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I love sharing new facts and information, so I was very excited that I would have a chance to become a real Wikipedia editor, and get graded for it! I really enjoyed being introduced to the world of Wikipedia through the training modules. I learned a lot, and it gave me a whole new respect for Wikipedia as a company. I am so happy to see that they hold such high standards, and I admire all of the hard work that the Wikipedia community does, all in the name of delivering free information to our world. I have experience in editing a similar Wiki page, TV Tropes, which is dedicated to recognizing and organizing tropes in fiction, mainly in TV (no surprise that I would be an editor there).

Once the information in the modules was introduced to me, everything was very easy to understand. TV Tropes exclusively uses html editing on their site, so I expected that I would use it when editing the main Wikipedia site. I was happily surprised and relieved that I could use a rich text format. Overall, I experienced no problems editing or citing sources. Although I liked the idea of the sandbox, I did not end up using it. I opted to practice my edits privately through Microsoft Word, and then tweak them as needed while on the “edit” page.

As for choosing an article, it didn’t take long for me to decide that I wanted to edit a page about a vintage television program. I mentioned in my very first blog post that my favorite TV sitcom of all time is Perfect Strangers. I truly enjoy the “culture clash” humor and the classic physical comedy the series is famous for. Being a student interested in media, I had the incredible opportunity to view the unaired pilot episode of the show at the UCLA Film and Television Archive when I visited Los Angeles in June. Bronson Pinchot is also one of my all-time favorite actors. Bronson personally recorded a wonderfully kind and thoughtful video for me via a fun web site called Cameo when I was going through a difficult time. Also, my grandma saw him many years ago in a play, Stones in his Pockets, and in 1988, he visited my mom’s alma mater, Ohio University, to report on a comedy course for Good Morning America (segment starts at 1:30).

When I saw that the Perfect Strangers Wikipedia article had “multiple issues,” I knew I was the right person to help! I made five edits to the article. Each one a different type of contribution.

For my edits, I…
1. Added a photo.
2. Edited text.
3. Added a citation.
4. Added a fact.
5. Removed text AND added a fact with a citation.

Below, I will briefly describe and show the edits I made, along with “before” and “after” photos.

Edit 1: Adding a photo

Another thing I did when I visited Los Angeles in June was locate and take a photo of the building that was used for the exterior shots of Larry and Balki’s apartment building in the first two seasons of the show. There was already a photo of the building posted in the article, but it was taken in 2006, and today, the building looks drastically different. I thought it would be a great idea to update the old photo with a current one that I took myself. I did not need to get permission to use the photo, as it is my own work. I uploaded the photo to Wikimedia Commons, replaced the old photo, and voila! My first Wikipedia edit was complete!

Edit 2: Editing text

For my next edit, I added a piece of information to a sentence that was found in it’s already existing source (citation 5), but was written in a different paragraph. I moved the information to the sentence that had the citation, and shortened the sentence where the piece of information had originally been.

Edit 3: Adding a citation

Being a big fan of the show, I knew that the first season never averaged in the Nielsen top 10 for the entire year. This was likely just phrased wrong, but I still wanted to fix it, and add a citation to back it up. I found a newspaper source with the correct information, I rephrased the sentence, and cited it.

Edit 4: Adding a fact:

In looking for good, reputable sources for my citations, I learned something new! I discovered that the final season, which has only 6 episodes, originally was supposed to have 13 episodes! I thought that was a fun fact, so I worked it into an existing sentence and cited it.

Edit 5: Removed text AND added a fact with a citation.

My last edit was also my trickiest one, but I am very glad I did it. There was only one sentence in the entire article that was flagged as needing a citation, so naturally, I set out to find one. I was unsuccessful, and when I realized that the only “source” for this fact was a so-called “industry insider,” I knew that it was questionable. Taking into consideration Wikipedia’s standards, I felt it was necessary to delete this sentence from the article altogether, so I did. Happily, I found another fact, one that is from a good journalistic source, to replace it, which I also did. I also joined two shorter paragraphs together, so that the content flowed better with my addition in place.

