Category: students

This week, our reading and viewing material for MCO 425 covered some of the many legal issues that affect the media. As a user and creator of media, I found this helpful. While I am familiar with topics like defamation and net neutrality, some of what was covered is new to me.

For example, learning that John Deere used (or abused, depending on how you look at it) copyright law to prevent farmers from fixing their own tractors blew my mind. Up until a few days ago, my concerns about the ever-growing Internet of Things centered around privacy. The copyright angle has given me something new to think about.

Overall, my takeaway from the readings and videos is that the law affects the media in both positive and negative ways. Many of its negative impacts are troubling, if not outright scary, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the good stuff too. The First Amendment is certainly a big deal here in the US. A free press is an integral part of our democracy. Our copyright laws are more of a mixed bag, but fair use is an example of a protection that encourages further creativity and commentary. Journalism wouldn’t be the same without it.

Now, let’s move on to my concerns.

Censorship is an issue I find particularly troubling. While I don’t currently worry much about being censored myself, I am worried for others. Governments around the world are jailing journalists, restricting Internet access, and banning social media use.

Just this week, major digital players like Google, Facebook, and Twitter threatened to pull out of Pakistan in response to new censorship laws. Rather than lose access, Pakistani officials have agreed to conduct a review and meet with citizens and representatives from the tech companies to discuss the law. I’m glad Big Tech decided to throw its weight around to fight government censorship. This should happen more often.

Defamation is another issue I am concerned about. It’s not that I think our defamation laws are bad. In fact, I quite like that it’s so difficult for public figures to win a libel suit in the US. The actual malice standard is a good thing. What I worry about is that the laws will be loosened, making it easier for the powerful to go after criticism or unflattering portrayals.

President Trump has been loudly complaining about the need to “open up” libel laws for years. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said that the New York Times v. Sullivan ruling should be revisited. I hope their take on this issue does not become the predominant one.

Will this week’s readings lead me to change how I use media? Probably not. However, the readings have inspired me to become more of an advocate. It’s easy to take for granted the freedoms we do have as media users and creators. If we let our guards down too much, we might lose them.

Calling my representatives in support of free speech, net neutrality, and smart copyright reform is the least I can do. Given that it’s an election year, I will also make sure to vote for candidates who will do right by their constituents on these issues. Talking about this stuff with my friends and family to explain why it’s important is another way I can make a difference.

Before this week, I had no idea just how much the law affects the media. I knew that things such as copyright, libel and defamation existed, but I didn’t realize the full scale of how these laws were enforced.

My biggest concern would be censorship as a result of copyright laws. 

This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation really opened my eyes to how mass censorship on the internet may not be far away. I had always thought of copyrighting as a tool to help artists and content creators get the money and recognition they deserve, but it seems that moving forward, this will not be the case. 

Though the article was written in 2018, the idea of creating an internet wide Content ID filters that can prevent any copyrighted material from being posted in the first place. 

YouTube has already implemented a similar system used to track copyrighted music in videos before they are posted, but under the new Article 13 Content ID filter, even media such as video, still images, code and text could be eligible for censorship. 

As of March 26, 2019, Article 13 did pass, and countries who are a part of the EU will have two years to implement the new copyright laws. Although the United States is no longer a part of the European Union, a large majority of the world’s internet will have to abide by these laws. So while we might not have to face these changes directly, I’m sure we will feel the backlash from them. 

For now, I don’t plan on changing how I use the media in any way. But if copyright laws do become more strict here in America to where it’s encouraging censorship, I might. 

When I do post content, I always try to make sure that it is original. The two places I typically create content on is Twitter or Instagram, and when I do, it’s always either photos I’ve taken myself or sharing thoughts I’ve had throughout the day. My media presence online revolves a lot around connecting and keeping up with friends and family, but in the future, this will likely change. 

Working towards my degree in digital audiences, my career goals center a lot around working in the field of social media and content creation. I think that if censorship continues going down the path it is right now, it could make media creation a lot more challenging. 

As mentioned in both of the articles I listed previously, Content ID filters are not always 100% accurate. In fact, a lot of the time, they are known to over block content that isn’t even infringing on copyrighted material, or to still let some of the material that should be filtered slip through its cracks. Overall, it’s very unlikely the system will be accurate, and this will present a lot of challenges from those who are in the field of using existing media to create things like ads or social media posts. 

