New Perspectives-Module 4 summary
This hefty chapter of New Perspectives goes into detail about the various resources on the web and what they’re made up of. It talks extensively about copyright law, avoiding plagiarism, fair use, resources on the internet for graphics, books, periodicals, audiobooks, multimedia formats and more.
In this module, we go into the intricacies of copyright. When talking about how copyright works, I largely thought of the video game scene and the medium’s large history of copyright struggles. I’ve always heard about how Nintendo would constantly go after “fangames”-derivative video games produced by fans of an original work. Nintendo’s lawyers send DMCA notices to those who haven’t yet published the work to a site or those who already have after an extensive period. Fangames were a big part of my childhood growing up because I hadn’t had a video game console until I was around 11 years old, and this was a way for me to play video games free online. Along with that were “roms”-old video games that often (but not always) had been delisted from the market for a long time and placed on the internet free to download. These Rom sites usually make money through things like Patreon and Buy me a coffee donations. Personally, I support both of these as long as they make no money off of the game, give credit to the original creator and in the case of roms, the original is delisted.
The module also talks about news sites and finding news on the web. I feel that with the news it is always best to check multiple sites. They all report in different ways that befit their brand and political leanings. For example, CNN, Fox News, and Al Jazeera will give the same story but present it in clearly different ways. Ground news is often advertised as being good at giving readers a way to determine the leanings and differences between them. There is also PolitiFact and Allsides. For historical research I’ve always preferred looking into books, articles, papers etc., though there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with using new sites as a source.
Public domain media sites are something I’ve always appreciated, especially as someone who doesn’t always have the financial means to purchase subscriptions to so many sites. LibriVox is a nice catalog, even if they don’t have everything and the quality of their readings is somewhat divisive. There was a reddit thread complaining about the quality of the books there and there were arguments defending it saying perhaps those hard of hearing might have different standards or beggars can’t be choosers, and others who criticized saying they butcher the quality of the original text. My personal view Is that it would be nice if they had a higher quality standard, such as speaking louder and clearer, but on the other hand I fully appreciate that there is a service such as this available.