IP and Its Inconveniences

First of all it is never ok to take someone else's information or product as your own. That said there are some laws regarding intellectual property (IP) that is much too strict and restrict the uses even in academic studies. This is especially true in a university setting where the only way students can learn about something is to learn from the past, and that sometimes has to be copying great works that comes before him/her. Fields such as music, literature, and other creative fields of study require the knowledge of those that came before, and to learn from them. Since this is for educational and academic purposes, there is no reason not to let us use these information because we are not receiving any kind of monetary gain from this whatsoever. The sole purpose of this is to learn so that we may better whatever industry we decide to go into. There is almost no downside other than giving credit to the originator of that information. And since plagiarism or not citing the originator is the only crime, there is no reason. Incorrectly citing or forgetting to cite a resources can potentially cost an "innocent" college student millions of dollars in copyright infringement fines. This has happened many times in the past from multinational companies who probably lost little to no profit at all from that student's actions. And since it is only for educational reasons and that student is receiving no monetary profit at all, there should be no problem letting them access to that information.

A great example of this is students of law schools are provided and encouraged to use several databases from large companies who keeps these databases for real lawyers for free in the student's studying years in hopes that once they graduate that they are so used to the service that they will rely on it, and therefore pay for the actual service. This type of action where the service or information is so good that there is no need to be so strict on its policies because people wil be enticed to pay for it. Same can be applied to downloading music. In this remix generation there are so many remakes. A student in the music production and creation fields of study should be able to download music for free in order to learn the intricacies of that soundtrack and how to remix or even just to understand how to create good music.

There are also other laws that state and can be argued that works such as this blog post or even anything that we produce in a college classroom is technically the property of the university in which it was created at. Even though this sounds ridiculous there are many agreements to which we sign that actually state this. Everything that we create in physical form and now, some can be even in virtual form and they are automatically copyrighted under whomever its creator might be. But the university law overwrites that ruling and makes our works into their property. A great example of this is that say you write an amazing essay for a class in an english class for fall semester. Then you take another class for spring semester but another essay requires you to so the same research that you already did the previous semester and have already written a paper on that subject. Now you may think that there is no harm in using the part or most of the original paper because you are the creator and writer of that essay, when in reality that original paper now belongs to the university. And because of this even if you copy your own creation, you will still be punished for plagiarism for using the property of the university. That's right, you can't use your own paper from one class to the next because it technically doesn't belong to you.

It is these areas of academic research and overall strict procedures in which we can use outside and copyrighted material that limits our own learning and creativity. Back in the day Shakespeare used many of his predecessors' works to make his own. So today we should be albe to "stand on the shoulders of giants" in order to progress our own intellect because if we can't learn what has already come before us how can we produce anything that tries to improve upon what we already have? In this respect our work should belong to us and we should also be allowed more freedom in the intellectual property and copyrighted works, because we are only using it for educational means and not for any profitable gain.

Creative Piracy

Piracy is illegal, this is for sure. But what about the ones that are considered "transformative work"? What do you do when someone takes an original content and puts their own spin on it? According to Lessig, most of today's forms of media is built on piracy. Mediums such as film and music are born from pirated works of their time. This is very apparent as you look at different movies, most of which takes ideas from older stories and puts their own spin on it. For example, Avatar, the top grossing film of all time, the story itself can be directly related to Disney's Pocahontas, and that story is based off real events of a man instead of the lead woman character in Pocahontas. Each version just puts on a different coat of paint, with different characters and settings, but the underlying story that each tells can be identical if stripped down to its most basic components. A better example of transformative work is of a Youtube user who adds commentary to his recorded "video-game" sessions and that in turn is not piracy. But if there were no commentary it would be considered copyright infringement. Where is the line drawn here?