Content creators are going to have to be much more careful about what they post if they don’t want it to be taken down. This goes for content creators of all kinds, not just those in social.

I am ashamed to say that when I was in high school, I cannot remember learning about copyright laws, net neutrality, and others. I knew they existed, and I can thank social media and the rest of the internet for that, but they were not anything that I paid too close attention to. It was not until the summer, taking my first Mass Communications course, that I had a true, in-depth learning experience over media and the laws that exist within it.

After going over this week’s readings and videos, I can say that I will be changing the way I use media, as I will now plan to be more aware of the content I am posting, sharing, or retweeting to my audience.

Something that concerns me is copyright, as a lot of what I post on social media has to do with music and sports, which are two areas where copyright laws are tight and strict. A few years ago, when the app Vine was popular, I had a friend who recorded a clip from a Major League Baseball game. He had recorded a video of his favorite player who happened to hit a monster home run and wanted his reaction in the background. It was not an ill-intentioned video, but when he posted it to Vine, he then also shared it to his Twitter where it was almost immediately taken down by the MLB. He then had his entire Twitter account suspended for 24 hours because of the video. He was not aware that it was infringing on the copyright law, and it was during that incident where I noticed the MLB had really started cracking down on those who post videos of game or game highlights without the right to do so. I understand why they do it, they want all of the media shared to come from them, and it should. However, it is also causing sharing media between journalists and fan bases to become a more of a difficult process.

Now that I have learned more about copyright laws, I have started double checking the media I put out onto my platforms. I make sure to include my sources and ask if I can share something if it is original to a different poster. I only share videos from main accounts (like the NFL, and MLB), as well as making sure I have no copyrighted music in the background of any videos I post myself. These are simple steps, but also easy steps to take to become a better media user.

One other area of concern is Net Neutrality, and where the future of the internet lays. I became aware of net neutrality back in 2017, and at first I had no idea what it was. I remember scouring the internet for sources to read up on the subject because at the time it was making headway across all of social media. Sometimes I am still confused by the whole notion but I turn to this article from Wired.com that breaks it down into simpler terms. Knowing what I know now, I believe everyone should be on their toes about the future and changes that could be put into place. We are a streaming society, things have changed drastically in the last ten years, and if providers now have the chance to slow down competing services that could do major damage to many different companies. Blocking content from other websites and providers will create a harsh environment for social media, and the last thing social media needs is another issue that causes you to take a side.

Overall, media laws are something that I have recently taken into deep consideration. From copyright to net neutrality to censorship, these are issues that we all need to be aware of in our daily lives, as changes seem to be looming in the future.

I am no stranger to Wikipedia.org and have visited the site many times. As most people, I used the site as a consumer, reading article after article, finding little gold mines of information that I could verify and consider to be accurate and true. Wikipedia has always been of great service from the consumer stand point, but now it was time for me to dip my toes into the editing aspect of the site, and let me tell you it felt overwhelming at first.

I never realized how many rules and standards there were when editing a Wikipedia page, and always thought that anyone could just make an account and start editing. It took me by surprise when I found out there are training modules to help teach how to properly use Wikipedia and edit an article successfully, but understood why. I’m glad they provided these modules because I referenced them multiple times when editing the Wikipedia page I chose.

After completing the training modules, I decided to scope Wikipedia for articles I could possibly edit and add useful information to. I’m not an expert on a lot of things, but I do know a lot about skateboarding so I decided to check out some of the Skateboarding topics that Wikipedia offered. The training modules showed me how I can search a Wikiproject, such as skateboarding, and it will provide an assessment table that sorts articles by importance and amount of editing needed.

After searching that table, I decided to edit the Enjoi Skateboarding Wikipedia page since they’re from San Jose California, close to my hometown of Gilroy. I know a lot about the company already, and the page seemed like it was lacking recent information about the team; possible information that I could provide! I noticed that the page had a section titled, “2014-Present,” talking about the most recent most recent projects Enjoi has participated in, except the last time the section was updated was in 2014.

