QotW4: Spreading the Cheer, Escaping the Jeers

What Drives The Gift Economy? ~ Sharing knowledge not shutting up

The ‘gift’ in gift economy pertaining to the exchange of information online such as providing answers to questions posted in forums, is a public good. This is so as “it is to some degree indivisible” and “non-excludable”, and is especially so in this digital day and age where the ease of copying and transmitting material enables “even a single individual's contribution of information or advice” to be transformed “into a public good” (Kollock, 1999). While these factors contribute to the willingness of many to provide expert advice, how-to tips, and advice, etc; it is social proof and the rule of reciprocity, as well as, the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that we ourselves and others provide, repspectively, that makes this economy of giving as successful as it is.

Social Proof & Reciprocity in Online Forums ~ The cycle of love = give and take

The principle of social proof involves the viewing of a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it (Cialdini, 2000). Therefore, the individual upon seeing the forum community’s unhesitant acts of ‘charity’ feels inclined to do the same in order to fit in. Of course, this could also be a cause of the rule of reciprocation, which states that “we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us” (Cialdini, 2000). According to Tiger and Fox, this “web of indebtedness” as viewed by cultural anthropologists, is a unique human adaptive mechanism that creates interdependencies which bind individuals together into highly efficient units (as cited in Cialdini, 2000).

Thus, the individual forum user having received a gift in the form of advice or any other online material feels the need to return the favor by helping someone else within the group. It has to be said that within such online communities, each member is regarded as an inherent part of the whole as they are all connected to one another via a shared interest or otherwise; enabling a “system of generalized exchange” (Kollock, 1999) where reciprocity occurs within the group as a whole and immediate reciprocation is unnecessary.

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation ~ Don't let the cat get your tongue

The two motivations are not extensions of the gift economy but rather make up the fuel that drives it. This can be inferred upon the study of tribal societies like those in Polynesia, who “organized themselves around the potlatch – the circulation of gifts”. The resultant gift economy “bound people together into tribes and encouraged cooperation between different tribes” (Barbrook, 2005). In other words, the intrinsic motivation was to desire to belong to the larger community by contributing, and the extrinsic motivation was to cooperate to achieve the common goal of survival.

Relating this to the modern day concept of online communities, whereby technology has enabled the individual to easily create a ‘gift’ by simply moving his fingers across a keyboard is simple. For instance, the Apache computer program that is “continually developed by its techie users” is open to modification, amendments, and improvements by anyone with the appropriate programming skills for “its source code is not protected by copyright” (Barbrook, 2005). What makes it interesting, though, is the fact that it is shareware instead of being marketed by a commercial company. In short, the creation and evolution of Apache is powered solely by its creators’ intrinsic motivation of passion. While the lack of copyright means no monetary reward and thus points to an absent extrinsic motivation, Apache’s creators have looked past financial gain, choosing instead to revel in the recognition of other user-developers within the community.

My Gift “Economy”

A fan of fantasy novels with political intrigue and strong female characters, I am a member of numerous forums where fans of such stories are able to discuss and recommend books they have read. As a new member of the LiveJournal community Athanarel (http://www.livejournal.com/users/athanarel/), I recall tentatively asking questions about the novel, Crown Duel, the group was dedicated to. The responses I received were overwhelming, and it was an added bonus that the author herself was able to answer my queries while posting and ‘friend locking’ her unpublished works. This meant that I could read her unpublished stories so long as I signed up as a member of the community. As time went on and upon learning more about the world and characters of Crown Duel, I was more than happy to share my knowledge with new and old members alike. Furthermore, having read other novels similar to Crown Duel thanks in part to the recommendations of other readers, I am now equally well-equipped to point others in the right direction.

This cycle of give-and-take not only enables me to keep in touch with like-minded others, it also fosters a sense of community and belonging that far exceeds the costs of ‘giving’. Moreover, as such information would hardly benefit me more should I keep it to myself I have no qualms about making it a ‘public good’ by sharing it with others who would value it as much as I do.

References

Barbrook, R. (2005). The Hi-Tech Gift Economy. First Monday. Retrieved February 7, 2007 from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/

Cialdini, R. B. (2000). Influence: Science and Practice Fourth Edition. Singapore: Allyn and Bacon.

Kollock, Peter (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation; Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Communities in Cybrespace. Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Photo Credits

Anuka Baratashvili: http://anuk.deviantart.com/store/
Msog~: http://msog.deviantart.com/
Firebird books: www.firebirdbooks.com/crownfull.html

QotW3: The Copyright Conundrum

The Copyright Conundrum

To summarize the problem at hand, it can be said that the interests of content creators and that of the public are at loggerheads. In order to accommodate the needs of both parties to achieve the greater good, a compromise has to be made.