The example I want to talk about are 2 companies that make games for mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android phones. The companies Zynga and Gameloft often takes direct ideas from massive selling games from homes consoles such as the Xbox 360 or PS3, putting different character names and settings into their own game then selling them on mobile app stores. Is this considered piracy? Taking direct gameplay mechanics (fundamentals of how a game works) and overall theme and putting it into their own game. Gameloft is infamous for being the "copycat" company because of their history with this kind of taking ideas from someone else and applying it to their own product. A simple search on Google would net you the results of a list of games they almost directly copy:

Hero of Sparta I/II = God of War

Shadow Guardian = Uncharted 2

Modern Combat = Modern Warfare

Zombie Infection = Resident Evil IV

Eternal Legacy = Final Fantasy XIII

Dungeon Hunter 2 = Diablo

Sacred Odyssey = Zelda (N64 and Wii)

Starfront - Collision = Starcraft Series

Brain Challenge = Brain Age

Gangstar = Grand Tefth Auto

Blades of Fury = Soulcalibur

Asphalt = Grand Turismo

Skater Nation = Tony Hawk

Shrek Kart = Mario Kart

Star Batallion = Starfox/Starwars

Nova = Halo

Order & Chaos = World of Warcraft

But the counter argument here is that if they didn't provide these experiences on a different device for the people who did not have access to the original games but want it for their mobile devices, then there would be no one else to do this. Companies such as Gameloft and Zynga argues that they provide a kind of fan-service that no one else would or could provide for the customers. The original creators would not want their games on an iPhone, so these companies do it for those of us who want it. But the underlying question is whether or not it is ok, or even legal, to provide a certain service, even if it means to directly copy someone else's, because that someone else wouldn't have done it anyways.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/03/18/gameloft-copycat-strikes-again-world-of-warcraft-ripped-off.aspx
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/29290014/zyngas-copycatting-continues-this-time-its-pokemon
http://www.vg247.com/2012/08/21/zyngas-copycat-games-squander-talent-say-mobile-devs/

Ahead of Our Time

Will the knowledge of advanced, unforeseeable technology be able to enable us to "reach for the stars" and boost our understanding to a new level? Many of us have imagined a scenario where we would have the knowledge of a currently unforeseeable piece of technology and the knowledge of how to create it. In our scenarios we would be able to use that to gain vast wealth, or change the world, or even reach enlightenment. But in reality it would just be a piece of technology that would be so far ahead of our time that we would not even have the resources to create or more importantly, maintain it. Or would it be so advanced that it would self sustain?

Problems of privacy, moral implications of advancing technology, etc arises from this thought. But it also raises an interesting question in that will technology eventually outpace or even replace the "human role"? In Bush's article he writes about how in the foreseeable future there could be libraries or encyclopedia systems that could search results associatively. One thought could lead to another but then could lead to entirely different subjects based on related searches. Yes today we have similar, although "primitive" versions of said machine (memex) such as Wikipedia and targeted marketing advertisements on Google for example. But Bush's idea goes far beyond that of Wikipedia, into the realm of automatic association and the ability to create relevant information of every possible "route" a search could take. In Bush's article he  mentions that we need to use technology to "encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience", to record our histories and pasts so that we may better and further ourselves (Bush). Now imagine that this can be done without the need for a human to physically search something. For example a machine could diagnose, search and prescribe the best possible treatment a sick patient on its own using its expansive database of information and any relevant information. The human role would stop there as it is more precise, and faster than any human could do at the same scenario.

An article by Steve Lohr mentions the idea of the actual technology being able to replace the need for human intervention. If machines are able to do it faster without "human error", why not let it. It is already happening today. Google Map's mapping system has "robot-driven cars (has)...logged thousands of miles on American roads with only an occasional assist from human-back seat drivers" (Lohr). If we look back at history we can clearly see that since the Industrial Revolution our advancement in technology has been in an exponential curve, especially after the dawn of the 21st century. It was and STILL is at an extreme exponential growth with every passing day.

Will we one day be outpaced by our constant strive for more knowledge and burning desire for better technology?

Lohr, Steve. "Technology Advancements Outpacing Human Role?" Technology Advancements Outpacing Human Role? N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Sept. 2012. <http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/technology-advancements-outpacing-human-role/453591/>.