Mutimedia Authorship slide show

Theory

Authorship over the content that is displayed on the Internet, especially on collaborative websites is not at all too clear. More and more often there are websites on which you can upload a text message, a quirky thought, a work of text or art, anything you can imagine. There has been an explosion of this type of websites, which seem to be a mass collaboration between people who without having to know each other, all add to the project at hand and make it a reality. Along with all of this great, hysterically funny, beautiful content out there, there still lingers a question. Who owns that content once it has been put up online and in the time thereafter and do we need to review the rules that exist on authorship in multimedia?

It seems that if people are so willing to post things on websites like Texts From Last Night or Urban Dictionary, then they are not giving too much thought on whether or not they want the have authorship over their creation. Barthes tells us that the author is killed by the text; once the thought is on paper or on a computer screen it no longer belongs to you. Yet it is this anonymity that comes with being able to post things and not have them immediately credited to your name that gives people a sense of freedom, which is more precious than being able to claim the thought as their own.

There is a greater willingness to share whatever you have, be it a picture of your cat, an anecdote or a secret, with anyone who has access to a computer. Or maybe people just aren’t reading the super fine print that warns you: once posted on this website you relinquish all power over the content and will not try to claim any type of profit later in the future. It becomes a dilemma on some level when a profit starts being made off the content that other people posted. There is a huge gray area and somewhere in it, the orginal author - the person who had that thought, wrote that story, or took that picture, becomes completely lost. What then is their place in all of this?

It is a problem between the willingness of people to contribute to multimedia websites and what or how much authorship they have once money starts being made off their creations.

Kimberly's Research Proposal

Websites such as TextsFromLastNight.com, FMyLife.com and BeforeIDieIWantTo.org are a huge collaboration between the person who came up with the idea for the project and the actual contributors who bring this project to life. There are the posts that make up the entirety of the project but there is also the person who came up with the idea of gathering all these posts up in one place so that they create a bigger impact. Without having a central place in which all those related posts, be it funny events that happened, things you want to do before you hit the bucket or anything else - they would just be a story between you and your friends or maybe even just an idea in your head. Yet having a website that is devoted solely to displaying those floating thoughts and putting them out there for everyone else to see creates a relationship between the person who posted something and anyone who can relate to that post on some level or other. There are thousands upon thousands of people who go online and check on these websites daily to see what is new; they can just get a chuckle out of them, have a deep impression made on them, or use whatever they read to start a conversation with someone. This brings up a good question: who do those posts end up belonging to then, though? For the most part they are anonymous and only you know that you posted something up. A good example of how you can quickly lose authorship over the thought you posted is Texts From Last Night. I know plenty of people who just use the quotes on that website and have even claimed them as their own! Also, once you post something up on the website then does it become property of the website owner? Not all of these websites have easy to find Rules & Regulations so that you know exactly what you're signing on to by posting something up. It's neat to be able to have tons of people see your thoughts but once they are up on the internet, anyone can claim them as their own and it won't be so unique anymore.

The bookmarks I plan on using include:

Texts From Last Night
LL&BB "Texts From Last Night" http://textsfromlastnight.com/. 9/12/09

F My Life
"F My Life" http://www.fmylife.com/faq. 9/12/09

Before I Die I Want To
Kenney, Nicole. "Before I Die I Want To" http://beforeidieiwantto.org/index.html. 9/12/09

Article about TFLN
Boog, Jason. "Read your "Texts From Last Night" in a book" http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/deals/read_your_texts_from_last_night_in_a_book__120239.asp. 9/12/09

Plagiosphere

While reading Tenner's article "The Rise of the Plagiosphere," I began to think of all the times that papers of my own have gone through that screening for plagiarism. It's hard to fathom when anything will be original anymore if it is constantly being searched for similarities with countless of other works of texts. Everything in the world, be it ideas, lyrics, books, has always been intertwined with some other work that exists out there. One thought will inspire another. Lethem's article "The Ecstasy of Influence: a plagiarism" drives that point home. When we find things that are similar to one another are we to assume that one person cheated and decided to copy the other? If so, then who do we say is in the right, who came first? The thought that what we say, write, think up maybe isn't so original anymore - to me, it's devastating. There is a certain feeling you have from coming up with your own thoughts and putting them out there for the world to see, via whichever form of media you choose; when all of a sudden you see that those thoughts and ideas were there before you - it's a kind of disillusionment. No one will deny taking inspiration from anyone else either - but where do we draw the line? How are we to define between pure coincidence, inspiration, and plagiarism if everything is constantly being compared to everything.