In my opinion, copyright – or the content creators’ ability to have some form of ownership over their works, is imperative, for the monetary rewards it could reap would serve as a motivation for them to continue creating their original works (Ovalle, 2005, p.2). Unfortunately, should everything be completely protected by copyright and nothing be allowed to pass into the public domain, the public’s ability to innovate by drawing upon available ideas, would be severely hindered.

On a side note, the latter view is echoed by Fiona Macmillan, a professor of law from the University of London (2006). She states that copyright has failed the “concepts of genius, creativity, and culture”, as the” threshold of the originality requirement in relation to literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works” is very low (p.1). In other words, any creative work can be copyrighted so long as it is considered ‘original’. However, originality extends insofar as the creators’ own ideas, neglecting the fact that they may have been inspired by and thus have infringed upon other copyrighted works. This situation succinctly describes the copyright conundrum.

Copyright laws as we know them are at best unclear and differ from case to case. They are further complicated by exceptions to the rule like First Sale and Fair Use. In addition, the advent of the digital age has brought about digital objects that require “mediation” via the creation and displaying of copies (Ovalle, 2005). Such copies are double-edged swords, increasing the ease of copyright infringement while promoting greater creativity. For example, the incident involving the creative remixing of the band Green Day’s American Idiot album by two disc jockeys, was a “copyright nightmare” that “became an instant hit” (“Remix culture”, n.d.).

Technical Solution: Creative Commons

Creative Commons licensing “allows the copyright holder to grant some of its rights to the public while retaining others” (Brady, n.d.); a non-profit organization, the Creative Commons (CC) provides free tools that content creators can use to “mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry” (“Creative Commons”, 2007). In short, this avenue, which enables content creators to choose from a continuum of copyrights, could prove to be the answer that would best please both content creators and users while providing sufficient encouragement and ability for all to continue creating and innovating.

Evidence of the success of CC licensing is obvious from its global jurisdiction of thirty-five countries; and an adoption scope, which includes the likes of archives such as Flickr, formal publications such as the Public Library of Science, collaborative content such as Wikinews, and instructional materials such as Clinical Skills Online (“Wikipedia: Creative Commons”, 2007).

However, CC does have its detractors who claim that it lacks an ethical, political, common sense, and pro-copyright position (“Wikipedia: Creative Commons”, 2007). While this may be so, I believe that CC is a viable technical structure that offers a form of copyright that would reasonably satisfy both creators and users of creative content. Naturally, it can be improved upon by defining more clearly the extent of the copyright its licenses provide, as well as setting a minimum requirement for the granting of its licenses.


Social Solution: User Honesty

The hope of abolishing piracy and plagiarism is a far fetched one, and it can only be achieved by total honesty on the part of the general public. This means changing the mindsets of pirates and plagiarizers and ensuring that they do not exploit copyrighted works for their own commercial benefit. To do this, the masses must be made to understand that intellectual dishonesty will not be tolerated.

While the act of piracy is deliberate and unavoidable without user honesty, there are times when plagiarism is accidentally committed. The simplest way to avoid doing so would be to ensure that all sources are acknowledged “in a full and consistent manner” (Claerhout, 2004).


Conclusion

In conclusion, current copyright laws are not entirely satisfactory due to their vagueness, and are biased towards protecting the interests of the content creators with almost complete disregard for the content users or would-be content creators.

Therefore, it is my belief that existing copyright laws should be more clearly defined, constructed in such a way that would benefit the public, and appended with probable punishments for offenders.

Lastly, alternative avenues to copyright such as the Creative Commons should be taken into consideration as a means of balancing the needs of the user and the ownership of content creator; the achievement of which would lead to the good of the greater public.


References

Brady, K. S. (2007). Copyright FAQ: 25 Common Myths and Misconceptions. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from http://users.goldengate.net/%7Ekbrady/copyright.html

Claerhout, L. A. (2004). Copyright Issues in Online Courses: A Moment in Time. [Electronic version]. Theory and Practice of Online Learning.

Creative Commons. (2007, January). Retrieved January 31, 2007, from http://creativecommons.org/

Macmillan, F. (2006, February). Copyrights Commodification of Creativity. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from Birkbeck College, University of London Web site: http://www.oiprc.ox.ac.uk/EJWP0203.pdf

Ovalle, C. (2005). An Introduction to Copyright. Information in Cyberspace, 2. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/1.php

Remix culture: a rights nightmare. (n.d.). ABC: Catapult. Retrieved January 31, 2007, from http://www.abc.net.au/catapult/indepth/s1645533.htm

Wikipedia: Creative commons (2007, Jan 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 31, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons%2028%20January%202007

COM125 Week2: Email

History

The birth of the electronic mail or email in 1965 predated the Internet and “was a crucial tool in creating it” (“Wikipedia: History of the Internet”, 2006). It also paved the way “for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate”, and it soon evolved into a network which enabled users to “pass messages between different computers” (“Wikipedia: Email”, 2006).

