The Web Difference

“The record business, or at least that of the major labels, is foundering, as CD sales spiral downward. But South by Southwest thrives on the plain fact that people still love music: making it, hearing it, dancing to it, even marketing it.” -Jon Pareles, NYT

The NY Times featured an article this past week on Austin’s South by Southwest music festival, and it made some interesting observations about today’s music industry that I thought were relevant to our discussion of the web difference in the music world. The author reiterates the point made in class that more and more musicians will turn to concert sales to make their living (as opposed to record sales). He ultimately characterizes the festival as “as close as the concert business gets to a level playing field.” He adds, “Big names and small play the same beery clubs, through the same sound systems, without their accustomed arena video setups or undistracted audiences.”

So in the growing popularity of these live music festivals, we see another example of the Web breaking down barriers to entry in the music business, a development which we in turn expect to improve information flow, increase choice, and drive competition.

I don’t know much about the festival, but Wikipedia says it is the largest revenue-producing event for the city of Austin – bigger than things like UT football games and even the more storied Austin City Limits music festival! (For more, see this article.) So it seems clear that the internet – by bringing about phenomena like the decreasing importance of major record labels, the popularization of off-label music on the Web, and increasing fan demand for live concerts – is also having a significant impact on local, non-Web entities like local governments/ economies. I think all this is interesting because music is one area where the Web has enabled a distinct online culture (MySpace, Bradsucks) to develop, but everything we’re seeing now suggests that the benefits from this online community are being transferred to (or at least shared with) the non-Internet world.

Brad of Bradsucks seemed to be focused more on the opportunities to make (and distribute) a new kind of music that have been made possible by the Web. He said he was less into the live performance opportunities, and is happiest when he’s at his computer, mixing and recording songs. But for many other musicians, the internet is changing the landscape of the live music industry and, in so doing, creating all kinds of opportunities to do what they love most – perform in front of a music-loving audience. All in all, it seems like the web difference in the music world has benefited all musicians. I wonder if this is truly a Pareto improvement vis-à-vis the artists themselves – or if there are some musicians out there who were happier before all these changes?

Hi all,

We read some Margaret Jane Radin in Property 1 and I thought I’d share an excerpt from (and my thoughts on) an article on Radin and Hegel that I found on this HLS Cyber Law site called “The Bridge” (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/Philosophy/takings2e.htm). The excerpt is particularly relevant to our discussion earlier this semester about identity and the web, and also to my paper, as planned thus far:

“Hegel maintained that a human being cannot live a full or proper human life, a life that matches up to the special human capacity for freely exercised agency, without coming to a full consciousness and appreciation of herself as a person sharing a society and a culture with other human beings and indeed sharing with them the making of that society and culture. In Hegel’s view, furthermore, achievement of this kind of self-appreciation is not possible except through a person’s voluntary and designed interactions with the material and social worlds — interactions that leave on those worlds the mark or imprint of her agency, her efficacy, in a way that not only is visible to her but that she knows is visible to others, as her work. But people cannot, in general, have much hope of imprinting themselves on the material and social worlds in this way (Hegel says) unless they can be made secure in their control over parcels of the material world, extended through at least a moderate length of time. Hence, the institution of private property is justified in a consequentialist manner, as conducive to the fulfillment of a basic and universal human interest.”