I decided to focus on that section, and wanted to add some information about a recent video series that Enjoi has been filming for the last 3-4 years titled, “Panda Patrol.” I figured this has been the most recent and consistent skateboarding content that Enjoi has released in the past 3 years, so it should probably be added to the section discussing what the team is currently doing. 

As the training modules suggests, I went to Enjoi’s Wikipedia talk page to see if there had been any recent conversation about adding content to the page, and the last update was to the external links by a bot in 2017. I saw this as a good opportunity to add to the page, and left a comment about my suggestion of adding, “Panda Patrol,” to the 2014-Present section.

I waited about a week in order to see if anyone was going to comment back, letting me know if they agreed or disagreed with my suggestion, but no response. At that point, I went ahead and made the edit that I thought was necessary.

I made sure to include in-text links to other Wikipedia pages when possible, and that all of my external references get added in as a citation rather than being linked directly on the page. So far, I have not received any feedback from experienced Wikipedians, and my edit remains on the Enjoi Wikipedia page, so I’m assuming that I was successful in editing the page correctly.  Since the page didn’t have an active talk page, I’ll make sure to come back when some time has passed to see if my edit is still there, and if not found out why it has been removed.

I had to reference the training modules every step along the way, like I mentioned earlier, just to make sure that I was doing everything correctly, because there is actually a lot of steps to the process. I found it overwhelming at first, and I really didn’t want to mess pages up for other people by formatting incorrectly or some sort of beginner mistake.  Once I committed to editing an article, the actual formatting and writing was easier than expected, but finding verified sources was a bit harder and took a little bit of time. Of course, just like with everything in life, practice makes perfect. I now feel more confident in adding little edits to pages I’m well-versed in and slowly building the skill to one day edit a whole section, or create an entire page.

It’s not as easy as I once thought, where anyone can log in and edit an article willy nilly. It’s a strong and committed community working together to provide a place where people can get trusted information or at least be linked to a trusted source.  I have a new found respect for those who are major Wikipedia editors, not only because they’ve mastered the formula of editing on Wikipedia, but that they also devote their time and effort to make sure that correct information is out there for people to read.

In my younger and perhaps more naive years of college, I was convinced I wanted to go to law school. I majored in Pre-law, I was a paralegal intern in a firm in Memphis and in short – I learned to hate it. Family Law made me lose hope in people as a whole, divorce Law made me end relationships before I even began them, and the overall well being of my mental state was sub-par, to say the least.

Reading through this week’s learning materials, there were some things that were familiar to me. (like the rights you have as a photographer and the four kinds of privacy.)

I will say, one of the articles that did surprise me, would the Blogging Rights article. Of course, I knew that Bloggers can be a journalist and are entitled to free speech and political speech, it was the last two that got me.
I had no idea that a blogger had the right to stay anonymous as well as having freedom from liability for hosting speech. I personally don’t read many blogs in my spare time, I actually feel that I have read more blogs in this class than ever before, but this article gave clarification on the protection that I didn’t even know was offered.

Another point of interest that I found was on two of the articles that had similar issues but had two separate outcomes. The first was the Michelle Carter case, an instance where a 17-year-old girl convinced her boyfriend to kill himself.

In this case, it’s obvious that free speech would get involved, however as explained in the article, Michelle Carter’s argued that her verbal conduct towards her boyfriend was protected by free speech, however when the case was brought to the supreme court, she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and ordered to serve 15 months of a two and a half year sentence. I personally believe that she should have had to serve her full sentence and believe that with her knowledge of her boyfriend’s depression and suicidal thoughts already, her pushing him to do it crosses the lines.

The other article that caught my interest regarding the law and media, was the overturning of the case against Lori Drew, who was accused of cyberbullying a 13-year-old Megan Meier, who later committed suicide.

However, this case was acquitted for a number of loopholes. One of them is that nobody in the hoax actually read the terms and agreement, and it was actually another person who sent the message to Megan, telling her the “world would be better off without you.” As the article continues, to actually convict drew, the prosecutors would have had to prove that drew accessed Myspace without authorization and did it for the purpose to torture Megan.
Reading through these articles and just how logistical the terms get when it comes to “proving” things, reminds me why I didn’t want to go to law school in the first place. After reading through these articles, more especially two mentioned, I think I’ll take more time and care reading through the terms and conditions that I have been so quick to scroll and check “yes.”

