Reading Lawrence Lessig's Code 2.0
On my long battle uphill to the comps exam, I'm reading some books on digital culture and thinking about how changes in the way we communicate affects plagiarism and intellectual property issues. I've started with Lawrence Lessig's Code 2.0 and the thesis of the book so far (I'm only halfway through, but it's very clearly laid out) is that the Internet is in danger of over-regulation by commerce and the government and we better watch out or else the freedoms that most count on from the Internet are in jeopardy.
I totally didn't plan this, but the book is becoming an excellent (if paranoid) companion to the SOPA debates.
In one of Lessig's first chapters he brought up what was, for me, a really interesting point: the architecture of the web manipulates actions people do on the web. (You're thinking "well, duh"). I'll let Lessig explain:
"We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental. Or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear. There is no middle ground. There is no choice that does not include some kind of building. Code is never found; it is only ever made..." (6).
I'm going to sound dumb, but I never really thought of that in those terms before; I suppose I assumed the ideal was to make the web as reflective of real human experience as possible, or as efficient as possible...but those things are not really true. And I'm flashing back to playing Hero's Quest when I was a kid on my family computer, trying to figure out the parameters of the world - what I could do and not do, and how that shaped my choices, making me avoid somethings and try others, ultimately forcing a win condition only after heroic deeds were accomplished.
Because Hero's Quest was a fictional world, I was constantly aware that it was designed, and I wasn't bothered by that: I just wanted to figure out what the game was trying to make me do, and do it. But though I can be very aware of the designs affecting my daily life, and how they either interfere with my tasks or make them easier, I don't think of them reflecting some grand scheme that reflects certain fundamental values...that's always seemed very conspiracy theory. But, when we are talking about encouraging or discouraging a specific behavior, I can buy that design affects the likelihood of the behavior occurring, or even being able to occur. And this made me think about how the structure of the web could encourage/discourage plagiarism and how it could be coded differently.
For instance, Tumblr itself is a case in point. There have been many many many back and forth squabbling (and rightly so) about people plagiarizing fan fiction by simply reblogging someone's work and leaving off the source. Tumblr gives us the option of leaving off the source because you can delete the data in the source box which even says in tiny gray slanty letters (optional). Both the code and the words on the page give the option of easily plagiarizing.
If Tumblr wished the code could easily be changed, which would stop all the silly nonsense of people immaturely or unknowingly taking credit from artists who in turn get all worked up about it. How could it change? They could make filling in a source mandatory, or even automatic when reblogging, OR they could stop reblogging altogether and plagiarists would have to go back to "old fashioned" cut-and-paste if they wanted to steal.
Taking this a few steps further, if we wanted to seriously crack down on plagiarism what could be done? I gave it some thought and came up with a few ideas for an anti-plagiarism u/distopia, but I'm not a programmer so there could be practical problems with some of these ideas, or maybe some are already in practice or more could be done - feel free to let me know.
1. There could be no cut-and-paste. Websites like Wikipedia could make it impossible to highlight and select text (like some pesky .jpeg files), making it just not as easy to plagiarize. Or, the whole function of cut-and-paste could not exist: when you Ctrl+C....nothing happens. Scary world.
2. Word and other word processing software could either not allow pasted text, or have an app/plug-in that flagged the author every time a chunk of text was pasted into a document and quotations were not used. Maybe a little paperclip guy could pop up in the corner: "It looks like you're about to commit academic dishonesty..."
3. The structure of the web could have a built-in copied text check. Maybe every time text is posted to the web, it checks against everything else out there and then highlights and links it automatically to other websites with the same text.
4. That red underliney thing that now automatically happens under every misspelled word even in writing on websites could happen with plagiarized text. Maybe a purple underline, for plagiarism.
hmm...I'm sure there's more, but I'm out of ideas.
Anyway, I'm not suggesting these things happen, or that they are good ideas. How many times is cut-and-paste used for good and not evil? The point is that these are (mostly) restrictions, that would probably influence behavior, but do we want all the baggage that comes with restricting rather than being permissive?
I tend to buy into the idea that we should err on the side of too much freedom, and make personal responsibility that much more important, but that doesn't mean we should be blind to the encouragement some options give, or forget to put up warning signs.
This seems to me to be very like the SOPA issue, with the key difference that it affects not only ethical norms (if you think that piracy is an ethical issue), but money. And money is a big deal. But like discontinuing copy-paste, giving the code-building keys to someone else can make expression harder.
I think I'll get somebody to program me that paperclip guy for my students.