So I might be writing my paper about employers digging up information about their (current or prospective) employees by checking out social network site profiles, and there’s an important concept I want to write about that this excerpt might help me to articulate: one major web difference is the extension of digital natives’ (Palfrey) personhood, manifested today in the particularly personal nature of social network profiles. Although Hegel thought that one’s “control over parcels of the material world” was the only way she could come to “a full consciousness and appreciation of herself as a person sharing a society and a culture with other human beings”; we now also have social networking profiles to serve the same purposes referenced in the excerpt above. Our profiles are filled with pictures going back three or four years, all cataloged and tagged. They feature wall posts from our other members of networked communities, archived over the same years-long span. In Facebook, profile content is so central that users’ welcome pages display, as the default, an RSS news feed which alerts them all of the alterations, no matter how minor, their friends’ have recently made to their profiles.  These alterations are so important because they signal, to members of their social networks, potential changes in she perceives herself and how she wishes to be perceived.  Essentially, to a “digital native,” a social networking profile is a time-lapsed aggregation of her agency–a passworded, limited-access archive of the very “interactions with the material and social worlds” which (legitimately, despite protestations of “digital immigrants” [Palfrey]) embody a significant element of her personhood.

Because these profiles embody a boundary-blurring extension of their users’ personhood, they deserve special (legal, I’ll argue in my paper) treatment in certain cases. One such case: employers are newly enabled by means of “sturking” to blur traditional boundaries between considerations of their (again, current or prospective) employees’ professional lives and considerations of their personal lives. It is increasingly urgent that we address the disconnect between the norms of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants,” (again, Palfrey 🙂 ) and I’m using my paper to explore this disconnect in relation to a specific, concrete issue that is likely to have social and economic impact on our country (and on my generation, gosh darnit!).

Danah Boyd explains the proliferations of “Fakester” profiles on Friendster in “None of This is Real”: “The early adoption of Friendster was riddled with playful interactions, most notably the proliferation of ‘fakesters’–invented profiles used, among other things, to help signal group and cultural identification and allow people to play within the system” (emphasis supplied). To the extent that social network profiles have become the major interface through which many people present themselves to their online communities, they have also become the major interface through which many people explore their identities by grooming, manipulating, and experimenting with these profiles. Digital Natives’ ability to explore our own identities through experimenting with these profiles is a benefit our society might value much more (and, I hope, legally protect the privacy of) if we re-conceptualize these profiles as extensions of personhood (Radin).

I welcome anyone who has the patience to wade through this to Please, Please, Please comment, because this post is the first time I’ve put down my thoughts about my paper in any kind of format besides an outline.

The blogging group has created a meta-blog. Check it out by clicking here. There are some great posts about blogging, ranging from the history of the blog to Youtube and blogging to the role of blogs as news providers. Be sure to leave comments! As fascinating as the internal discussion has been so far, it will be far better with your commentary. Happy blogging.

A study by Nature seems to have shown that Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of accuracy of scientific entries. Of course Britannica disputes that finding vehemently. This article highlights how collaborative contribution on Wikipedia has been able to unearth more information. At the same time, the “egalitarian” nature of Wikipedia, and in particular, the freedom for everyone to “mold” the truth, has led to a lot of distrust. [Wiki may, however, be not as egalitarian as it seems. It has recently been accused of accepting bribes to change a wiki entry and remove libellous entries.]Most people still think Wiki can only be cited as a secondary source. Somehow it still cannot gain as much credibility as established encyclopedias.

There is an article on how a third party Google application has been used to steal gmail log-in ids. It also describes some of the security problems plaguing online web services such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. This reminds me of our earlier class on privacy issues on the web. Our personal information collected by third parties is never secure. More and more people are ceding their privacy rights to Google because of its popularity, yet simultaneously, Google is becoming an increasingly popular target for security breaches.

Metadata is information about information

Passing around a copy of the New York Times the class highlights what in the paper is metadata. David Weinberger, who is leading the class, wonders why no one chose to highlight the headline as metadata, which boldly proclaims Spitzer’s indiscretions (John Palfrey suggests it was perhaps too seedy for us!). The problem is that the headline can be data itself, we even have headine news. But the headline is also imparting information about the information in the article which makes is a borderline case, it tells you about the article only if you choose to read it. Is the font size information? Metadata? Yes, it tells you in all caps this guy screwed up big. Placement on the page is also metadata. So the newspaper itself is metadata, even the difference between NYT online and the paper version in terms of space. The fact that something appears in the print version gives us information about the article because there is limited space (claims of all the news that’s fit to print notwithstanding). Does the space between words tell us something? (other than the dominance of oppressive mainstream gramatical structures!) Spaces are metadata because they show you the end of the information you care about, you are told this is the end of the word.

