The “Right to Read” is a story predicting what it is like in the future when sharing digital copies of things, specifically in the story it was sharing digital copies of books. The dilemma started when someone needed to use another student’s laptop. The student being asked of this request had to think hard of the consequences of sharing his laptop. In these days, the copies have software that will track who opened the digital copy of the book. The person in the end allowed the person in trouble to access his laptop and if for whatever reason the person decided to read the books on the laptop, the software would at least think it was him reading and not the girl.
I think that patenting and licensing is starting to become restrictive on creativity and freedom of information. It is not entirely there yet where creativity is totally lost but people are more scared than ever to put out original content as in these days, nothing is purely original, something is a derivative of another and any little thing can be used by people to claim copyright. People are YouTube used to post video called “AMV” . These were pretty much just videos of anime or cartoons and usually fighting scenes with the background music being some type of rock band song at the time. People would say this is how YouTube became so big. However, now it is rare to see these videos as due to copyrights claims, these types of videos are taken down so quickly that there is no reason to continue creating it. Another argument is that creators on YouTube have said they are now more mindful than ever when it comes to their content because of copyright issues from other bigger companies. Since a lot of these creators now depend a majority of their income from YouTube. When even one video is demonetized, it can really hurt their income which hurts how they live.
A counter argument against my first argument supporting my stance could be that this type of video is just not as popular now which is by it is less seen. However, it could be said that because of copyright and videos being taken down so quickly without notice, it is the reason why it is not as popular now therefore, it is less seen. Counter argument to my second argument supporting my stance could be creators should branch out to other sites other than YouTube. Now this is true however, YouTube is so huge that leaving the platform is the same as quitting your job because the revenue would definitely not be the same. So creators are stuck with no real way of getting out.
I am supporting the current system as it is at the moment okay and I do not see it becoming any worse so long as we do not create software such as the one described in the story. These types of software may seem nice at first but they would lead to a world such as a world in that story. Where a student needs to think twice or 3 times to help a friend use his laptop.
Virackdara Chhom CP373 Blog 