I am very proud of my first Wikipedia edits, and I because I enjoyed this experience so much, I know I am going to be doing many more of them in the future. Am I a “Wikipedia warrior?” I’m not entirely sure, but after my first successful round of edits, I sure feel like one!

When I think of media laws, the first thing that comes to mind is the lengthy jargon contained in the seemingly endless terms and conditions of our favorite social networks and websites.

The act of ignoring all of the legalese and scrolling down to hit that “agree” button is so ubiquitous that it’s often been meme-ified. To many, it’s just another post-modern joke about how complicated the digital landscape has become.

In one of this week’s articles on privacy, Jeffrey Toobin was referenced as saying, “In Europe, the right to privacy trumps freedom of speech; the reverse is true in the United States.”

While we live in a world where data, not oil, is our most valuable resource, many Americans continue to trade their privacy to places like Facebook for the sake of using their platform to exercise their right to free speech. The implications of this reality, however, are profound.

The Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, provides a look into the delicate balance of privacy and freedom of speech. The film dives into the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and features David Carroll, a college professor who filed a suit to gain access to his data used by the firm.

Spoiler alert: he doesn’t get his data back.

Both the scandal itself and the fact that private data like this is so heavily guarded by companies like Facebook allow us to glimpse the consequences of sacrificing our privacy on the altar of the first amendment.

Unfortunately, allowing privacy to trump free speech is also equally as troubling in many ways. While the circulation of genuinely fake news that perpetuates falsehoods is troubling, proposing legal consequences for fake news is just as concerning. As we discussed in our lecture this week, just because something is offensive or wrong doesn’t mean it should be illegal.

While some are calling for censorship of this type of content, we must take into account the fact that norms and laws are not the same. While “fake news” may not be illegal, there may still be social consequences. Just as it’s not illegal to tell off your boss, you still have to endure the result of being fired.

As I’ve become increasingly more aware of the complexities of how the law impacts media, I’ve also changed many of my online behaviors, particularly on social networks. One primary example of this is a decision my husband and I have made regarding our future children.

While many parents use Facebook and Instagram to share photos of their children on the internet, we have decided that when we have children, we won’t post pictures of their faces for the world to see. This is certainly out of the ordinary, though we want to give our children the ability to craft and curate their reputations online once they’re old enough to do so rather than be handed an online presence that’s been in existence since before they were old enough to consent.

As Professor Gillmor stated in our lecture this week, everything on the internet is permanent. As our society struggles with the balance between privacy and freedom of speech, I hope that we can keep this truth at the forefront of our minds.

Ever since I started using social media, I’ve been told warnings on what I can and can’t do on the internet, whether it was about what websites I should avoid, or what I shouldn’t post about. Those were usually just social warnings, and I never really knew anything about the actual laws of the internet, or what rights media users actually had. This module gave me a more in-depth look on the laws that regulate the internet, and overall it gave me a different perspective. It also gave me the knowledge I need in order to post things on the internet safely!

I think if anything worries me, it would be the censorship laws. As weird as it is saying this, I generally don’t like being told what to do, and that applies to the internet as well. I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that the law can come in between me and the things I want to do online. It’s not that I’m going to be visiting sites that are bad or posting inappropriate content, It’s just the concept that bothers me.

Another thing that I find weird is that I feel like it’s super easy to accidentally violate this country’s copyright laws, and whenever I post anything I’m overly weary of my citations and where I get my sources from. While this makes me hyperaware of the source I am using and what I’m writing, living in that constant fear of retaliation is annoying, and I feel like I could make one wrong move and then I’d be breaking the law.

I don’t plan to modify the things I post anytime soon, but that may change in the future. I really don’t post that often online- I have gotten this far without breaking any laws, so I don’t see myself running into problems while I’m still in college (but at this point, who knows what could happen?).

How the Law Affects our Media

The laws that control how the general public interacts within modern media is complex. Some laws attempt to protect our 1st amendment rights, just as other laws control what we can access and how we can interact with it. In some cases, these laws can lead directly to how we obtain and disseminate the information in non-digital environments. In any case, it is almost as if the world of digital media is difficult to understand and that causes mass amounts of confusion and potential legal perils.