Existential Crisis Alert after the jump

I googled the core core question of the class, “Is the Web Different?” The first, second, and sixth results seem to indicate that this guy may have an opinion on the topic.

Since Professor Weinberger tends to be reluctant to urge us to read his works, I will do the urging for him. His essay can be found here. Enjoy!

To build on what I said in class, while no one seems to have suggested using the statistically improbable phrases tool on Amazon to check for plagiarism, people are using both Google Books and Amazon’s ‘search within this book’ tool for that purpose.

An article in Slate suggests Google Books could be used to discover long-existing plagiarism.

Similarly, another source suggests that Google Books and Amazon are the “greatest plagiarism detector ever created.”

As you might have guessed, lively Wikipedia debates are not restricted to “serious” topics like JFK and waterboarding. The Onion AV Club recently posted a list of 12 Surprisingly Controversial Wikipedia Pages, including Geordi La Forge, Barry Manilow and Speedy Gonzales. They’ve helpfully plucked out the discussion page highlights so that you don’t have to slog through them yourself. Also, the Wikipedia page on “truth” is apparently itself controversial. Sorry if I just blew your mind.

Can anyone “own” knowledge? Does the web make us think differently about the nature of ownership of information or expression?

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has passes a motion for Open Access to Scholarly Articles and Harvard Law School is considering a similar policy.

Junior faculty members consistently face the battle with tenure; the main requirement is to have an article published in a scholarly journal. Professors sometimes spend years waiting for an article to be published; one’s article must be accepted by a journal, peer reviewed and then published. Before being published an author must agree to a licensing agreement

Traditional Publishing Paradigm; author gives up copyright to journal

Stage 0: If the professor post working papers online. Most contracts restrict the author’s ability to direct students to working papers online. Well-accomplished journals will have contract that ensure that a previous work on the article cannot be made available author, but they are unable to control the SSRN.

Stage 1: Making of the License
Professor will give article along with rights to journal. In return author will receive intangible rewards including prestige and tenure.

Stage 2: Library buys article
Journal receives money from the library in return for a copy of the journal. Hardcopies are cheaper than online forms.

Stage 3: Professor 2 wants to use article for class
Journal receives money from the professor in return for allowing the professor to use it in his course pack.

Stage 4: Another author wants to put article in his book
Journal receives money from the author and the author is allowed to include the article in his or her book.

The traditional publishing paradigm benefits the journal much more than the professor. The market allows for the journals to conduct price discrimination. Journals are value added: they collect and present articles conveniently, have access to related work and know professor 2 in stage 3 for peer review. Faculty members have to pay for articles in stage 3 and are rarely allowed an allowance for their own article (Harvard Business School has recently allowed for authors to receive 100pdfs). While wealthy universities give allowances to their faculty for this purpose, sometimes students have to pay for the articles when buying for course packs. This is a case for journals ownership of knowledge.

University-Research relationship and Copyright law

Traditionally faculty is in work for hire contract. University split the money made off research, faculty remain happy and university will improve endowment and reputation. (Ex: Stanford benefiting from Google). As long as universities can assert rights from under copyright law, parties will usually bargain for a result that is beneficial for both parties. Although universities’ probably do not have rights to undergraduate work the line becomes fuzzy at the level of graduate work.

