Digital Freedoms and Intellectual Properties on the Web

My blogging for this term will be centred around the controversial topic of who owns what on the web, and the extent to which intellectual properties should be protected (or made available for free distribution) on the internet. I will be discussing a range of globally relevant topics, and exploring their specific relevance to the South African context. Some of the main issues which will come up are privatisation and patenting, the African Digital Commons, copyright on the internet, file-sharing systems and the sharing of intellectual content in online communities.

I will use case studies in most of my discussions, and will try to stay within South African produced new media. In order to make my blogs on this subject more personalised and unique, I will be relating the topics to specific real-life examples that relate to my own life at Rhodes University. For example, for my blog on patenting and privatisation, I plan to investigate the patenting of the hoodia plant, which is both indigenous to the Eastern Cape region, and is being used locally by women to lose weight. I will explore the sensitive issue of how indigenous knowledge (the anorexogenic properties of this plant) has been patented and privatised, and taken out of the hands of its original owners.

For my blog on file-sharing systems, I plan to conduct interviews with students who use programs such as Kazaar and DC+, as well as the owner of Roxbury, who has launched a campaign against these illegal file-sharing systems. This provides a platform to explore Youtube, Myvideo, Zoopy etc. In all of my blogs, I aim to discuss the legal and ethical considerations involved, in order to provide some insight in our own online media habits.

Web site design

It is imperative for web designers to think critically about the structure of content and navigation on websites, especially in the African context, and in light of the various current technology convergences. A cleaner, more user-friendly layout increases clarity and comprehendability. As mentioned in my previous blog on accessibility, many people in South Africa have poor computer literacy. Therefore information on web pages may be harder for them to find and use. However, if information is arranged on a page in a clear, logical structure (which is easy to navigate), people with less computer literacy are more likely to be able to access the information that they need. A clearer structure improves the flow of information in a webpage, so that information is easier to comprehend for people who may be second or third language speakers of English. Virginia de Bolt also points out that due to the convergence of technologies (such as the use of internet/WAP on PDA’s, cell phones and aural screen readers), pages should be structured in such a way that they can be “CSS ready”. This entails “first….thinking about the semantic meaning and structure of the content your page will hold.” This will enable your page to be easily changed to incorporate cascading style sheets.

Why be concerned with accessibilty?

Webpage accessibility should concern journalists because journalists have an obligation to provide people with information through which they can actively practice democracy. The W3C Web accessibility pages say that “everyone should be able to perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the web.” The importance of the internet for the practice of democratic rights is constantly increasing. Equal access to the web leads to equal opportunity, because “the web is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health, recreation ….”. Problems which face accessibility in Africa tend to be poverty-related, particularly the lack of computer literacy, and inadequate infrastructure for internet access. Many poorer South Africans do not know how to navigate a website in order to find the information they need, therefore that information is inaccessible to them. Lack of bandwidth and unequal access to technology act as physical barriers to the access of information necessary for the practice of democracy. If we as journalists want to avoid exacerbating the digital divide, we must find ways to make our websites more accessible. This would entail using more efficient forms of coding (such as XHTML), and thinking critically about the structure and navigation of web pages.

Why learn XHTML in Africa?

Journalists in Africa should have a solid grasp of XHTML because of the bandwidth and accessibility problems which we as a continent face. Robert Niles supports the use of XHTML by journalists because the code is neater and more efficient. Superfluous information and bad HTML practices (such as not closing tags) are cut out, which makes the information easier and faster to download. This in turn means that less bandwidth is used in processing and accessing the website. This is especially important in Africa, where people have limited access to technology. The telecommunications infrastructure is very poor in rural areas, therefore telephone lines are not available for easy internet access. Computer hardware and software also tend to be obsolete and outdated. According to Virginia de Bolt, XHTML is backwards browser compatible. This is because XHTML is a combination of XMS and HTML, a new and an old technology. This means that people using old browsers (such as outdated versions of Netscape Navigator etc) can still access websites coded in XHTML. The fact that XHTML is a combination of old and new technologies means that it is useful both now and in the suture, which of great importance in our rapidly changing continent.

Computer Assisted Research- What did I learn?

My experience of using spread sheets to probe crime statistics has been very enlightening. I started the exercise with the belief that everything can be found on the internet with ease, and I have finished the exercise with the knowledge that this is not always the case. The crime statistics were fairly easy to find at first, as it was merely a matter of looking on the “saps.gov” site and finding the 2006 statistics for each area. However, my first stumbling block came when I couldn’t find the stats for Bloemfontein. Jude hinted that Bloemfontein had undergone a name change, and so I found the new name (Mangaung) and was eventually able to find the stats. I also battled with finding detailed population statistics for each of the cities in the exercise, until Galen figured it out. It was a matter of finding the “Data supplied to the National Treasury”, and then finding the municipality codes needed to decode this document. Once I had all the statistics, it was fairly easy to use the information to work out the per capita rates and to create charts. I realised in the duration of the exercise that the task which I had expected to be easiest (finding the information), was in fact the most difficult. I do not believe that the information was intentionally hidden, rather, I believe that it was difficult to find due to a lack of organization on the site. I had assumed that vital statistics - such as population statistics - would be easily accessible on the internet, due to the obvious importance of these figures. This exercise has shown me that the internet is always the “font of all knowledge” that one assumes, and that sometimes one must resort to traditional sources, or some very creative thinking, in order to find that information that one needs.

