Encompassing the Internet: February 2010

Creative Commons is "a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration." Their organization works to increase creativity throughout the common public, to increase free and legal sharing. They provide tools to give everyone the opportunity to stick to a standardized way of copyrighting their work. Creative Commons creates a less strict environment by giving people an option of copyright terms from "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved."

More about Creative Commons can be learned through this video:

Creative Commons is different from the traditional copyright because it allows artists to chose the conditions of the license they would like to give to their work. There are six different licenses available through Creative Commons. The first type of license is Attribution; this allows others to "distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work as long as they credit you." This allows people the most access to your work. The next type of license is the Attribution Share Alike; this allows people all of the rights of the Attribution license but they must "credit you and license their work under identical terms." The third type is Attribution No Derivatives; allowing "redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you." Another type is Attribution Non-Commercial; allowing "others to remix, tweak, and build uponyour work non-commercially," but they dont need to license it the same way. Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike; lets others "remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit and license under identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work, and translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on it, but all new work will carry the same license, so anything else created will be non-commercial in nature. The last type of license is the Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives; being "the most restrictive of the six but allowing redistribution. It is also called 'free advertising' because it allows others to download and share as long as they mention and link it to you but not change or use commercially."

Artists like Josh Woodward are taking advantage of Creative Commons and still protecting the rights to their work because he is able to produce his work quickly and efficiently and get it posted on his website quickly by using a Creative Commons license as opposed to waiting for a copyright on his work. This helps Josh Woodward and artists like him to get their work out there quickly and allows other artists, depending on the type of license, to use other work to enhance their own or to remake and tweak the work by giving credit to the original creator.

I think that Creative Commons is a great way for people to put their work out there and also have it protected in some way. A good way to find different types of Creative Commons work is to check out this site it helps you to locate work like this:

This photo was found on calmenda's photostream on Flickr and is protected under the Creative Commons Attribution License. From the mashable site you can also find audio, general searches, images, texts, visuals. I think that Creative Commons is a great way for artists of music, writing, journalism, video, photography, cartoons, and any other creative outlet to protect their work and get it out to the public.

More information can be found at Josh Woodwards website, blip tv, Creative Commons, and Mashable.

Google.cn image found at: http://www.busmanagement.com/news/google-versus-china/

It has been about two weeks since Google announced that they would pull out of China if they did not relax their censorship laws. Google made this decision based upon a secuirty breach in December. Since the announcement, ISEdb.com has reported five main things have occured;

"1) China Stands Firm: stating, 'there was little room to compromise in the area of internet security.'

2) Google Boss Schmidt replies Google would like to stay: saying, 'Google would like to stay if China relaxes its censorship policies.'

3) Fake Google appears in China: 'a site called, Goojje has appeared'

4) Twitter may be blocked in China, too: 'Co-Founder Evan Willams announced twitter was partially blocked in China...however there are ways around the firewalls.'

5) China reports it won't limit use of Android: "China will not be limiting the use of Google's Android operating system.' "

China is one of the world's top internet markets. The graph below shows that in October of 2007, China was just under the United States in terms of most internet users by country. However, since 2007, the tables may have turned and China may now be in the lead of internet users per country.

Graph found at: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/18/the-web-in-charts%E2%80%94google-vs-microsoft-yahoo-vs-china/

The announcement that Google would pull out of China was seen by many human rights advocates aroumd the world as a step in the right direction. In the NYTimes forum on Google vs. China, we learn that, "Since China isn't likely to allow unfiltered results, which would bring banned topics, Google would have to quit operating google.cn, it's Chinese search engine."

However, there are many ways around such issues. As mentioned previously, when Twitter co-founder Evan Willams announced that Twitter was partially banned in China, he also added that there are ways around the firewalls. From the NYTimes forum we see, "The very tech savvy are starting to work around the government filters."

Cartoon found at: http://beforeitsnews.com/story/12721/Google_vs._China_A_Summary_of_Events.html

There are many ways to avoid and bypass firewalls in China. An article from the NYTimes helps to outline some, "They are using a variety of tools to evade government filters to reach the wide-open Web that the Chinese government deems dangerous - sites like YouTube, Facebook and, if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from China, Google.cn."

Image found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/technology/internet/16evade.html

The article continues by saying, "It's difficult to say precisely how many people in China engage in acts of digital disobedience. But college students in China and activists around the world say the number has been growing ever since the government stepped up efforts to 'cleanse' the Web during the Beijing Olympics and the Communist regime's 60th anniversary last year."

The Washington Post reports, "The company's (Google's) decision to stop censoring it's Chinese search engine is more likely to mean the end of China-based service than a breakdown of Beijing's political firewall. But more important than the question of whether Google.cn survives is the larger issue that Google has now raised for other Western companies and democratic governments -- which is whether China's gross and growing abuse of the Internet should be quietly tolerated or actively resisted."

Personally, I think that China has succeeded thus far in their censorship of the internet, but since so many of their citizens are able to break through "The Great Firewall" of China, that the government needs to give up their fight and make it easier for everyone and stop censoring the world wide web from their citizens.

On a personal note, in Feb. 2008, I took a trip to China and I was there for about two weeks. I went with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. They adopted a baby girl, and asked me to come along. Our plan was to create a blog and document our trip so that our friends and family back home could read and watch along. The blog is: http://ruth-china.blogspot.com/ It was through the same blog website we are using for class. We had heard from numerous other families that this was the best blog to use over there because of all the censorship laws.

As we arrived in China and began to blog about our adventures, we were unable to view them. It was the most annoying thing to not know if the content had actually been posted or not. We knew that we hit the "Publish Post" button, but we had no idea if what we wanted posted actually posted or not. We also realized that we were allowed to submit photos to be posted on the blog, but it would not allow us to post videos; we just hoped that people back home could see them, since we couldn't. Come to find out, when we arrived back home, we had numerous comments from family and friends about how cute and amazing all of the photos were and how much they enjoyed watching and reading about our trip through the blog.

In the end, we wished that censorship had not played a role in our trip, as we would have loved to read all of the comments from the friends and family that we had missed back home, but it was unavoidable for us.