Copying: “Sharing” or Theft?

In the 1500s, infor­ma­tion was rel­a­tive­ly easy to con­trol. How­ev­er, when print­ing was intro­duced to the world, it tru­ly threat­ened the con­trol. Now, in the mod­ern world, under the quick devel­op­ment of tech­nolo­gies, the Inter­net has devel­oped to an extent that we can now share the infor­ma­tion all can be shared with each other.

The video “Steal This Film 2″ tells us that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an act of copy­ing. The way we com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er online is like a way to repro­duce and share the infor­ma­tion. We can see the same infor­ma­tion on the dif­fer­ent web­sites. Copy­ing is a way to communicate.

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Brew­ster Kahie, OF THE Inter­net Archive, said, “Chi­na makes cer­tain thing hap­pen that in ret­ro­spect seem kind of barbaric.”

Some of the things stat­ed in the “Steal This Film 2” video, are exam­ples of the sit­u­a­tions inside Chi­na. In Chi­na, because of the advanced tech­nolo­gies, the sales of movies and music albums with copy­rights has risen over the years and is becom­ing worse each year. This could be due to the con­stant price increase of copy­right mate­ri­als. Peo­ple choose to lis­ten to music and watch movies online rather than pur­chas­ing. There are var­i­ous ille­gal web­sites in Chi­na. In 2005, Jack­ie Chan held an anti-pira­cy event in Bei­jing and invit­ed Schwarzeneg­ger to join in this event. Because of China’s large pop­u­la­tion pira­cy can nev­er be stopped.

The jour­nal­ists in Chi­na have the same sit­u­a­tion as the artists. If you post a report, sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, there will be more reports that share the same ideas, same pho­tos and the same head­lines on the web­sites. Every jour­nal­ist in Chi­na is find­ing out the way to get the fresh infor­ma­tion first and get the “huge- bomb” news.

The copy­ing is like a two-edged sword. On one side, it is tru­ly a way to share the infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er. Also it can encour­age the devel­op­ment in Jour­nal­ism, Busi­ness and many more. On the oth­er side, it is theft, because the copiers steals oth­er’s infor­ma­tion to get the goal and receive the benefits.

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Felix Stalder, a media the­o­rist, said,” Why do we share cul­ture, why do we share lan­guage, because we imi­tate each oth­er, this is how we learn, and this is how the new things com­ing to soci­ety and keep us togeth­er, because we copy from each other.” 

In my opin­ion, free infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion gives peo­ple more space to use and cre­ate oth­er things. For exam­ple, in the case of Sher­pard Fairey V. AP.Los Ange­les street artist Shep­ard Fairey used “com­put­er­ized paint by the num­bers” and “copy-and-paste style” to cre­ate the high­ly rec­og­nized “Hope” image of Barack Oba­ma. This case shows that we nev­er know what exact­ly can be used and what can­not use.

Also, we can eas­i­ly find these pho­tos, videos, infor­ma­tion to use from the Inter­net and from advanced tech­nolo­gies. Besides, jour­nal­ists can use this case as a warn­ing. Jour­nal­ists must be care­ful to choose what they can pub­lish and what they can­not pub­lish. We can­not say this per­son is ille­gal and he should be caught, because as I said above, it is a way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing which every­one has that rights to.

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Sur­vival for journalists

I believe the sur­vival for jour­nal­ists in this infor­ma­tion cli­mate is becom­ing more impor­tant than before. The con­trol of the infor­ma­tion will be threat­ened increas­ing­ly, we can­not stop oth­ers using your infor­ma­tion, pho­tos and videos. On the oth­er hand, as  jour­nal­ist, some­times, you may want to com­bine your infor­ma­tion with oth­er’s infor­ma­tion. I pre­fer the copy­ing is more like a way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and shar­ing than theft. I think it is a way to encour­age the devel­op­ment of jour­nal­ism. It can let the jour­nal­ism be better.