Lecture 6 Summary

In today's lecture Adam discussed the various current technological applications we use today which are continually emerging alongside the Internet.

Instant Messaging (IM) first became popular with the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988. However only text-based back then it was popular because of the real time communication between users. This was before chatrooms were implemented. ICQ (I Seek You) became an alternative as it allowed users to add personal contacts and to leave messages for users to retrieve at a later time. After the success of ICQ, a blethora of Instant Messengers emerged onto the market, today there are Instant Messaging software such as MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Googlechat etc.

Portable music and podcasting are clearly popular with the current generation of Internet users. This led to the development of numerous portable MP3 players such as Apple iPods and iRivers. MP3 are a proprieter format which means copyright laws apply to it.

Peer to Peer (P2P) and Filesharing are used by nearly everyone nowadays, it is a convienient way to exchange files and data between users however there is a lot of debate on the legitimacy of the data distributed.

Voice over IP (VoIP) and Voice Chat are technological applications that are currently emerging in our society at the moment. The introduction of these technologies are either going to be embraced by telephone companies or refused as they primarily allow users to make cheap telephone calls.

The second half of the lecture discusses the topics of Free and Open source software. Firstly Open source software is free for anyone to download and use an example of this would be the Linux operating system. The figure responsible for the introduction of the idea is Richard Stallman, which he refers to as copyright flipped over.
GPL is legally binded contract that control the use of the free and open source software, which protects the people whom invest time in making really good programs that are not sold for commercial gain. I learnt that Open source software offers us a way to get completely free software which is ecnomical, legal and moral.

It was interesting to find that Creative Commons allows people to apply a license to things that they create and subject to legal protection of some of their rights while being free from copyright. It gives people the freedom to use information without the free of being sued.
The EFF is similar to the Creative Commons as it deals with the law and digital media across the entire spectrum. They are both non profit organisations.

I found this lecture to be very informative as I gained some knowledge on the stuff that I could "borrow" from other people without being sued by them. But in order to know explictly about the laws that apply to digital content and such, I will read up thoroughly on this topic at my leisure. Yay.