We live in a world where our right to privacy on the internet is in a state of constant fluctuation. There are legal attempts to establish our right to privacy and a digital world that seemingly encourages opportunistic individuals that seek to steal that privacy from under our noses.

In the article by Medium, they establish 4 points of privacy relevant to the general public:  Human, Personal, Defensive, and Contextual. Although arbitrary, these categories attempt to define the rights of an individual. The four elements of privacy focus on separating an individual’s personal life from broader exposure and legal protections have been set in place to promote these. False light, appropriation, intrusion and private facts torts are the legal remedies available in theory.

The actual implementation of these laws can vary significantly by degrees of privilege, financial status, and accessibility. I strive to maintain privacy from external pressures, but the laws seem to have gaps that make it difficult to protect myself. For example, our past and current administration fight tooth and nail to limit our only significant lines of digital defense, encryption. As leading technology companies fight to maintain our privacy, (likely for financial interests) the judicial branch of our government looks to craft limitations.

Beyond personal privacy, copyright laws surround almost every portion of every interaction I have with almost every form of media. When these laws are applied to corporate interests, a wildly different world of elitism and special circumstance make me aware of my insignificance. I have encountered and I am aware of a variety of situations where I and smaller producers of media are potentially at a loss for efficient protections.

Copyright law is meant to serve as a protect-all for intellectual content, but the actual application often favors those in charge. I have had a few social media posts be flagged for media I included that are not significant portions of the original works. Many of the YouTubers I watch frequently are flagged unnecessarily. As a result, they fear demonetization and have no resources to defend themselves. The monolithic corporations have virtually no need to be accurate and largely face no repercussions. Authentic art is the loser in this battle, but the laws were originally crafted to protect the same artists.

Unfortunately, I am not currently at a place of effective defiance or organized opposition to the powers that rule. This does not mean I will bough my head and disengage, instead, I will fight to learn my rights, formulate self-preservation techniques, and help to devise content that is in a state of effective compliance albeit formulated resistance.

 

Before I read about law and media this week in my class, I did not know just how much law truly does affect the media.  It is very interesting just how much I did not know about this topic and how my view has changed just by becoming a little more educated.  I believe that the law gives the government and companies too much power.  This article about why the government should not be able to regulate social media content is an excellent read. We have rights that should be protected and I expland on certain concerns that I have below.

Copyright

We all know that copyright is not allowed.  However, people are allowed to post someone else’s work in limited ways.  Meaning if you do use someone else’s work make sure that you are not using the whole thing and you need to give them credit.  The concern that I have with copyright is: companies are allowed to make claims of copyright infringment against other companies.  If the company refuses to take it down, they could be sued.  That gives way to much power to bigger companies that could bully smaller companies into taking something down because of the fear of being sued.

Privacy

This is one of the most concerning things when it comes to the media and law. We have all seen the meme on social media about the FBI agent watching you through your laptop or cell phone camera.  It is actually terrifing that the government allows this to happen.  They have taken away a sense of privacy from the citizen’s of this country.  Now, everyone does realize that by having social media it does mean you are putting some personal information out there.  However, the fact the government and the companies that provide the technology have the tools to watch our every move is not okay.

Censorship

Many governments spend a countless amount of time blocking or suppressing anything they deemed dangerous, politically unacceptable or a threat to national security.  While in some instances this might be appropriate, this should not be done on an every day basis.  We as citizens have a right to share and create what we want due to the freedom of speech.  The government having the power to block or remove something takes that away.

Defamation

This is a concern for me mainly because I want to become a journalist some day.  If you follow the journalism standard you learn in school will reduce the risk of being sued for defamation.  However, the concern is even if you might be completely correct and did not libel anyone, you can still be sued.  If that happens, it is very expensive to defent yourself.  Which is the scary.

Photography

If you are in a public place there is no law that states you are not allowed to photograph.  However, there are instances where people are getting harrassed for trying to take photographs or videos by mostly private or public law enforcement, workers and security guards.  This is taking away the rights of citizens who are not in the wrong.

I do plan on modifying the way I use media.  I have changed all my social media settings to the more private side thanks to this article with 7 tips to help make your social media more private.  There is so much information that can be accessed by social media.  When it comes to censorship, I am going to throughly start checking that what I post or repost does not put me in danger legally. I don’t need to change anything for defamation because when I do write stories, I make sure what I am reporting on is accurate and fair.  Law and media is a very sticky subject, I will keep learning about it to form more ways I can protect myself from them.

