Book review | Wired Shut by Tarleton Gillespie

Wired Shut: Copyright and the shape of digital culture
by Tarleton Gillespie
The MIT Press | 2007

Wired Shut paints a picture on how the role of copyright law has drastically changed in regards to technology and therefore how it has started to greatly affect online culture. After an introduction to the topic, the book briefly summarizes copyright law and the changes it has undertook through the last few centuries, up to the development and implementation of DRM. Gillespie articulates where previous attempts at regulating digital media was discussed by the industry and failed, how the DCMA and DRM has changed access privileges for the online community, and future implications of continued encryption practices within digital culture. The question of how all of these changes affect fair use is a reoccurring theme within the book.

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Book review | Piracy by Adrian Johns

Piracy
by Adrian Johns
University of Chicago Press | 2010

The contemporary discourse surrounding the issues of copyright law, file-sharing, and intellectual property might lead you to believe that piracy is a relatively recent endeavor, one which was ushered in by the digital age, the Internet and Web, the proliferation of digital devices, and the ease with which digital files can be copied, distributed, and shared among users. However, Adrian Johns’ book Piracy (published by The University of Chicago Press) reveals that piracy, as currently defined, has a long, colorful, history beginning in the mid-1600s. In ancient times craftsmen formed guilds to uphold the standards, customs, and duties of the craft. Similar to a contemporary professional licensing board, each guild governed its members and its craft by issuing rules regarding proper conduct, professional courtesy, and the requisite knowledge and skills of each craft. The guild protected its craft and its members’ interests in the preservation of standards.

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Book review | The Breakup 2.0 by Ilana Gershon

The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media
by Ilana Gershon
Cornell University Press | 2010

While teaching an undergraduate class on language and culture, author Ilana Gershon asked her class to describe “bad” breakups. The answers surprised her: the students all mentioned text message and Facebook breakups. Gershon had her next research project. Over two years, conducted ethnographic interviews with 72 undergraduate students at her university.

What Gershon found is that media is now integral to most contemporary relationships. Email, text messages, instant messaging, Facebook and even face-to-face conversations were all considered mediums through which to end a relationship. The most common breakup problem interviewees reported was the appropriateness – or lack of appropriateness – of the medium used to do the breaking up. This understanding of appropriateness is linked, Gershon posits, to each person’s media ideologies. Media ideologies are “a set of beliefs about communicative technologies with which users and designers explain perceived media structure and meaning” (p. 3). Understanding these ideologies is a critical way to gain insight on technology use.

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Book review | Personal Connections in the Digital Age by Nancy Baym

Personal Connections in the Digital Age
by Nancy Baym
Polity Press | 2010

In her book, Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Nancy K. Baym describes exactly how we, in this current digital age, are still making personal connections. With six chapters and a conclusion addressing the myth of cyberspace, Baym walks readers through what personal connections can look like in relation to new media and addresses questions associated to mediated relationships.

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Book review | Kids and Credibility by Andrew J. Flanagin & Miriam J. Metzger

Kids and Credibility
by Andrew Flanagin and Miriam Metzger
The MIT Press | 2010

The MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, present findings from current research on how young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. How well, for example, do children navigate the ocean of information that is available online? The enormous variety of Web-based resources represents both opportunities and challenges for Internet-savvy kids. Kids and Credibility by Andrew Flanagin and Miriam Metzger reports on the first studies aimed at examining children’s online information-seeking strategies and their beliefs about the credibility of that information.

The book starts of with a rationale for studying the credibility of information delivered via digital media, especially regarding children, and describing the research approach in short. The core of the book, however, deals with the findings from the studies conducted by Flanagin and Metzger’s team.

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