “Digital Restrictions Management,” seeing as DRM is used to restrict, not free.
The EFF and FSF do, to some degree, seem too extreme, but their basis for opposing DRM is legitimate. Many of the products with DRM drive users away from buying the product, and instead pirating it because it is easier to download and hack rather than deal with the frustrations of navigating around DRM. This is especially seen in software such as computer games. Companies such as EA Games use a form of DRM which requires the player to connect to the internet in order to play the game, which causes problem after problem, headache after headache. The fact that even a single player game is connected to the internet means that if the server is down, all the players who payed legitimately cannot play, while those who pirated the game can continue playing, which has happened. Such restrictive DRM caused many people to pirate games instead, to save the frustration of dealing with DRM. Websites like Arstechnica talk about the recent problems with one of their newer games.
Piracy in music is also prominent, especially when there was DRM on legitimate music files to only be able to play on certain music players. People who buy music online typically want to put the music in multiple locations- to listen while they drive, while they exercise, while they are relaxing at home, while they use the computer, etc., so DRM restricting such uses drives people to pirate the music instead. Within the last few years some of the major online music distributers switched their music to be DRM-free, which actually increased sales rather than promote piracy. Any search on Google about this topic shows how online music distributers are promoting the change to DRM-free music.
Even without organizations against DRM, just the existence of DRM discourages customers from buying the product and dealing with DRM. Companies can only see loss in customers and profit if they use an overly restrictive DRM, but they still use it. Why?