In our pursuit to become digitally literate, we consequentially learn some Doctorharsh realities and helpful insights to ensure that we remain on the right side of the law. Many digital users view their activities as free game with little to no restrictions. New content creators or curators are faced with the task of making sure that all content and curation is original work and if not must give credit to original creators. This can be as simple as making sure that you have permission to use your favorite song alongside the YouTube video you have just created.

So how do we know what is free game and what is off limits when it comes to the law and the media we use? The first step is to educate yourself on laws regarding copyright, privacy laws and other legal issues that often go overlooked. Even with insights on this mind field landscape, ensuring that you are using digital content legally is a must.

In an article found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website titled How The EU’s Copywrite Filters Will Make it Trivial For Anyone To Censor The Internet writer Cory Doctorow presents us with a look at legislation that could allow anyone the power of censorship over the internet. Doctorow begins by defining “notice and take down” explaining that ” it offers rightsholders the ability to unilaterally censor the Internet on their say-so, without any evidence or judicial oversight.” We quickly learn that the problem with notice and takedown is that the material can simply be reposted once taken down.

Doctorow points out that rightsholders would prefer a “notice and staydown.” This process involves rightsholders submitting their content to platforms and then those platforms having the right “filters” in place to determine if the content is copyrighted.  The article elaborates by highlighting legislation “Article 13,” “which makes Content-ID-style filters mandatory for the whole Internet, and not just for the soundtracks of videos—also for the video portions, for audio, for still images, for code, even for text.” This presents the argument that the censorship will not help artists or curators.

In an article title 9th Circuit: It’s a Federal Crime To Visit A Website After Being Told Not To Visit It writer Orin Kerr touches on a case between Power Ventures and Facebook. Power was a service that allowed users to “aggregate their contacts on different social media sites.” Facebooks disapproval came with the reality that “Power users also authorized the software to send Facebook messages to other Facebook users for them.” They answered with a “cease and desist” letter to Power telling them to stop and they even went as far as blocking their IP address. Where Power really messed up is by completely ignoring the cease and desist and simply changing their IP address.

It is easy to conclude that when it comes to law and media we must be vigilant in knowing our rights and limitations as users. In striving to become digitally literate, legality can never be overlooked. This module reinforced the principle that when it comes to creating or curating media there are indeed set guidelines that must be adhered to. We can somewhat tie this reality into the concept of “slow news.” Before engaging with media, creating media, or curating media we must make sure that we can legally move forward.

Francisco Healy

In my current job working for a large casino gaming company, I am on call 24 hours a day, and I work 60+ hours a week. I have always enjoyed helping others in the casino industry to become strong, confident, influential leaders. My greatest joy in life has been mentoring others to become successful. Needless to say, my crazy work schedule, along with my second job of going to college, does not allow for enough extra time to help others as much as I would like to.

Due to my lack of time available and my desire to help people, I came up with the idea to create an Instagram page that focused on empowering people with daily positive quotes. I titled the Instagram page, Empoweryourinnerboss. This Instagram page was dedicated to positive and uplifting quotes for everyone to enjoy and was my way of positively impacting people’s lives on a daily basis.

“#Quotes “Do not judge me by the success….” [800 × 400] – Nelson Mandela” by junaidrao is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

My intentions with creating this page were sincere, positive, and entirely from the heart. All I wanted to do was provide a picture and a quote daily that would make people smile and feel better about themselves. This all changed the day that I started my research on media laws, policies, and procedures at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

After studying media laws, policies, and procedures, I realized that I was violating all kinds of copyright laws by posting these quote pictures daily.  In the beginning, I was not creating my own content to post. I was finding great quotes attached to beautiful images on the internet and sharing them on my Instagram page. I was not aware that I was violating copyright laws because I did not create the content that I was sharing.  I also had not received permission to use the content. Everything that I was posting daily was basically infringing on someone else’s copyrighted work. 

