Topic 5 2015, Page 4

Having read many posts by my classmates and especially Junwai’s Comment on my previous post, I’ve come to a conclusion that the justification of free online content should be contextualised based on creators’ intentions. As Education and Arts Industry are hot subjects for this topic, I’ll share my research and thoughts on them. As Yixin shared in her post, students like us generally have low disposable incomes. Continue reading →

I came across many petitions worldwide urging signatures to support OA (Open Access). Many of such constituencies can be found online, passionate for this movement. (Picture Source: The White House Petition on Open Access to Research) (Picture Source: EFF Action Petition for Online Access) What fuels this need for the petition? A great takeaway from Kai Yuan’s post is that the ‘quality’ most people would associate with Non-OA access is subjective. Continue reading →

It is obvious that people want free stuff but we can’t blame content creators for not making it free! Most of my classmates made the same conclusion that whether one is to allow free content or not, really depends on the creator’s objective and context. (Credits: blog.linguistlist.org) Nicole mentioned in her blog that the perks of publishing free content online is that the author’s reputation will be built along the way due to the fact that his content is more accessible. Continue reading →

Topic 5 was all about the materials found online. Should content producers make them free of charge? How do they get compensated through this? As there are many different types of content available online, producers and consumers have different expectation and compensation methods. Digitisation has lead to people trying to get everything for free, old business models are broken and people have different needs. Continue reading →

Upon reflection, I took the opportunity to read my classmate’s blog post. Most of them share similar pros and cons points as me but some post had extra points that I did not cover. For instance, Shannon’s blog post explained clearly how free content that is being published online like educational videos or articles have led to people’s success as entrepreneurs. Similar, would be a point made by Crystal – Good Reputation from Viral Distribution. Continue reading →

(Image Source: quickanddirtytips.com) Before doing on this topic, I have never thought about how free content could have an impact on us. In Joey’s post, she discuss about ‘satire’, how certain content online available might not be credible. This made me think, should there be a system of evaluation for online content even though it is free? In this article, they talked about how we should have internet social contract [1]. Continue reading →

After reading on others’ posts i realized that the common issue us(students) faced is when we needed to use a particular article, there’s a price-tag for it which 90% of us wouldn’t want to pay for it unless it is relevant but we can’t judge from the abstract. Why is it beneficial (Alma Swan, 2010) to us(students) and others? What i missed out in my previous post. Continue reading →

Going through this topic made me realized how lucky we are as users to be able to enjoy the luxury of getting free content online at the expense of the content producers. Photo Credit: Pinterest via Google Clinton’s blog post identified about the changing mind sets of how people used to pay for content through “prints” but yet expecting everything online to be free of charge. Continue reading →

Its great to see many of my colleagues having different views on this topic. It is a general consensus that students like us will mostly support open-access because it benefits us in learning by analyzing online research. However I strongly feel we should take a more neutral stand and look at the whole concept of open access through the interest of the content producer and reader before making a final stand. Continue reading →

After reading my classmate’s blogs, I still personally feel that the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to releasing free online content. I am all for the free content because it really makes researching and answering my doubts a whole lot easier (and faster). People are not yet entirely open to the concept of paying for something that is intangible. Making contents online free is a step that people have to take in order to increase the chances of being heard. Continue reading →