In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling ...mission--"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible"--and its much-quoted motto, "Don't be evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google--and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid.
In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling ...mission—"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible"—and its much-quoted motto, "Don't be evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid.
In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling ...mission—"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible"—and its much-quoted motto, "Don't be evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid.
Responses to the reviews Vaidhyanathan, Siva
Revista Română de comunicare şi relaţii publice,
04/2020, Letnik:
22, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Professors Jakubowski, Haliliuc, and Buturoiu encountered Antisocial Media at a moment when many of the issues the book explores are daily news. They were deft enough to focus on the deeper goals and ...themes of the book, avoiding getting distracted by the latest breaking news about Facebook and its effects on democracy. For that I am grateful.
Copyright reflects far more than economic interests. Embedded within conflicts over royalties and infringement are cultural values—about race, class, access, ownership, free speech, and ...democracy—which influence how rights are determined and enforced. Questions of legitimacy—of what constitutes “intellectual property” or “fair use,” and of how to locate a precise moment of cultural creation—have become enormously complicated in recent years, as advances in technology have exponentially increased the speed of cultural reproduction and dissemination.
In Copyrights and Copywrongs , Siva Vaidhyanathan tracks the history of American copyright law through the 20th century, from Mark Twain’s vehement exhortations for “thick” copyright protection, to recent lawsuits regarding sampling in rap music and the “digital moment,” exemplified by the rise of Napster and MP3 technology. He argues persuasively that in its current punitive, highly restrictive form, American copyright law hinders cultural production, thereby contributing to the poverty of civic culture.
In addition to choking cultural expression, recent copyright law, Vaidhyanathan argues, effectively sanctions biases against cultural traditions which differ from the Anglo-European model. In African-based cultures, borrowing from and building upon earlier cultural expressions is not considered a legal trespass, but a tribute. Rap and hip hop artists who practice such “borrowing” by sampling and mixing, however, have been sued for copyright violation and forced to pay substantial monetary damages. Similarly, the oral transmission of culture, which has a centuries-old tradition within African American culture, is complicated by current copyright laws. How, for example, can ownership of music, lyrics, or stories which have been passed down through generations be determined? Upon close examination, strict legal guidelines prove insensitive to the diverse forms of cultural expression prevalent in the United States, and reveal much about the racialized cultural values which permeate our system of laws. Ultimately, copyright is a necessary policy that should balance public and private interests but the recent rise of “intellectual property” as a concept have overthrown that balance. Copyright, Vaidhyanathan asserts, is policy, not property.
Bringing to light the republican principles behind original copyright laws as well as present-day imbalances and future possibilities for freer expression and artistic equity, this volume takes important strides towards unraveling the complex web of culture, law, race, and technology in today's global marketplace.
Dosa Vaidhyanathan, Siva
The Virginia quarterly review,
04/2015, Letnik:
91, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Hotel Saravana Bhavan is one of the newer restaurants in Manhattan's Curry Hill neighborhood. Nothing about the restaurant's design panders to the nostalgia of the dozens of South Indian families who ...eat there every evening. Nothing about it evokes India, for that matter. This New York Saravana Bhavan is part of a growing chain of South Indian restaurants. Here, Vaidhyanathan explores real authentic South Indian food in big cities and explains why it's hard to find.
Consider two American films, twenty-four years apart, both starring Gene Hackman as a reclusive surveillance expert. The difference between the work done by Harry Caul, the naive, emotionally stunted ...private investigator played by Hackman in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film The Conversation, and the work done by Edward Lyle, the disaffected, cynical former spy Hackman portrays in the 1998 Tony Scott film Enemy of the State, is more than a matter of the tools they use. Adapted from the source document.
Private companies and government agencies are now creating and tapping into vastly more data than ever before. These data flows include enormous amounts of personal information and raise questions ...about privacy and intellectual policy that could have profound impacts on our lives. While data collection and creation are nearly ubiquitous, the instruments of collection and analysis are often hidden in order to track more natural behavior. Recent revelations of massive governmental data collection offer the country, and librarians in particular, an opportunity to discuss and question the societal implications of "Big Data," and the policies that govern them.
This paper takes measure of an emerging scholarly field that sits at the intersection of many important areas of study. Critical Information Studies (CIS) considers the ways in which culture and ...information are regulated by their relationship to commerce, creativity, and other human affairs. CIS captures the variety of approaches and bodies of knowledge needed to make sense of important phenomena such as copyright policy, electronic voting, encryption, the state of libraries, the preservation of ancient cultural traditions, and markets for cultural production. It necessarily stretches to a wide array of scholarly subjects, employs multiple complementary methodologies, and influences conversations far beyond the gates of the university. Economists, sociologists, linguists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, communication scholars, lawyers, computer scientists, philosophers, and librarians have all contributed to this field, and thus it can serve as a model for how engaged, relevant scholarship might be carried out. CIS interrogates the structures, functions, habits, norms, and practices that guide global flows of information and cultural elements. Instead of being concerned merely with one's right to speak (or sing or publish), CIS asks questions about access, costs, and chilling effects on, within, and among audiences, citizens, emerging cultural creators, indigenous cultural groups, teachers, and students. Central to these issues is the idea of 'semiotic democracy', or the ability of citizens to employ the signs and symbols ubiquitous in their environments in manners that they determine.
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