Privacy & Confidentiality

The rise of new media has raised concerns about privacy and confidentiality.  Privacy and confidentiality is used loosely when in comes to new media due to the openness and interactivity it offers.  Probably a common example that all if not most could relate to is social media accounts.  Many of us are into the newest kinds of social media and are willing to give up privacy and confidentiality of personal information in order to build a profile that can be viewed by the general public.  Everything from our names to our birthdays to our interests to our faces are fair game when it comes to new media. 

But in relation to the readings, privacy and confidentiality issues are also raised when speaking about copyright materials and free/open software.  Starting with copyrights, we have all gone on YouTube and seen the various covers and fan-made videos that clearly have copyrighted material, most of the time in the form of a song.  However, some companies that own that particular song will remove the content completely due to legal matters.  As shown in the article, "As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes", many of videos have disappeared and been removed due to copyrighted material.  But from my personal experience, most individuals who use these copyrighted materials do so without any harm.  They mainly use it to express themselves, to show off their creativity.  It's something fun and no meant to hurt the company who owns the material.  Because of this, one must give credit to the owner/artist or even link it to a site for them to purchase it like iTunes.  But nonetheless this has been a rising issue with the evolution of new media and the easiness of obtaining and sharing certain materials.

To combat this issue of copyrighted material, there have been alternative sites where users can share their creativity with the world freely under specific terms and conditions that they determine.  For example, as seen on the Creative Commons website, they indicate that their main purpose is to "help share your knowledge and creativity to the world" by "developing, supporting, and stewarding legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation".  In simple terms, it allows users to showcase their originality and talents and be able to share it to the world by allowing free downloads of their content as long as it remains under certain terms.  Additionally, others have created free software such as GNU which is a free operating system.  Instead of paying expensive prices for certain computer programs, some sites have shared it their similar programs with the public by making it free to download and use.  As they have indicated, it offers "freedom".

When it comes to privacy and confidentiality, many of us take it for granted because new media has allowed us to manipulate it and publish it easily.  But know that there can be consequences if the material is perceived by the company to be used in a negative way.  The bottom line is BE CAREFUL!