Seventy-eight, Part 2

An upper or a downer? I thought at first that it was an upper like most of my classmates, that that means that we as a world are coming closer together and being more open, but now, I’m conflicted.

In Humanity in Globalization, the professor brought in Tom Crampton as a guest speaker. He actually turned out to be the first guest speaker of the class to be more of a guest lecture. Whereas Professor Reyes would usually sit the guest down and ask questions to solicit information and discussion, he then opens it up to the class as a forum. Tom Crampton came with his own PowerPoint and lecture and it was frankly surprising.

This last week’s topic was about social media, in which almost all of you (blog readers) participate. I can hardly think of a friend not on Facebook; Everyone had facebook before; I myself just joined Twitter, silly as it is, about a month ago. I have my blog, which to my surprise has popped up in some funny places. One person stumbled across my blog while searching for Hong Kong bus routes. More friends than I expected now read it. A lot of people I did not think read for pleasure (debatable, I know) I found read this blog. One was the most surprising; one was the most disappointing.

In lecture, Tom Crampton was being introduced by Professor Reyes. He was described as being a (former) journalist who is now a consultant for businesses looking to make inroads into the social media world (in which spamming is a failure). Professor Reyes introduced the topic—social media. He briefly defined it. He proceeded:

“So who in this class has a Facebook?” All hands went up.

“So who in this class has a blog?” Hardly a soul’s hands went up. Mine didn’t, and many people who I knew were serial bloggers didn’t raise their hands either. It was not because I’m ashamed of what I do in my spare time at all. It’s not because of what I put in my blog either. It’s just that I didn’t really want the attention—and since no other bloggers were raising their hands, I wasn’t about to either. Cool.

When no one’s hands went up, the professor took a quick glance around the room and centered on the center of the lecture hall. I happened to be sitting in the dead center of the lecture hall that time around.

He pointed at me and said, “I know you have a blog!”

Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. I looked behind me to see if he was pointing directly behind me. There was no one behind me. He was pointing at me.

“Yeah, you!” he said, as I quizzically pointed my finger towards me and my beating heart. What was I to do? I’d never been pointed out of a lecture hall of students before.

“Yeah, I guess I do blog,” was the only thing that would come out of my mouth. Casual.

“Yeah, you talk about this class on your blog, don’t you?” he pressed on. I was silent. “It’s really not that hard to find this stuff,” he concluded in stride.

People in my row, most of whom friends of mine glanced over at me. While it was surprising and moderately frightening, I appreciated him doing that. First off, let me say as I’ve said to many of my friends in that class, that I feel that even though I do not write the most positive opinions, I always try to back up and substantiate my claims. And as you can see, his distinguishing me in such a light had no effect of slowing down my writing.

In that lecture, we went on about how print media faces some serious challenges now and though the foreseeable future, how the Internet as a medium has allowed online individuals and companies to proliferate news and other information in a manner much faster than even the next day as the presses can only do. Whereas at first these newspapers published their news online, charging a fee, in addition to in print, they’ve found that they can’t really charge money because the news will just be spread by online companies with smaller payrolls, supported by earning ad revenue. News can also be spread and reported more easily by bloggers (like me, though I claim not to be a journalist in this regard).

And speaking about blogging, I decided to search for my blog online. I typed in my full name and the first results were related to my blog. The first was the link that UCSD posted on its website for my blog. The second was my blog itself. The third was a website called globalpost.com that had my full name and the full title of one of my blog posts.

I clicked on this third one, and to my alarm, I found that all of my recent posts are being reproduced in their entirety onto their website. The fact that my entire text in such a manner is only partly mitigate by the fact that they cite me and link to my blog. The thing is though that in the fine print, globalpost.com claims copyright over everything on their website, including my blog. Equally annoying is that they are potentially earning money in ad revenue from my work.

Copyright of the entirety of my original text is mine by virtue of my having created it, and as such it is illegal for them to reproduce my blog, even in part, without appropriate permission. Though arrogant as it may seem, the principle of the matter requires me to push through. The company still has not responded to any of my emails (they do not list an address or give a phone number).

So why don’t you decide? Was that day an upper or a downer?

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.