RightS? Ownership?

I like the idea of “rule of thumb” in the reading of “lockdown” (Cory Doctorow, 7). It makes me think about what the purpose of using computer or Internet is.  I think most of the people would say “share information” especially in the time of 20^th century. Worldwide information transmission is absolutely necessary for nowadays, whether in business purpose or in personal purpose. When the information becomes more and more easy to exchange or copy, then it comes to a question “How to define the right of using that variety of intangible assets?” Then a series of arguments around copyright, license, encryption, fair use, patent, commercial and so on are making people go nut. It seems to me that people are making questions that will harm themselves. When people are making the things easily shared, they oppose people having them by all means at the same time.      

It is very ironic. The reading “The Public Domain”, says “The logic of the Internet Threat leads to the position that a network is either controlled or illegal. The better and cheaper the network, the tighter the control needed.”(James Boyle,25) However, the logic of Internet Threat is opposite of the logic of the Net. The idea of Internet is “freedom from centralized control, absence of intervention” as Boyle says.  Then I complain about the people who put things on the Internet although they are free to do so.  They should not blame people whosteal their things because they let people see it. It seems that it is selfish to say this. However, I have another thought when I put myself into the shoes. People like posting pictures on facebook. They want to share what they have for dinner; however, they don’t want people to use them for their own purpose. Things seems to be easily explained when I flip the situation.

Moreover, I am interested in the use of intellectual property rights on facebook. Here is the Facebook message, “For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos, you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.” In other word, Facebook can do and can legally do with my photos, videos, stories, and everything else I might be able to add everything it wants. That means I lost the control of my pictures.

Control and ways of use are the main issues of the computer information world. How we can share and control the things at the same time? It seems to me that if we want to share, we would give up our ownership.

“Rights” always come to a argument about “cost” and “benefits”. As copying costs approach zero, we should bear in mind that the intellectual property rights must approach perfect control. However, I think the logic behind this is a little bit contradicted, like, facebook provides a free platform for you to share your stuff (cost approach zero), then facebook has a right to use my stuff in commercial purpose. What is the logic behind this???

--Ring Sum Chiu