2.4 Content Sharing

Lecture: Content Sharing

End of second module:
A meme is usually depicting something that is happening culturally.  It is something that begins a discussion point, Rebecca Black's single that went viral only for its bad taste, the cultural response involves discussion.  Meme's are tongue in cheek, it keeps being used in a certain type of way.  Meme explodes due to our reactions to them.  Meme's are culturally specific, valid in certain time frames, remix able via videos, music, lyrics.  They are spreadable, they amplify and diversify, they can be legally problematic, remixing the original song of Rebecca's and mashing up her images, due to all of this being easy to do, doesn't mean we should.  Copyright laws.

Remixes - ground hog day movie mixed with her song.  Check out the bob Dylan and Rebecca Friday song.

Remixes and mashups:
Avatar and Pochahantus - is it critique, cultural politics, derivative plot, commentary? Common themes, if you can show that this has critique, a parody, it is legal, fair dealings are an exception to a copyright.  A meaning and powerful satire. 
Dj earworm takes the top 20 songs and make a 5 min mashups.

Is it a threat to the commercial success of the works being remixed?
Is it viable substitute of the work being remixed?
Is it likely to act as a promotion for the works being remixed?

The legal system we have in this element doesn't work properly hence people are ignoring it.

Copyright is automatic, and it lasts a long time, no applications are necessary for it. 

What can I use?
Things I have permission to use, simple.
Anything definitely in the public domain.  Shakespeare, is in the public domain.
Explicitly licensed allowing reuse, creative commons copyright.  Creative commons is an attempt to create a common ground.

6 types of licenses;
Attributes who developed it.
Non commercial license, you can use it but you can't make money off it.
No derivatives license, it can't be changed.
Share alike - keeping the chain of copyright going, must have the same licensing term.

CC is the icon and click on it and see what their requirements are.
www.bit.lu/tamawiki


Reading:
Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication through Shared Metadata

The problems inherent in an uncontrolled vocabulary lead to a number of limitations and weaknesses in folksonomies. Ambiguity of the tags can emerge as users apply the same tag in different ways. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the lack of synonym control can lead to different tags being used for the same concept, precluding collocation.
Ambiguity  -   As an uncontrolled vocabulary that is shared across an entire system, the terms in a folksonomy have inherent ambiguity as different users apply terms to documents in different ways.
Both Delicious and Flickr seem designed primarily to deal with single words. So no gaps inbetween multiple word tags.
There is no synonym control in the system. This leads to tags that seemingly have similar intended meanings, like “mac,” “macintosh,” and “apple” all being used to describe materials related to Apple Macintosh computers. Different word forms, plural and singular, are also often both present. In this particular situation with these Macintosh tags, the “related tags".
Some classification schemes are disjoint from the vocabulary of the users. In “Metadata for the Masses,” Peter Merholz argues that a folksonomy can be quite useful in that it reveals the digital equivalent of “desire lines” (Merholz, 2004). Desire lines are the foot-worn paths that sometimes appear in a landscape over time. Merholz notes, “A smart landscape designer will let wanderers create paths through use, and then pave the emerging walkways, ensuring optimal utility. Ethnoclassification systems can similarly ‘emerge.’ Once you have a preliminary system in place, you can use the most common tags to develop a controlled vocabulary that truly speaks the users’ language.
Makes it easier to find things due to time efficiency.

“Aside: I think the lack of hierarchy, synonym control and semantic precision are precisely why it works. Free typing loose associations is just a lot easier than making a decision about the degree of match to a pre-defined category (especially hierarchical ones). It’s like 90% of the value of a ‘proper’ taxonomy but 10 times simpler.” (Butterfield, 2004)

Many professionals would likely argue that Butterfield’s assessment of 90% and “10 times simpler” is vastly overstated, his fundamental point holds true: non-trivial and important metadata are captured through these folksonomies.

“Of course, that idea’s been around for decades, so what’s special about Flickr and del.icio.us? Sometimes a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. The degree to which these systems bind the assignment of tags to their use - in a tight feedback loop - is that kind of difference.  John Udel, 2004.

Individual and Community Aspects

Both Delicious and Flickr are used by individuals to organize materials with their own vocabulary of terms. Individuals have an incentive to tag their materials with terms that will help them organize their collections in a way that they can find these items later. The organizational scheme that emerges for each individual reflects their individual information needs. The popularity of the “me” tag on Flickr perhaps best reflects this aspect of a folksonomy, as well as the “toread” tag on Delicious. Both can really only be understood in the context of an individual user.

Groups of users do not have to agree on a hierarchy of tags or detailed taxonomy, they only need to agree, in a general sense, on the “meaning” of a tag enough to label similar material with terms for there to be cooperation and shared value.

Finally, there is the compulsion to share in general that underlies these systems. The very act of user self-selecting what to tag is important: this is not just material that users want to find themselves later, but also material they are sharing with others. Both systems have an explicit kind of social networking component built-in: Flickr allows you to specify other users as contacts, friends, or family and see views of just their material; Delicious allows you to “subscribe” to other users lists.

These two models, community and individual motivations, are not mutually exclusive, and it is likely both are necessary to explain a folksonomy in the context of these services. An area of further qualitative analysis could help to determine how much each of these theories applies to actual user behaviour.

Mathes, A. (2004). Folksonomies – Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata.

Reading 2:  Future of Open Source: Collaborative Culture.

Folksonomies are proof of the power of emergence. Emergence is a fascinating phenomenon because it explains complexity through intrinsic simplicity.

A folksonomy in which every tag is different isn't a folksonomy. It's just a pile of tags. Nothing emerges from it. But a folksonomy in which there's been complete convergence, so there's only a single tag for any one object has created a 'tyranny of the majority.' A useful folksonomy hits a sweet spot in which there is some convergence around tags, but enough diversity that those who think about matters differently can nevertheless find what they're looking for, and what they've tagged can be found by others. Such a folksonomy operates as a loose, emergent thesaurus that is able to translate among interpretations, much as the elusive babelfish can translate among languages.

But folksonomy is not, will not, and should not be our only way of ordering the world. And that multiplicity of meaning—shared, emergent and ours—is at the heart of folksonomy's symbolism."

Wolk, D. (2009). Future of Open Source: Collaborative Culture. Retrieved June 12th, 2009, from http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/06/dp_opensource_wired0616.

My reflection on this reading:
I took this directly from the article as the information here was new and interesting to me.  The use of the girls image, through Flickr, for the cover of Boni Iver’s record, Blood Bank. 

This is due to Open Source Culture, making your creations open to the public, moving from mass culture, that one source say MTV being seen by the many, to culture of the masses where we all contribute valuable content and depending on whether a large group finds it via other peoples reposting etc.  This explains the importance of Folksonomies in someways, making your image or data easy to find.  So the sns allows the masses to hold control over their creativity, thus this software is allowing us to cut out the middle man.  Privately Made, Privately Owned. 
So even if the sites/platforms themselves aren’t open source they allow the ease of sharing which facilitates Cultural openness.  Wolk, D

Activity: 
Motivational poster and post it into this weeks discussion board...  Done on the 2/05/2012. Under the My Poster discussion link.

https://lms.curtin.edu.au/courses/1/305033-Vice-Chancello-111877403/db/_3570268_1/motivatorc90c4e3269ecd6e4f35fdf0021ddd2164e0b4dfd.jpg