Is This Really Better?
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Internet Culture
Is this really better? Something like this? What I mean to say, is it a good thing that I pay somebody money for hosting space and bandwidth so that I can publish this website? It seems weird considering that I could get something like this for free on any number of services such as WordPress.com or Blogger, or LiveJournal. Okay, maybe not LiveJournal, the natural habitat of the whiny over emotional physically lacking whack job, but still, there are other services.
I mention this because the news about EULA controversy concerning services like these and Facebook and Twitter seem to never end. It has become clear that the thoughts, photos, videos, and comments you put on those services are not your intellectual property. It has become clear that these now multi-million, and in some cases billion, dollar corporations want you to just hand over your content for free. All so that they can essentially turn around and sell it back to you and your friends and readers.
Is it really fair that we as the people of the Internet, populate Facebook and MySpace (another service dominated by the emotionally challenged) with original content and that they make money buy plastering their pages with advertising. Have you looked at the Feed on Facebook lately? There is no distinction what so ever about what is an ad and what is something that one of your friends actually posted. In fact, some of those ads use your friends names and avatars to promote their product.
I don’t like the idea of my likeness being used to promote a product just because I happened to visit their website. I mean, what if it’s an ad for Dr. Pepper? My friends will think I have horrible taste!
And I bet you that they are going to do the same thing to they own it. Is it fair for them to use our content to make money? Some may argue that it is considering that they give these services away for free, but are their limitations to what they can do? And have they shattered those limitations? I starting to think that some services may have.