Open Access Grant Paradigm

Stage 1: License
Professor enters a contract with the university to grant licenses in return for the university giving the author access to the collection. University may make article open to the public. Old may still have control of the articles prior to Open access, but will not have exclusivity right to article not published under open access. All journals will have the same rights as before, but will reap less benefits then before

• Ex: FAS Open Access Agreement
o Nonexclusive (grant to as many people as the university wants and does not exclude journals)
o Worldwide
o Paid up (no additional consideration)
o Irrevocable (once the author contract with university: he or she may not take it back)
o Restriction on grant: right to distribute except for profit (exception under stage 3, where the professor uses an article in course pack)

Stage 2: Libraries
Libraries will continue to pay for journals, because they will be unable to receive the all the articles through open access. As open access grows, journals will receive less income from hard and soft copies.

Stage 3: Professor 2
Professor 2 will not longer be paying for open access articles in course packs

Scenario 1: Faulty may opt-out of Open Access under FAS and proposed HLS agreements

Some non-tenured professor may want to be published in elite distinguished articles and have the option to opt-out of open access. Deans want to keep their faculty happy and are glad to have there article published in elite journals A problem may arise if the dean does not want the article published in a particular journal. JP ask is this automatic waiver better and does this action violate the reasoning behind open access? Is the waiver better, because it saves on transaction cost? Is it easier for Harvard to take this stance because Harvard has prestige, that elite journals consider their value added.

Scenario 2: The effects of every faculty having open access

Will elite market-leading journals go out of business?

JP and class say no. Rather these journals will create a new business model. They may not be able to reap the benefits from owning the exclusive rights to articles, but they will still have exclusive rights to older articles. The Value Added that is intrinsic in journals remains: journals are a gateway and filter that separates the good from so-so articles through peer review. Elite journals may begin to compensate peer-reviewers, this may create overzealous reviewers and a push for more profitable work, but maintaining a good reputation of brand and of profession can combat these two pitfalls. A related example is CNN, Fox and MSNBC remaining in world full of bloggers. Although Carl Malamud is preparing a database the will put an end to companies profiting off of free government documents.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Malamu…). Another alternative suggested is for elite journals to create scarcity as it relates to the relationship; professors may only peer review for certain journals. (For more understanding of compensation read Fischer Chapter 6 alternative compensation system).

Scholarly Societies

Forces Societies to focus on receiving income from conferences rather than journal.

Open Access Grant Paradigm for Harvard Law School

The difference between FAS and HLS is that law journals are mostly student run.

Stage 1: License
Law Journals receive several variations on the amount of rights they receive. Some journals may have exclusivity right for a year. While other produce a hard copy, sell a soft copy to an online index and put up a free copy on their website. In return professors receive subciters and prestige. In addition both side receive the features above in Stage 1 of Open Access Grant Paradigm.

Stage 2: Libraries
Law Journals receive money from the libraries when they buy hard copies or buy a access to an online index. In addition both side receive the features above in Stage 2 of Open Access Grant Paradigm.

Stage 3: Prof 2
If a professor is not a member of the open access community and the university has not opened the article to the public, the rate of the article is set by the law journal and determine by size and scope of distribution
How Does Open Access Affect Law Journals?

Considering the fact that most law journals immediately put up a free online version following release, the affect is small. Law Journals can still sell to indexes, because they make it easier for customers to access more articles through archiving and creating classifications. Law Journals have other sources of income. (Example: Harvard Law Review and the Bluebook and other journals have sponsors)

Arguments Against Open Access and Questions Remaining (by JP and the class)
• Could seriously damage student journals
o Smaller and newer journals who make money strictly off of book sales
• Law Reviews may require professors to submit waiver along with article, therefore they will not accept some articles
• Irrevocable
o What if some publisher wants to put an article into a book that he will sell for profit, but will not include article if he cannot reap the benefit
• Is there a problem with professors deciding to opt-out
o Will professors be judged on decision?
• Why do we need Open Access if most law journals already have online?
o Is there a values in saying that we want information to be free, to encourage other fields to do the same
• Want a deposit of knowledge

Further Reading
Jean-Nicolas Druey, “Information Cannot be Owned.” (an argument for free information)
Open Access for HLS http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/scholaracce…