I have come up with a phrase that describes what I feel the laws of digital media should uphold: “freedom without sacrifice.” That is, uphold the freedom of knowledge, freedom of speech and freedom of creativity, without sacrificing our privacy or the economy. This can apply to many issues in media law today: copyright and property protection, net neutrality, the list goes on. On paper, it seems like an idealistic pipe dream.

I’ve thought about how the laws of the media mirror the physical laws of real life. The world of media is a place that IS essentially a digital version of the world. It IS a whole other world… as real of a world as the globe itself, and it is governed by laws we must equally obey.

Media as it relates to the law is of utmost importance, and I am concerned about many aspects of it. Privacy in particular is one thing, as I have always been a private person online…and of course, we all want our private information to be secure. Monitoring of creative and informational web content is also of great concern to me. How much monitoring is too much? Net neutrality and “free use” are two things that have been fundamental in keeping the openness of information and entertainment online, but there are still plenty of issues with protection laws that could obstruct these legal doctrines.

Copyright laws have been around well before the DMCA ruled. Protecting a property: a song, a character, a film and ensuring compensation for these properties’ creators and distributors, is, in my opinion, an absolute economic necessity. But how far should it go before works enter the public domain? Apparently, it can go pretty far, if Disney has anything to do with it. They have allegedly managed to influence the extension of US copyright laws in order to retain the rights to Mickey Mouse, particularly his 1928 debut short, Steamboat Willie.

Music copyright laws tend to be even more strict. To relate this problem to my central topic of television, a sizable amount of vintage TV series have yet to see the light of day on DVD or streaming video because of the astronomical costs of distributing music owned by others that were used in these programs. The distribution rights of this music was negotiated decades ago, before anyone could even dream of the idea of watching any episode of a TV show anywhere, at any time. This thoughtful article from Vox explains it all.

However, even public domain works can still fall victim in many ways to copyright laws. Consider the works of William Shakespeare. His numerous works are not copyrighted per say, but individual ideas concerning or inspiring his work may be protected legally. The complexity of copyright laws concerning Shakespeare (which you could apply to many kinds of public domain works) is detailed very well on this entry on the Trademark and Copyright Blog.

My concern with copyright laws is this: art and media should be accessible to everyone, yet creators also need to be fairly paid. The “free use” doctrine has remedied much of this by providing a good middle ground, especially within the realm of the internet. But are we doing a disservice by being stingy about our copyright laws?

As I mentioned earlier, privacy is a big concern of mine. I have always been a careful digital media user. I try to stay as anonymous as possible, likely from the fear that in the digital world, one is NEVER truly anonymous. Therefore, I’m not sure if I will modify my media usage very much. If anything, I will try to open up more, especially once I enter the professional world. The internet has definitely made the world smaller and has made our knowledge greater, yet it has also made things much more complex.

Hello Again and Welcome to My Week 7 Blog!

Almost to the finish line so thank you for staying with me these weeks!  Today’s subject includes the law and media, specifically what I think of how one affects the other after this week’s class readings.  Well, in order to tackle this fickle subject, I decided to break it into two of the many issues within the articles that affect the law and media: following the laws intended to keep everyone safe while keeping the right to protest peacefully and how much information should truly be public (government documents, police arrest footage, etc.).

I read articles like the ACLU piece “Know Your Rights: Protesters’ Rights” and I have to admit certain questions come to mind that may not flow in line with what most people think.  I have in the past believed in the right to protest, however, the way that protests have become in certain cities in the past couple of years, I have thought that maybe there should be more restrictions around certain events.  I know that this is not the popular opinion but hear me out for a second.  In terms of protesting for your rights, the article mentioned above does a great job of talking about one’s rights as a protester but I can’t help but think that these are great in theory but many times protesters don’t go by these “rights”.  For example, it speaks about the right to protest on public property as long as there is no blocking to the building or interference for people going in but I have literally been in the scenario where a protest was going on in front of the capital building and all entrances were blocked by protesters.  Not only that but if the police are doing their job of trying to maintain peace and a group gets rowdy, why is a person allowed to video that police officer doing their job to maintain the peace?  There is also talk about dispersal orders and I can say from experience living in a large city during times of certain protests, that no matter whether or not a rally became a riot, many of the protesters actually stayed and became more violent towards police presence.  While protesters have their rights, shouldn’t they have to follow the law and respect the right of officers to keep the general public safe?