The significance of my introduction to new media and journalism studies

I believe that my introduction to new media and journalism studies has vastly influenced my future career in the journalism industry. As the use of new media such as the internet grows, it is imperative for journalists to understand the impact that these new channels of communication will have on the way in which news is presented, distributed and assimilated. New media offers various unique opportunities for journalists. Lister asserts that “new media appear, as they have before, with claims and hopes attached; they will deliver increased productivity, educational opportunity and open up new creative and communicative horizons” (2002). Some of these communicative horizons, according to Lister, include “new textual experiences”, “new ways of representing the world”, “new relationships between subjects (users and consumers) and media technologies” and “new patterns of organization and production”. These create exciting new opportunities for the media to reach its audience on an entirely new, and more interactive, level. Lister asserts that information on the web exists in a “permanent state of flux, in that, freed from authorial and physical limitation, any net user can interact with [it]”. I believe that the interactivity of the web will allow for a more relevant, more democratic form of journalism, closely criticised and regulated by the very audience for whom it is produced. With regards to how new media relates to critical media studies, I believe that there is much merit in research of the ways in which people view new media, and the ways the new media act as filters to shape those perceptions of the media. We use cultural decoding to make sense of the advent of these new forms of media, and it is these new forms of media which give us the tools to decode them in a certain way. Lister mentions the need for critical study of “the wider processes through which media information and representations of the media is distributed, consumed and received by its various audiences.” Two major areas within new media which relate to critical media studies are “the shift from modernity to post-modernity” (and the perception that new media are one of the main manifestations of post-modernity) and the connection between new media and intensifying processes of globalisation - as seen in the expansion of the global village, via search engines such as Google (Bucy 2005). New media are seen as both cause and effect of these changes. Lister also asserts that internet thought is “modular, non-linear, malleable and co-operative”. These characteristics of the internet result in what Lévy calls “the disappearance of the signature”. A “reading writing continuum” is formed when the lines between reader and writer become blurred. This new experience of media is of great importance, as it influences the ways in which people relate to themselves, to the world, and to new media itself. I also believe that new media cannot be called “old wine in new wineskins”. Lister asserts that “the nature of the change that was experienced [at the advent of new media] warranted an absolute marking off from what went before”. Our current new media differs vastly from previous forms of media in that it utilises digital, rather than analogue, forms. This allows for “media texts to be ‘dematerialised’”, “compressed into very small spaces”, “accessed at very high speeds” and “manipulated far more easily than analogue forms.” These, and the high level of interactivity afforded by new media, means that the media is more accessible to the public than ever before.

Bucy E (ed). 2005. Remediation in Living in the Information age: A New Media Reader. USA: Thomson Wadsworth *
Lister, Martin [et al.]. 2002. New Media and Technologies in New media : a critical introduction . London : Routledge

Why learn xhtml?

Why learn xhtml? Due to the profusion of advanced web design tools available to the new media journalist, it may be tempting to overlook the value of learning xhtml, the absolute basics of web design. However, it is in fact extremely important, because xhtml forms the building blocks of any work done in new media, and is the underlying common language which links all aspects of the emerging field. Firstly, it is not enough for a new media journalist to simply be proficient in the journalistic aspects of new media (eg: writing for the internet, or how to choose video footage for the internet) – for the web site to work as a dynamic package, one must master all the technical aspects of online journalism. Secondly, if one is to use powerful web design programs such as Fireworks or Dreamweaver, one should have an understanding of the fundamentals (xhtml), so that these packages are used merely as aids to enhance one’s ability to create web pages. Bus Kraus points out that knowledge of xhtml allows one to edit the code while one is using these programs, to allow for creativity and innovation. Templates can be personalised and customized to suit the individual needs of the designer. He also says that the ability to edit code gives makes it possible to “create optimized easy-to-manage web sites that upload and download faster, and enhance search engine optimization”, because one can do away with unnecessary and superfluous code. Knowing xhtml also helps one to learn other markup languages such as XML, SVG, SMIL and RSS more easily, as they rely on the same syntax. This is useful to any new media journalist, because one has more abilities and can manipulate a variety of coding languages. It is also particularly useful for new media journalists to learn xhtml because it makes one more independent of web design programs. If one is on a tight deadline and there is no access to these applications, a journalist can generate news from any computer, as one is able to use basic standard programs (such as Notepad) to create a basic webpage.


Bud Kraus 2000 - 2007 TryNet, Inc. 5 Good Reasons to learn XHTML and CSS.
http://www.joyofcode.com/reasons_to_learn.html

Intro to XHTML .A Tutorial for the Beginner.
http://www.sarahdopp.com/docs/Dopp_XHTML_Tutorial.pdf

Top XHTML. Learn XHTML Tutorial.
http://www.topxml.com/xhtml/