Week 2- Potential Research Questions

Hello, my name is Lilian Le-Dang and I am a first year student in the MI program, in the Critical Information Policy Studies (CIPS) concentration.

My current interests are in the use and regulation of various information communication technologies (ICTs) and more generally of the internet and the virtual/digital world. For this first blog post (assigned, as suggested by Luker at the end of Ch1) I will be specifically examining copyright infringement in YouTube videos.

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In fifteen minutes and without any aids (to recall references):

1)      Issue: YouTube videos are quickly taken down thanks to algorithms, programmed to detect the contextual meta-data.* However, the main issue is that these algorithms do not screen for the actual content of the video. As a result, parody videos may be taken down, DJ mixes of copyrighted songs, among other content used in accordance to fair use regulations (e.g. non-profit, for education/ideals of freedom of information/open access etc.) also get taken down in the process.  

2)      Some potential research questions:
           

·         What do these ‘big data’ sorting algorithms, as seen on video sharing websites, have implication on the value of human labour in ‘sorting’ videos by copyright infringement?

·         Who does copyright affect in this new medium (e.g. on the internet; video sharing platforms/sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion)? In particular, paying attention to the affected who may consider the internet as a space for democracy, accessing information (open access) and the freedom of speech and expression, as opposed to other actors such as those claiming copyright infringement.

After this brief exercise, the missing citation indicated by the * would have been attributed to the reference below:

Reference

Agrawal, S., & Sureka, A. (2013). Copyright Infringement Detection of Music Videos on YouTube by Mining Video and Uploader Meta-data. In Bhatnagar, V., & Srinivasa, S. (Eds.), Big data analysis: Second International Conference, BDA 2013, Mysore, India, December 16-18, 2013, proceedings (pp. 48-67). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.