Another article I read that brought up questions was the piece from Wired “Introducing Aaron’s Law, a Desperately Needed Reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”  The truth is that I have always been of the opinion that certain sensitive items, whether government related or not, should remain shielded from the public in every way.  Per the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was previously put in place to address hacking issues that were more than likely threat related to protect the public and I am sure, government documents.  I appreciate the fact that the article speaks about using the tragedy and loss of Swartz as a way to enact changes within the CFAA for the types of crimes covered under it.  The one thing I tend to not understand in situations like this, where a person may know they are going against legislation currently in place on the use of certain digital media, why hack or make items public if there could be any repercussions that potentially fall under the realm of prosecution?  Again, in this case, shouldn’t people try to follow the legal rules to a “T” while trying to fight for change through the appropriate legal avenues?

The thing is, the law is not without error and I think we all see this play out in different situations on a daily basis.  To that point though, humans are not without error either and there are many times where I have seen people who just do not want to follow restrictions around certain media interactions or what are considered rights such as protests.  I genuinely believe that the intention of many of these laws put in place for media of all types were for public safety.  I do believe that there can be a general lack of respect for these laws as well as a bit of resistance to be lax on these laws, however, I think the only way to affect change is to follow the laws while simultaneously working on the change that may be needed to what is no longer applicable.

Thanks for taking the time to read and until next week!

Wikipedia: A Mob of Success(!?)

I found the idea behind this week’s assignment entertaining as well as enlightening. Although I have always used Wikipedia as a beginning information resource in an informal context, I previously never really thought about who specifically was posting the content. Was it some mythical online Wikipedia fairies, or was it real-life people that found value in sharing and curating easily accessible, educational resources?

I  had no understanding of the processes in making or revising a Wikipedia article, so I refrained from including myself in the mix of a potential Wikipedia aficionado. All it takes is encouragement and access to the right information or tutorials to get started. I found the WikiEdu training modules to be very effective and I immediately felt confident in joining the Wikipedia contributor melee.

The training immediately got me thinking, what kind of article was I confident in editing or adding content to? If an article was a staple of my previous online research, was the article prominent enough to be able to find easily available, trusted resources to cite? And if the answer was YES to both of the aforementioned criteria, was it controversial and/or did it need any revisions I was capable of making?

After playing around with these ideas, I was able to determine that one particular article that garnered enough trusted resources to add information to a particular omission from the article’s timeline. The article was about a band called The Parlor Mob that I have always enjoyed, but as it turns out I only knew surface-level information about. Once the citation resources were developed, it was time to jump in!

Although the Sandbox feature was thoroughly explained, I found myself only using it for this initial project as a means for exploration. I posted to the feed to prove to myself that I understood what this part of the process entailed. Admittedly not a stellar beginning, but it got the party started!

The next step was to Talk about my proposal for article contributions. As suggested, I reviewed existing content within the article’s talk page, then I posted a short explanation of what I intended to contribute. In this case, there wasn’t a ton of recent activity and I did not feel that the community would find anything about my proposal objectionable. I posted and waited for any response.

After a few days of waiting, I did not receive any objections so I found it appropriate to post to the main article. I found the editor fairly similar to any standard text editing tool, so the only real problem lied in deciding how to make the post congruent with Wikipedia and the article’s existing format and style.  Once again the waiting game commenced. Would my contribution be accepted, or would I get booted off Wikipedia in perpetuity? lol 🙂

Success! As of today, my post is still left standing as is, no revisions. I found an immense amount of joy in that I was successful in contributing to the Wikipedia community so effortlessly. I shared this experience with any coevals at work and my wife at home, although they may or may not have been as enthusiastic as I am…

 

The sandbox

Let’s Talk about it

Success!!