“Police Officer Breaking the Law” by Call To Adventure is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Of course, I did not intend to infringe on another person’s copyright. The moment that I realized that I had violated these laws, I immediately deleted all of the posts on the page that I had not created myself. I then researched further on Instagram’s rules and regulations and wondered if I can still violate another person’s copyright if I did not intend to infringe?

Instagram states, “In most cases, you shouldn’t use someone else’s copyrighted work if you don’t have permission. It is possible to infringe copyright without intending to do so. Remember, your use of someone else’s content may still be infringing their copyright, even if you:

· Give credit to the copyright owner

· Include a disclaimer that you don’t intend to infringe copyright

· Say that the use is a fair use

· Didn’t intend to profit from it

· Bought or downloaded the content (for example, a copy of a DVD or a song       from the internet)

· Modified the work or added your own original material to it

· Found the content available on the internet

· Recorded the content onto your own recording device (for example, from a     movie, concert, sporting event, etc.)

· Saw that others have posted the same content as well

“DUD_0159” by wouter! is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

I read through the rules of copyright and posting content on Instagram, and the rules state, “It is generally a good idea to get permission before posting content and to get that permission in writing.” According to Instagram, if you want to make sure that the content that you post to Instagram does not violate copyright laws, you should only post content that you’ve created yourself.

Before you post content on Instagram, you may want to ask:

· Did I create all of the content myself?

· Do I have permission to use all of the content included in my post?

· Does my use of the content fall within an exception to copyright infringement?

· Is the content protected by copyright (for example, is it a short phrase, idea,   or public domain work?)

If you would like to make sure that you are not violating copyright laws and would like to learn more about Instagram policies and procedures, please read “How to legally reshare Instagram posts.”

“Handcuffs” by The.Comedian is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Learning about the “Grandmother Problem” was very helpful in talking with my actual Grandmother about this issue. She joined Facebook a couple of years ago and as the political tension has grown in our country, she has become more active in commenting, posting and reposting information. I think the most untrue information that is shared are articles that someone else has posted. Usually before fact checking them, she would just share it after reading because it aligns with her views and justifies her way of thinking. As someone who is very rooted in her beliefs, I knew addressing this issue was going to be sensitive. With taking the advice I learned from Craig Silverman’s article “What to Do If The Older People In Your Life Are Sharing False Or Extreme Content”, I kept it positive and personal and told her about the website snopes.com. Snopes is a fact checking website for all internet urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. She was a bit defensive but after relating to her and admitting my own faults in times that I shared misinformation on Facebook she realized that everyone does this and why it’s important to always share current, relevant, and factual articles and information.

Of the issues discussed in the reading, I am concerned about them all, but I am most concerned about network neutrality, often called net neutrality. Net neutrality is “the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.”

It really concerns me that internet service providers could begin to strike deals behind close doors that hurt the average American consumer. If we cannot access the internet equally, you lose a large breadth of knowledge that everyone deserves to have. In my opinion, internet access should be something that everyone in America has access too, especially as the internet is becoming more popular and is the source of so much information. For example, tribal land has very poor access to internet, and it translates to issues in literacy. If there was no longer net neutrality, their internet could get even worse.

Additionally, some forms of censorship also concern me, specifically government censorship. I worry that if governments begin to take reign over the internet, access to things like journalism that uncovers bad things in the government or even opposing views will not be represented. This is not something I particularly worry about in America, but it happens in other countries and is very concerning. Plus, even private media companies could begin to censor things, like Google or Facebook, and that is also concerning. For example, Google could stop showing content that is critical of certain viewpoints.

I don’t plan on shifting the way I use media as it stands right now, but the readings definitely helped me know what I am worried about for the future and how that could affect me moving forward. The one thing that really touched me throughout the readings was the Wired story on cyberbullying. As someone who has grown up on the internet, I view cyberbullying as a serious problem, and this judge’s ruling is completely unacceptable. I have reported things on various platforms, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Many of these times the posts I reported were not removed, despite (in my opinion) being completely inappropriate. The ability for a media company to essentially decide right from wrong is really worrisome, as I don’t trust many of them, specifically the large social media companies that thrive off of things like this.

To think that someone lost their life over posts on the internet from people they did not know is horrifying, and I think the overall lack of coverage surrounding cyberbullying in the news is a huge issue that should change.