Fandom & Harry Potter

Summarizing what Hellekson Karen says: Fandom is one set of fans who share a hobby, person or phenomenon in particular.

The Harry Potter fandom in this case is the most prominent in the last, is a large international and informal community attracted to the series of books written by J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter. The fandom diversifies and expands the use of many media, including websites, fan fiction, podcasts, fan art, songvids, and different musical genre, known as Wizard Rock. However, fans not only interact through Internet forums, also meet fans at conventions, book clubs, sightseeing tours to important places from the books and film production, and the famous parties held at midnight of publication of each book and flim.

The Pottermania is an informal term that was first used around 1999 to describe the madness of the fans who had taken over the series of Harry Potter books. The midnight parties were popularized by fans from the publication of fourth book in the series. Several Anglophone bookstores stayed open all night during the eve of the launch. In 2005, Entertainment Weekly outlined the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as one of the "highlights" in the last 25 years.

The madness about series was the subject of parody on the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, The Devil Wears Prada and the 2006 adaptation to the big screen. In the novel, Miranda Priestly is the director of a fashion magazine that is pretty unkind to their employees and particularly their assistants. One of them is Andrea Sachs, which orders him to get two copies of the next installment of the series for her twin daughters as soon as they are released (in the film, before they are published).

Through video games, Potter left the limits of imagination existing, new viewers and gamers were immersed in the fictional world, the sense of realism Increased, however, it is through of the Internet that the narrative grew to the shared experience of multiple contributors. Thus, the story of Harry Potter expanded from the world of imagination to the physical sphere.

Sources:

- Hellekson Karen, ‘Fan Fiction & Fan Communities (abstracts)’, 2006.

- http://knowyourmeme.com/

CIPSA. The new Big Brother?

CISPA is the acronym of Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is a cyber security Bill currently is discussing in the USA congress. "It is designed to help prevent and defend against cyber attacks on national infrastructure and against other internet attacks on private firms by obtaining and sharing cyber threat information"  This law will allow private sector  search personal user data, and then share the information with the companies and with the US government, without the need for a warrant. If this law was passed by Congress, the private companies would can share their data: emails, text messages... without judicial oversight. This bill continue with the trend of the USA government to control internet because is in the same line that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act).

The main problem of this law is where is the limit between the national security and the personal privacy? and, who do puts this limit?  Our day to day lives is archived and saved in the cloud and this information should be private. This information could be used to prevent terrorist threats or dismantle criminal organizations, but also know the likes and the activities of the normal people. This information is so valuable for the companies and for the government, because they can exercise more control over consumers and voters."This won't simply be a world of a single, governmental Big Brother watching over your shoulder, nor will it be a world of a handful of corporate siblings training their ever-vigilant security cameras and tags on you." (1) Because we are partly to the blame too and we help to this situation.

But for Jamais Cascio we are in a Participatory Panopticon world, where this constant surveillance is done by the citizens themselves, and is done by choice. We upload the pictures in the social network, we write private information in our emails... The  camera phones pose a big help to this Panopticon world and we have the possibility of save all of our memories and past actions. But we don´t forget that all of this information is a part of our privacy and we must decide with who share this information.

SOURCES:

(1) Jamais Cascio, 'The Rise of the Participatory Panopticon', in: Worldchanging: Change Your Thinking, May 4, 2005.

Helen Nissenbaum   "A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online" in: Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Page 1-12

http://www.zdnet.com/what-is-cispa-and-what-does-it-mean-for-you-faq-7000013965/

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/04/20/navegante/1366454587.html

Megaupload!

     On June 21, 2005, Kim Dotcom founded Megaupload, the website where you could share documents and records online. Was so popular because you could get all the documents or records that you needed. The problem was that a lot of people used this hosting service to share movies, songs, software... without paying the price of the service. This freedom in the hosting caused that megaupload was the first website classified as digital piracy. This situation led the closing of the hosting website and the arrest of all its leaders. Currently, Kim Dotcom has created a new web called Mega, but Megaupload still is closed  by FBI.

     The intention of the company was that all people would could share the materials to other individuals by putting it on-line. The problem was that the people use the hosting to share a lot of piracy material. The book of Philippe Aigran, ‘Introduction’ and ‘The Internet and Creativity Debates’ support this idea. "The non-market sharing of digital works is valuable and must be recognized as a legitimate activity" (1). This author proposes a new business model where the access to the culture must be free and all the people can share the materials. Philippe Aigran says that is impossible fight against the piracy, so the only solution is found the way to share and maintain the earnings for the culture producers. The problem is that the culture creators have to make money and is not clear the system to compensate to the creators.

     A lot of people think that this sentence against Megaupload is unfair because the company did not know the type of archives that their clients shared. The problem with Megaupload encompasses a larger problem, because both of parts (cultural producers and consumers) have convincing reasons to defend its position. A lot of companies lost many important archives when the FBI closed Megaupload. But is true too, that the culture companies: film producers, music groups, writers... were losing a lot of money with the illegal downloads. The closed of megaupload has not solved the problem with the piracy, so the only solution in create a new business model for the cultural industry.

SOURCES:

(1) Philippe Aigran, ‘Introduction’ and ‘The Internet and Creativity Debates’ Amsterdam University Press 2012, pp.15-25

Pedro Huichalaf Roa. "Minuta explicativa sobre Proyectos de ley SOPA y PIPA de EEUU y sus posibles efectos jurídicos"

"Lo que siempre quiso saber y nunca se atrevió a preguntar sobre el conocimiento abierto en la redConocimiento y cultura en internet. ¿Lo masivo o lo libre? ¿Lo gratuito o lo comunitario? David García Aristegui. Page 1-17

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