After reading and watching all the material for this week’s module, it is very obvious that the law can have an immense amount of power when it comes to affecting the media. Some may say it’s too much power.
Even before taking this course, I was well aware of many of the issues that were mentioned in this module. Specifically network neutrality is a topic that has fairly recently been in the front of many daily internet users minds, including my own. Had you asked me or any common person who regularly used the internet five years ago what net neutrality was and why it’s important, I doubt any of us would have been able to speak to it at all, but within the past two to three years the concept of net neutrality and what that means was brought into a new light.
A specific topic that concerns me (and that I still have a hard time wrapping my head around) is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the DMCA. The span of the DMCA is remarkable and unbelievable. The John Deere tractors discussed in this module was something unbeknownst to me, but I have long been intrigued and concerned with how the DMCA works and what it encompasses.
Some background on me, I’ve worked at Barnes & Noble for upwards of 7 years. I love books and I love reading. I’ve been a huge advocate of reading any way you can and while I do love the convenience of digital books, or ebooks, if you know anything about the DMCA and purchasing ebooks, you’d know that despite spending your money to own an ebook, you technically do not actually own the ebook. I want my customers to know that digital reading is a wonderful option, but I also want them to be aware that because of how the DMCA works in regards to digital content like ebooks, it’s very possible that one day they may not be able to access items they have purchased. How likely is that to happen? I would assume fairly unlikely, but I want to keep my customers informed never the less.
Another concern that I have is regarding copyright. This does not affect me so much as it affects many of the content creators that I closely follow. If you’re familiar with YouTube, I’m sure you’ve heard some YouTuber mention that they or someone they know have received a copyright strike on their channel for whatever reason. In the lecture it was mentioned that things get taken down from YouTube all the time due to content infringing upon copyrighted stuff, but that power is abused by Hollywood and the music industry, despite the fact that whoever issued the takedown notice doesn’t truly own the content. Some people make a living off of YouTube, but within the past few years, with videos being taken down left and right due to copyright infringement, many of my favorite YouTubers have left the platform because they can no longer make the money they once did and they were tired of their content being limited at times when it made no sense.
The way media is affected by the law is astounding and it’s not hard to imagine a future where the law enforcement gets out of hand. It reminds me a lot of an aspect in short story I read recently. The story was titled “City of Silence” and it was written by a Chinese author named Ma Boyong. A huge part of this story was the idea that laws around language and media had gotten so strict that only certain words were allowed to be used online and in person. So many words and concepts had been banned that it was easier for the government to issue a list of acceptable words for people to use instead of a list of unacceptable words. People have to go through an arduous process in order to gain access to the web and the only sites on there are forums where the language is just as limited.
The whole story seems far-fetched but who knows, maybe it’s not so far off from what we’ll be experiencing in the future.
