Practicum 5(?)

Ethics and Legality Practicum
So… in the technological age, people are incredibly familiar with copyright laws. Its just so easy, and sometimes so much fun, just to grab things off the internet and use them. And its way too easy to just claim ‘educational usage’ protection as a student.
But from this, there have been a lot of websites that popped up supplying these ‘law-exempt’ properties. Most of the time, yeah, they’re right and the material provided isn’t infringing on intellectual property rights. But for every website that doesn’t, there’s always some that leave you questioning whether you should download that file.
Of the three links provided for this practicum, the Teachers Pay Teachers site and Internet Sourcebook Project seemed entirely legit, following proper protocols and having copyright disclaimers and seem to truly want to know if they’ve broken any laws. That said, the last link to History in Photographs of the California Gold Rush didn’t seem so concerned.
In fact, they seemed more concerned about t-shirt and coffee mug sales than copyright. Sure, in some of the pictures there is a note saying “photos may be downloaded at no charge for use in non profit, educational research project”, of course one must email them for permission and make sure to credit “historichwy49.com”. This seems entirely legit, but… still.
I searched through their website and couldn’t find any sort of backing up of how they’ve received these pictures (through donation, records-searching, etc) and what their rights are. There’s no little footnote about legit ownership. Nothing. Under their web credits is a thank-you to their benefactors and the companies that they’ve listed as part of their provided ‘tour of Hwy 49′, but I failed to find anything talking about the picture.
If they have fair use, that’s great. Does a picture from so long ago really need to be worried about? Well, not really. But if we’re supposed to worry about the ethics of it all, some sort of credentials should be provided. Especially if I can go and buy a shirt or poster of this funky chick:

 ”Photo Credit: historichwy49.com”

 

Reading response

So, this weeks reading covered the danger that is copyright and plagiarism. It’s a scary thing. Almost any idea one has these days, you need to worry about the source of it.
It seems silly. Most days, I spend scoffing at the copyright labels on anything.
Even personal pictures online people are putting their own copyright label on it. Small works of poetry from unknown people posted on a blog is left with a copyright. Heck, even this blog is the intellectual property of myself. (though hey, if you want anything on this, by all means PLEASE take it).

It’s true that the digital age has made it a lot easier to accidentally break these laws. Just being able to have instant access to almost anything means that not thinking about citations and disclaimer labels is all too simple. But it doesn’t make the laws any less true.
I know that it’s important. That its the only thing that can keep companies in business, that people want to know that their information is safe from being abused by another. I understand this concept. I understand that the idea of keeping things open-source and completely free for use is naive.
But a small part of me wishes that if I wanted to grab a picture of some silly Disney character for public usage, I didn’t have to worry if I’d be receiving an email threatening law suit or pulling the site down.

Post 4

So for this weeks practicum, article, I pressed the random page button and landed on an article about Louis Pouzin.

The main point that encourages a belief in validity for this article is the discussion page.

Some articles are marked as “WikiProject Biographies”. These articles are held to different, higher standards.

One of the rules of this is that these articles must adhere to the following rule.

“Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous.”

This part is important to keeping out false information from the page.

If anyone ever needs reliable information on the man who invented the datagram and created one of the first versions of command-line, Wikipedia is a reliable source despite it’s deceptively small size.

Post 3

This scavenger hunt was… interesting to say the least. (and trust me, you don’t want to hear my litany of complaints).

Just to be finished with this, here are my three links I found. It may not be exact, but its the closest I got and the best links I found.

1. Earliest desc. of seance:

Seance Article

The only reason this link exists is because of the OED online. Researching the origins and history of seance led to this silly find. Earliest usages of a word can be very useful in tracking down popularity trends. Knowing it was a word from france led me to Proquest’s news database and a search for this.

2. Most detailed desc. of electric car in before 1910 book:

Electric Car Information

While there were easier sources to find on books about the car, this was the most technical source I could find on the inner makings of that car before 1910. Thanks Google Books for making it easy to find books in a time period search.

3. Best source for voting patterns in Fairfax:

Voting Patterns

So, this one’s a bit.. hinky. I figure the best source for any information is public records. Its not MY fault they’ve not been digitized, blame lack of funding… and interest. But this is the best source for the answers to any and all Fairfax data.

Extra Post

Its shocking, I know. Posting for something that WASN’T required. Its absolute madness, I know but bear with me.

I stumbled across this video a few years ago and I’ve used to it explain the Web and Web2.0 to friends and family that are slightly… behind on technology. I figured, what the hey, maybe it’ll be enlightening to someone else too.

 

Post 2

For the practicum assignment this week, the choice of computers was difficult. I couldn’t decide which computer actually seemed halfway decent. They all just seemed to be beep-boop lights that I had no interest in whatsoever. But as I read through them all, one seemed to be the most interesting. Okay, well the picture seemed interesting…

 The UNIVAC I. In 1951, it debuted as the first commercial computer that actually got some attention. Its shocking, such a big honking machine could actually be interesting.

But with 46 sales, it made a million for each of them. The first one of these was given to the US Census Bureau. Guess they had to have a VERY long training session to learn how to use this thing.

 

It uses magnetic tape memory with 1000 12-character words saved into it. Numbers were represented with 6 decimal codes. The input: the UNITYPER. A lovely typewriting station desk that looks like something out of Star Trek.  The printer output device, which was an extra 250,000 dollars, was another large station this thing came with.

Interesting factoid: the fifth was used by CBS to predict the results of the 1952 election. It got it right. Way to go Ginormous Computer.

Post 1

I’ll be first to admit, blogging isn’t the easiest for me. Its not the actual technology part. No, that’s the only fun part of it. The part I struggle with is finding something interesting enough to blog about. That’s why I’ve chosen to make this post about techno-silliness.

I know our first class lecture seemed to reinforce this idea that all historians are technophobes and that history and technology run in two different circles. But Technology and History have never seemed like foes to me. In fact, I’ve always tried to see them as something quite similar.

Both are concerned about the facts but are riddled with bias and misinformation. Both technology and history are concerned with keeping the past alive for the future.

There are many attempts to make these worlds connect. Through all sorts of digitization of old records, using programs to try and relive and track out a timeline of past events.

A semi-amusing version of this virtual timeline is by twHistory. twHistory is a website that takes a past event from a period of days and tweets one person’s perspective of the event. Its an amusing idea to take events like the Boston Tea Party and put it into 160 characters. Least, I’m easily amused by it.