Then, in 1971 Ray Tomlinson created what we know now as the “standard email address format”, that separated user names from host names with the @ sign (“Wikipedia: History of the Internet”, 2006). Only in the early 1990s, however, did the widespread public use of email begin.

Today, not only is email employed in the “Internet email system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol” (“Wikipedia: Email”, 2006), it is also inherent in intranet systems that enable members of an organization to communicate with one another. The proliferation of its use is unavoidable as it is user friendly, efficient, and versatile in facilitating asynchronous communication. In fact, about 60% of the UK population use email in their daily lives – an unsurprising statistic if you consider that about 50% of UK households have access to the Internet.

Graphic Representation of UK Households with Internet Access:

Spam

The advent of the email and its prevalence has heavily influenced the Internet in both good ways and bad. For example, email spam – the sending of unsolicited, “nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by email” (“Wikipedia: Spam”, 2007), has become a negative side effect of email. According to the Message Labs Home Page, spam accounted for “about 83% of all incoming emails” in 2005, “up from 24% in January 2003” (as cited in Gomes et al., 2005, p.1).

This trend resulted in the creation of spam filters, that according to Internet researchers dramatically decreased the amount of spam received between “March and September” 2006 (Sloan, 2007). However, within three months, spammers have developed new spam techniques that “have effectively defeated these email filters”. This is possible as spam filters cannot differentiate between legitimate and spam image content. Thus, spammers simply convert their advertisements into images and insert them into their emails. In fact, this practice is now so prevalent that “email security firm Postini said recently that image-embedded spam made up 45% of all spam” at the end of 2006, as compared to the measly “2% a year ago” (Sloan, 2007). This problem is compounded by the use of botnets – expanded systems that are created via the hijacking regular Internet users’ computers.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that current spam filters are capable of dealing with the new forms of spam. Meanwhile, users would have to waste precious time deleting spam emails from their inboxes and retrieving legitimate emails from their spam folders.

Therefore, email and inadvertently spam has had such in impact on the Internet for it has revolutionized the means of advertising and marketing; making millionaires of spammers, and sparking near impossible proposals of “a tiny fee to send email” by Bill Gates, as well as “a one year plan to change the entire, underlying system of sending, routing, and receiving electronic mail” (Sloan, 2007).

Benefits

On the other hand, email also has its benefits. According to Professor M. Lynne Markus of The Claremont Graduate School (1994), the use of email for intra-organizational coordination, is believed to “increase personal and organizational productivity”. This could be possible due to the fact that “managers who receive email are not passive recipients of data, but active produces of meaning”, and “empirical findings in which email readily supports the level of richness that information richness theory reserves for what it considers to be rich media”.

My Personal Experience

On a more personal note, for the past two years I have been in communication with an American girl only via email. We are not pen pals and barely know how the other looks like, but we email each other frequently as we are co-authors of a novel of sorts. In other words, the creation of our literature from characterization to world building has been done solely through email. Email has been such an integral part of this endeavor that without it, we would have been unable to edit our drafts, discuss possible plot lines, or receive notifications of reviews submitted by our avid readers.

Our work can be viewed at these links:

Pirate Princess (complete) ~ http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2064459/1/

Gypsy Queen (in-progress) ~ http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3252904/1/

Conclusion

In conclusion, judging by the enormous influence email has had and continues to have on the Internet, it is a double-edged sword. With its ever-extending reach into the awareness of the masses, it can be used for good or ill. As such, it should be employed with the utmost care.

References

Car, J., & Sheikkh, A. (2004, August). Email consultations in health care: 1 – scope and effectiveness. BMJ: Helping doctors make better decisions. 329 (435). Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7463/435?ck=nck

Gomes, L. H., Almeida, R. B., Bettencourt, L. M. A., Almeida, V., & Almeida, J. M. (2005). Comparative Graph Theoretical Characterization of Networks of Spam and Legitimate Email. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://www.ceas.cc/papers-2005/131.pdf

Lee, A. S. (1994). Electronic Mail as a Medium for Rich Communication: An Empirical Investigation Using Hermeneutic Interpretation. MIS Quarterly, 18, 2, 143-157. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0276-7783%28199406%2918%3A2%3C143%3AEMAAMF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U&size=SMALL

Markus, M. L. (1994). Electronic Mail As the Medium of Managerial Choice. [Electronic version]. Organization Science, 5, 4, 502-527. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1047-7039%28199411%295%3A4%3C502%3AEMATMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8&size=LARGE

Sloan, W. (2007, January 10). The new spam: it's bigger and uglier. Bangkok Post. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://www.bangkokpost.com/.

Wikipedia: Email (2006, Feb 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email

Wikipedia: History of the Internet (2006, Aug 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_Internet&oldid=70771572

Wikipedia: Spam (2007, Jan 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam