Exam Flashcards
Digital Rights Management (DRM)
a set of technologies, methods, and restrictions designed to control access to and usage of digital content, devices, and applications. DRM systems are implemented to protect the intellectual property rights of content creators and distributors by preventing unauthorized copying, distribution, and use of digital media and software. DRM has been controversial due to concerns about user rights and potential limitations.
Critical Political Economy
a critical and often interdisciplinary examination of the relationships between politics, economics, and power. It seeks to analyze and understand how economic structures and processes are intertwined with political institutions, ideologies, and social relations.
Free-to-Play/Freemium
games or software are free to use but create demands for in-game or in-software purchases
- Surveillance
The monitoring of activity. Many forms of state or commercial surveillance have existed in specific contexts of exchange and disclosure
- Privacy
Ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals.
- Knowledge/Post-Industrial Economy
relationship between information, knowledge, and creativity and the ways in which sustained technological and economic innovation are accompanied by social, cultural, and institutional innovation are strongly connected to the rise of creative industries.
- Globalization
increased interconnectedness and interdependence among countries, economies, societies, and cultures. It is characterized by the exchange of goods, services, information, ideas, and technologies on a global scale. Globalization has been facilitated by advances in communication, transportation, and technology, breaking down traditional barriers and creating a more integrated and interconnected world.
- Regulatory Capture
when a political entity is undercut by the very forces it is trying to regulate.
- Creative Commons
nonprofit organization that provides a set of licenses and tools to enable the legal sharing and distribution of creative works. These licenses offer creators a way to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others, allowing for a more flexible approach to copyright. The Creative Commons licensing system helps individuals and organizations easily communicate how their works can be used by others.
- Astroturfing
the practice of hiding the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from, and is supported by, grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source’s financial backers.
- Digital Platform
technology-based system or infrastructure that facilitates the exchange of information, services, or goods between users, businesses, or other entities.
- Cyber-libertarianism
view the infrastructure of the internet as manageable through self-governance. As the Internet has grown and the user base has become more diverse, the notion of a shared ethos is less applicable. Failure to address questions of corporate power.
- Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
independent regulatory agency in Canada that oversees and regulates the country’s broadcasting and telecommunications systems.
o Establishes policies to promote Canadian content and cultural expression in the broadcasting industry.
o Ensure that Canadians have access to reliable and affordable telecommunications services.
o Manages the allocation and use of the radio frequency spectrum.
- Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)
addresses issues related to copyright infringement in the digital age, providing a legal framework for the rights and responsibilities of both copyright owners and online service providers.
- Metadata
data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data itself. E.g. the time it is posted, who posted it, who it was sent to, size of data, file type, etc.
- Behavioural Data
information that is generated by the actions, activities, and behaviors of individuals or groups. E.g. users’ interaction on digital platforms, search queries, transactional behaviour, etc.
- Creative Industries
Those industries with a heavy emphasis on creativity, including architecture, fashion, music, and theatre. There is a growing recognition of the role of these industries both for their direct and indirect economic impact. Three key economic drivers of creative industries are:
1. The rise of the service industry sectors.
2. The emergence of the knowledge-based economy.
3. The culturalization of the economy as services becomes increasingly central.
- Intellectual Property
creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.
- Gig economy
Hiring oneself out through online services such as Uber and DoorDash
- Panopticon
a type of institutional building designed to allow a single watchman to observe all inmates without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched. This architectural model has been widely discussed in the context of surveillance and power dynamics. In terms of new media and digital technologies, the panopticon metaphor is often used to analyze and critique the surveillance practices that have become prevalent in the online world. Users feel they are constantly monitored but are not aware of the specific instances monitored or entities conducting surveillance. Users are not fully aware what collected data is used for.
- Military-Industrial Complex
evolved to include the integration of information and communication technologies into military operations. E.g. using interactive games as training, surveillance, technological innovation.
- Affordance
recognize how technology introduces new social possibilities and how these challenge assumptions people have about everyday interactions. The design and architecture of environments enable certain types of interaction to occur. The characteristics of an environment are affordances because they make possible—and, in some cases, encourage—certain types of practices.
o Affordances of Networked Publics:
persistence: the durability of online expressions and content.
visibility: the potential audience who can bear witness.
spreadability: the ease with which content can be shared.
searchability: the ability to find content.
- Open-Source Movement
o A general belief in freely available content.
o A belief that collaborative, non-proprietorial initiatives ultimately generate better products, and that open source has a compelling commercial, as well as moral, logic.
o An implicit belief in the value of a gift economy.
- Value Chain
a step-by-step business model for transforming a product or service from idea to reality. E.g. Disintermediation (Producer straight to consumer) and reintermediation (Producer, through some intermediary, to consumer).
- Governance
overseeing the control and direction of new media. Is the foundation for Internet regulation. An amalgam policy, regulation, law, commercial and consumer practices, and organizational behaviour. In the face of considerable uncertainty as to who has control of the internet, there is much concern over “internet governance,” especially as a partial antidote to the free rein of “cyber-libertarian” notions.
- “pull-type” supply chain management
processes begin with customer orders and enable just-in-time production.
- Disintermediation
provides the opportunity for producers and consumers to access each other directly. i.e. Manufacturers -> Consumers.
- Reintermediation
intermediary functions remain but are conducted by organizations whose operations are driven by the new ecommerce marketing logics: partnerships with consumers, “permission” advertising, product and service customization, and multiple modes of communication with consumers. i.e. Manufacturers -> Electronic Intermediaries -> Consumers. Like Amazon.
- Platform economy
The extent to which the modern economy has become dependent on and is built upon (mainly online) platforms such as Google (search), Microsoft (software), and Amazon (sales).
- Platform society
The social relations and culture that build up within a platform economy, including new jobs (social media manager, influencer), new forms of influence and celebrity, and new ways of entertainment (e.g. Netflix).
- Walled-gardens
Services that drive you to work only on specific platforms such as O365, Facebook, Google, Amazon.
- Power imbalance
platforms define the rules of the game, and creators are forced to get clever when interpreting those rules.
- Respectability
Platforms define what is or isn’t “respectable” for audiences.
- Internet law
mostly the application and extension of laws developed for other media and communications technologies.
- Technological protection measures
mechanisms and technologies implemented to protect digital content and control access to it. TPMs are often associated with Digital Rights Management (DRM) and are designed to prevent or limit unauthorized copying, distribution, and use of digital content
- Digital rights management (DRM)
set of technologies, strategies, and tools used by content creators, publishers, and distributors to control the access, use, and distribution of digital content and intellectual property. The primary goal of DRM is to protect the rights of copyright holders and prevent unauthorized copying, sharing, and distribution of digital media, software, and other intellectual assets
- Open-software and free-software movements
decentralized, networked, and collaborative initiatives to develop new forms of software licensed through non-proprietorial general public licenses.
- Data mining
Industry actors gather private and publicly available data to develop composite profiles designed to better target goods at specific niches of consumers.
- Networked public
publics that are restructured by networked technologies. I.e. the space constructed through networked technologies and the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice.
- Digital locks
An encryption or other scheme to prevent copying of digital goods. DVDs are often protected by anti-copying codes (widely broken by software available on personal computers)
- Disruptive technologies
Technologies or services that undermine or overwhelm the value proposition of an existing product or service, thereby hastening its demise in the market. They are often unappreciated by suppliers of existing solutions, since they (at first) seem unrefined or unsuited to the task that their customers demand.
- Endogenous growth
A theory from economics that recognizes the importance of innovation in the growth of an economy and, importantly, that it is not outside of the economy (exogenous) but a part of it.
- Explicit knowledge
Knowledge that is codified, can be formally taught and learned, and is readily transferred from one context to another.
- Fair Use/Fair dealing
The principle of copyright law that some users, sometimes, have the right to use copyrighted material without paying a fee or obtaining a license. Examples of fair dealing include research and criticism.
- Forbearance
The decision not to fully regulate in an area where a regulatory commission has jurisdiction. The decision by the CRTC not to regulate mobile phones of the internet has been a significant aspect of new media governance in Canada.
- Information society
A society dominated by the movement and use of information, as well as information and communication technologies
- Innovation
The application of knowledge to new products, processes, and services.
- Innovator’s dilemma
A choice that confronts those who develop new technologies of whether or not to work on new (replacement) technologies even while the existing ones are doing well in the marketplace.
- User-lead innovation
Attending to, and adopting if possible the changes made by your leading customers when they adapt or extend your product.
- Notice and notice
Copyright holders notify ISPs, then ISP notify the subscriber about the copyright infringement.
- Three important dynamics shape creativity in policy
- Creativity manifests itself differently across the scientific, technological, economic, and cultural domains.
- It identifies information technologies as a unifying factor that can bring these domains of creative practice into a closer collaborative set of relationships.
- It identifies the main institutional and policy challenge for governments: how to better facilitate cross-disciplinary interactions.
- Creative class
Describes cities that attract and retain a specific kind of creative people (the creative class), and as a consequence prosper in a world where intellectual property is highly valued.
- Knowledge push
The growth in outputs in education and scientific research arising from public and private investment, and the ways in which ICTs speed up the production, collection, and dissemination of such research outcomes.
- Market pull
Factors including economic globalization, increased competition, greater sophistication in consumer demand, and the growing importance of intangible assets.
