Take a look at computer you are using to view this. Not at the words on the screen, but at the actual computer. It is the physical property of you or whoever owns it. Now take a look at the words on the screen. These words you are reading are the intellectual property of Jeff Takiue. I thought them up, wrote them down, and you are reading them. In this way, the intellectual property is mine.

After grasping the concept above, I understood the whole concept of Chapter 6 - Intellectual property. First off, physical property is tangible, but intellectual property is not. With the use of web technology and the increasing access to digital communications, the value of intellectual property comes into question.

With this increase in technology, four questions are brought up by Dyson:

1. What is right
2. What is legal
3. What is practical
4. What makes commercial sense.

Dyson argues that the answers for the first two are unchangable. The answers to the last two determine the ways and means of dealing with intellectual property in this day and age.

Dyson then discusses the financial aspects of intellectual property. She lists eleven basic business models:

1. Subscriptions - paying for delivery of content
2. Performances - event, like a concert
3. Intellectual Services - consulting services
4. Electronic Intellectual Services - e-consultant, consultant who does all the work and keeps software
5. Memberships - paying to be in an organization
6. Face-to-face conferences - mix of membership, performance, and intellectual services
7. Product Support - supporting services for products
8. Spin-off goods - licensing, merchandising
9. Advertising - paying to advertise on website
10. Sponsorship - When a sponsor pays to promote content
11. Selling copies - using e-cash

Dyson then talks about a few different things regarding intellectual property. She talks of community based control, which is the idealized notiion of the web community self-monitoring themselves.

The next issue she brings up is caching and mirroring. Caching is something your internet browsers usually do. It saves recent downloaded files so that if you go to that page again, then the saved page will be used for faster viweing. The issue Dyson brings up is that we are essentially copying information when we cache. Mirroring is when one site is an exact duplicate of another site, but is in a different address. This is also for faster viewing as one address might be busy, while the other is not busy. Dyson believes that mirroring might be wrong because of the lack of constant update. If one site updates, then the other site needs to update as well. It is not automatic. But if they are mirriors, then they should be the same.

I think this issue is totally confusing and lack practicality. The caching and mirroring are used for convinience, not for the infringment of intellectual property. I believe that when people use caching and mirroring with the intent of deception, they usually end up hurting themselves and the people who don't know any better. As netizens, we need to develope some type of "street smarts" to what we are viewing.

The next thing Dyson talks about is linking. This is also a topic brought up in our class discussions. She discusses if linking is an infringment to others intellectual property. I disagree with that. Linking is simply a referral to another, like a doctor referring to another doctor or referring a good mechanic to a friend. This is totally up to the individual viewer to make the decision to link to that site. Again, if deception is involved, then there would be some infringment of intellectual property.

The final thing that Dyson discusses is framing. Some people use framing to take information out of context or to front as thought they were theones who came up with that information. Again, I have no problem with framing, but I think it needs to be used properly.

A baseball bat can be used in a fun game, or can be used to bead a man's head until dead. The item doesn't change, but the appliation of it does. In dealing with intellectual property, tools used, such as framing, linking, caching, and mirroring are all good, effective tools that needs to be used properly. Also, the netizens need to be aware of what they are looking at when looking into a site. People are always going to try and find ways to infringe on intellectual property. We, as netizens, have the repsonsibility to use discernment while viewing sites. It's the nature of this beast we call cyberspace.