A couple of ideas that were touched on in this week’s symposium stand out in my mind:

• We do not have freedom of speech online

I think the accessible and widespread nature of the internet has created a generation of tech savvy young people who are so used to using the web in whatever ways we want, we forget that everything we publish on the medium is publicly available for moderation. Other users can see what we post and read what we write. With simply the click on a button, someone who doesn’t like what we have to say can “report” or delete the content. However we use the internet so casually that we forget that our content can be viewed by anyone and everyone, and similarly everything we post can be reported. Copyright law also inhabits our ability to express certain ideas online. It stops us from developing the work of others or re-posting it to demonstrate our own ideas. These factors inhibit our freedom of speech online.

 

• Copyright law must be enforced by the copyright holder

While it is “the law”, in reality copyright must be enforced by the owner of the work because there is so much content on the web that it would be impossible for a limited number of people to keep track of it all. If we’re being honest, another reason the copyright holder must enforce the law him/herself is because often they’re the only person that really cares enough to enforce the law. Baring this in mind, it is easy for people to breach copyright law without being punished. In fact, this happens all the time. Take memes, gifs, video mashups, for example. Breaches of copyright law are all over the internet. The copyright law is simply not being enforced.

 

In hindsight, both of these concepts seem logical, even obvious, however I have never really considered them before.