(W6) Neglect intellectual property in social media, don't we?
It is interesting for me to first time hear about "knowledge brokering", one of the six core networked knowledge activities, according to Dennen. It is common for me to share posts from other sources in social media. It turns out that this action is brokering, not sharing. The nuance of these two activities is that the first is to share content of others while the latter is to share one's own content. The source of the shared content poses a concern of intellectual property and the permission to share.
I think that can be easily neglected in informal contexts of some social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok. The informality and fast pace of interactions in these channels tend to distract me from caring about every aspect of the shared information, including its owner's intellectual property right. When sharing a post publicly, I usually ask for permission to share. However, I may forget that when sending it privately to others. Or I don't need to ask for permission when sending it to someone? Also, there are chances that the post owner loves as many people sharing their original post to gain more impressions and responses, especially for advertising posts.
Overall, the knowledge brokering poses a practical question: When don't we need to ask for permission to share content, especially in casual channels such as Facebook, Tiktok or Instagram? I would love to hear your thoughts about that.
Reference:
Dennen, V. P. (forthcoming). Networked Knowledge Activities. Excerpt from Social Media for Active Learning.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts & posing these questions! To answer your question, one approach I use --with no major problems so far--is simply following the cues of the original post's settings. For instance, Facebook provides users with pretty straightforward sharing options (public, friends only, friends except, etc.), so when I see that a post is public, I assume that I can share it without asking for permission. Similarly, if a post is for friends only, I would never screenshot & share that way, though of course that would be completely doable. So I guess, long story short, is that I sort of just tend to assume that using the platform's built-in features is fair game but that going to any extra effort (such as taking screenshots, copying/pasting, etc.) to distribute the content is out of bounds.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your approach, William. It is a subtle and wise consideration, I must say, to grasp the creators' intention and willingness to share behind a post. If we want to share some contents that sound private, checking with the creator is necessary.
DeleteHi Pink, When I share videos with my friends on Instagram, the link shows the content creator. For this reasoning, I do not believe that sharing it with others violates their intellectual property. Also, the author can identify how many views their video received from sharing it. However, if you recreated the video for your family specifically, and didn't state that you received the idea from a video that you watched, then you would be breaching their intellectual rights.
ReplyDeleteYou reminded me of the visibility of content creator when sharing materials online. That is a great point to care about IP but not being tensioned about implementing it correctly, especially in informal contexts.
DeleteAgreed, we often overlook passing along the IP info. Most tools try to encourage it when we properly use the share function. It's fine to not use APA, just link back, etc. when doing informal online sharing -- but still, this freeform online sharing has really pushed us to think about the origin of ideas and media.
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