Our Class Wiki - So Far

I choose the topic "Intellectual Property Law and New Media" for our class wiki.

So far, I've been researching for new media copyright law cases including DeCCS and DVD-related DMCA cases. I used two books, Intellectual Property Law & Interactive Media written by Lamoureux, Baron and Stewart and Intellectual Properyt and Information Wealth by Peter K. Yu and some other online articles. I've edit my wiki providing different intellectual property laws and how new media technology/digital age alter several IP laws. The WIPO which is the World Intellectual Property Organization is the specialized agency of the United Nations on developing a balnced and accessible international intellectual property system. On my wiki page, I've added "Intellectual Property and New Media Technology" and "Intellectual Property Laws", I also added the photos to the web page. I will add more to my wiki after researching more about the international IP law where it involved global economic policies, global culture issues where internet change everything and how IP law affects the maintenance of the international legal environment.

P2P File Sharing

The common definition for file sharing is the exchange of files between computer users. File sharing contains text files, pictures, films, videos or even programs that can be shared and can be uploaded or downloaded through the usage of internet connection. This practice of exchanging files from computers to computers is the easiest and quickest way to transmit data with one or more users. The act of file sharing is commonly legal unless copyrighted files are transmitted through internet network without proper permission or authorization.
P2P file sharing is also known as peer to peer; it is the type of file sharing where the files or programs are set up as a server ready to be installed and run into a shared folder for large files to be downloaded or make available for upload. Millions of users including us share files online. We are connected from our computer to a network sharing the same program/software. A great advantage of using P2P file sharing is that we can excess to numerous information for free.
As mentioned in the article of Wired 13.01: The BitTorrent Effect,  BitTorrent is one of the example of P2P file sharing. The files of BitTorrent to be extracted is also known as the "seed" that must be uploaded and downloaded using their specific software. After the files, mostly are music, games, videos and movies can be fully access and use with other softwares to open them after the seed is 100% complete in downloading. This sharing protocol are used for distributing large amount of datas. It is a free and easy accessible open source file sharing program utilize to share date more efficiently and at faster speed. Another popular P2P file sharing is eMule similar to LimeWire. It is an application that provide direct exchange of zip files and sources. Comparing with other P2P file sharing, eMule is great at providing a large user base and full content. Many other open source sharing are created to sustain better and legal sharing environment.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality have been the ongoing issues for years. Now, everything evolved technology and the internet, people are more likely expose to identity theft and the birth of new media bought the dangerous of privacy to another level. Due to internet, privacy is being violated more and more. Because of that, as internet users, we should learn how to protect ourselves to avoid these things from happening.  Privacy is a rising concern, although with IP addresses help tracking one's information when fraud occurs, privacy can only be protected under certain circumstances and degrees. Since privacy and confidentiality mainly deals with personal information, if we are always aware of and liable of keeping our information secure and confidential, we can certainly prevent the loss of our privacy. It is obvious that the breakthrough of technology brings profound benefits and convenience to our society, but at the same time, it is now our job to guard our own privacy and confidentiality. The improvements of new media are innovative and remarkable where users can share their ideas and opinions, but we must protect ourselves every step of the way while using new media.

Advice to Baruch College

An advice to improve Baruch College by using new media is definitely try to offer more online classes for students. It would be extremely helpful especially for those who work and study full time. Baruch has a very limited amount of online classes. Next to that, we should try to improve Blackboard in terms of communication and social networking. It seems that Baruch College do not offer many options for students to interact with Professors. If Baruch students can login to a certain web page where discussions can be taken place at ease where one can provide feedbacks and suggestions, they will maintain a better learning and networking environment. I see that Baruch have been adapting Facebook to create groups such as the Student Government page, but not many are aware of their pages, so maybe Baruch can use new media to promote their pages and even try to adapt other varieties of communication tools such as Twitter to update students with current events.

About My Term Research Paper

For my term paper, I choose the topic: Analysis: Wiki’s Positive and Negative Effects on Society.
I did my researches on this topic through the Baruch library's databases and borrow several books related to the rapid growth of new media technology and the shift in media culture. The Baruch library's database is where I found my two scholar sources. I did google a little bit about the potential of new media technology on increasing interactive mass media, ecommerce and etc.

On my research, I have traced back to the first creation of wikis and how the web page was first formed. I have learned that wikis are slowly adopt in many other fields of society as it was not planned at first. I also found out that blogs were actually the first one on gain popularity especially after the 911 attack where people use blog to express their voices and opinions as they pass along different videos and images and share them with other audiences. After the emerge of blogs, wikis' also graudally gaining its popularity especially because of the formation of Wikipedia, an entirely volunteer-contribution-driven encyclopedia.

I mainly choose this topic because I always thought of wiki as wikipedia, but as I research on them, I found out that the wiki systems, other than wikipedia, have more to offer. Wikis' mainly focusing on creating a co-author collaboration environment. I also find it interesting that the word "wiki" was actually originated from a Hawaiian word meaning "fast" or "quick."

I hope that my paper can contribute to the field of new media by clearly stated how new media technology is important in a way as it revolved our daily life enabling an increase in knowledge and incorporates interaction. Through my paper, I also want to point out that we should learn to adapt to different forms of new media technologies as well as allowing the integration between the old and the new in order to maximize their potential benefits.