Digital Networked Environment Research Articles

DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION AND SOCIAL AGENCY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DIGITAL NETWORKED ENVIRONMENT

Digital technology and the internet constitute an integral part of individuals' and society's lives in the modern era. Digital interaction significantly influences social, cultural, and economic aspects, giving rise to a new field known as digital sociology. This field encompasses a diverse range of topics, including sociological imagination and social agency in the context of the digital networked environment. This research aims to understand the impact of digital culture and identity on user behaviors and the shaping of social interactions online. The study focuses on exploring digital sociology and its significance in analyzing social and cultural dynamics in the digital networked environment, emphasizing the challenges faced by this environment and proposing comprehensive solutions. The study presents several suggestions and measures to achieve a safer and more sustainable digital environment through awareness enhancement, training, and expanded access to technology. It also underscores the importance of developing effective policies and laws to protect users and promote diversity and inclusivity in the digital environment. The study highlights the role of sociological imagination in understanding the effects of the digital environment, guiding decision-making, and shaping public policies. The researcher emphasizes the importance of using sociological imagination to design innovative solutions that meet societal needs and promote positive technological developments. In conclusion, the study emphasizes that digital sociology is an evolving and exciting field for study and research. It underscores the importance of continuous research and innovation to keep pace with changes and challenges in the digital environment, emphasizing that continuous learning and knowledge-based collaboration form the foundation for the development of an advanced and thriving digital environment for the future

Global Cultural Law and Policy in the Age of Ubiquitous Internet

Abstract:Digital technologies and the Internet in particular have transformed the ways we create, distribute, use, reuse, and consume cultural content; have impacted the workings of the cultural industries, and more generally the processes of making, experiencing, and remembering culture in local and global spaces. Yet, few of these, often profound, transformations have found reflection in law and institutional design. Cultural policy toolkits, in particular at the international level, are still very much offline and analog and conceive of culture as static property linked to national sovereignty and state boundaries. The article describes this state of affairs and asks the key question of whether there is a need to reform global cultural law and policy and if yes, what the essential elements of such a reform should be. The article is informed by the ongoing and vibrant digital copyright and creativity discourse1but seeks to address also the less discussed, non–intellectual property tools of the cultural policy package. It thematizes the complexity and the interconnectedness of different fields of policymaking, as various decisions critical to cultural processes are made by institutions without cultural mandate. While this problem is not entirely new and is naturally triggered by the intrinsic duality of cultural goods and services, the article argues that the digital networked environment has only accentuated complexity, spillover effects, and unintended consequences. The question is how to navigate this newly created and profoundly fluid space, so as to ensure the preservation and sustainable provision of culture. The article hopes to contribute to the process of finding answers to this taxing question by identifying a few essential elements that need to be taken into consideration when designing future-oriented cultural policy.

Research on Reader Service Mode in the Library Based on Digital Networked Environment

Along with the development of science and technology, the digital technology and networking enter into the development of the library. The paper researches the networked library system service mode based on the digital environment, and verifies through the service concept, library resource, query method and other tests that the library system based on digital network environment improves the reading method and information query method. In this way, readers are more convenient, thus exploring a new means for the library digitization and networking.

‘Information communication technology’ innovation in a non-high technology sector: achieving competitive advantage in the shipping industry

The global marketplace is resulting in an ever-increasing networked and digitalised landscape where organisations compete as integrated supply chains. This paper explores the impact that the digital networked environment has on the traditional shipping services industry. The research contribution has four aspects: (1) most research efforts focus on high technology sectors; this research emphasises the need for information communication technology (ICT) adoption in a non-high technology sector; (2) the research highlights the importance of ICT in achieving competitive advantage in the complex environment of shipping; (3) complexity principles are applied to the discussion on ICT; and (4) the link between ICT and the development of dynamic capabilities is created.

Collective Rights Management, Competition Policy and Cultural Diversity: EU Lawmaking at a Crossroads

In the digital networked environment, user’s expectations of getting easy access to digital content all the time and through a multitude of devices clash with the territorial structure of copyright and the complications of the licencing process. Under these circumstances, systems of collective rights management (CRM) offering a one-stop shop for rights clearance would seem to be an attractive solution to simplify cross-border licencing and save on transaction costs. In the European Union (EU), the Commission has made many attempts over the last decade not only to make collective management organisations (CMOs) work more efficiently but also to bring them from a system of national licences granted by national monopolies to a system of EU-wide authorisations. The European Commission’s Proposal of 12 July 2012 for a directive on CRM is a confirmation of this policy. However, it is questionable whether these regulatory attempts are compatible with cultural diversity interests. This paper discusses the role of CRM in ensuring cultural diversity and how a purely competition-orientated approach can impinge on this. It does so through analysing EU case law and the Commission’s Proposal.

Free and Open Source Software Communities, Democracy and ICT Law and Policy

This article discusses how and why the locus of the tensions brought about by new information and communications technology (“ICT”) in the global inter-networked society have gone beyond territory, sovereignty and law and why this shift changes the focus of the discussion initially from government to governance, and then ultimately to participation. Free and open source software (“FOSS”) developer communities are used both as case studies and as a critique of existing regulatory approaches to ICT. By showing the profound and sometimes disruptive impact hybrid active subjects like FOSS communities have had on matters relating to regulation, governance and culture, this article explains why there is a need to expand what democracy means and entails in the digital networked environment.

Trade versus Culture in the Digital Environment: An Old Conflict in Need of a New Definition

Following the recent UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the first wave of scholarly work has focused on clarifying the interface between the Convention and the WTO Agreements. Building upon these analyses, the present article takes however a different stance. It seeks a new, rather pragmatic definition of the relationship between trade and culture and argues that such a re-definition is particularly needed in the digital networked environment that has modified the ways markets for cultural content function and the ways in which cultural content is created, distributed and accessed. The article explores first the significance of the UNESCO Convention (or the lack thereof) and subsequently outlines a variety of ways in which the WTO framework can be improved in a ‘neutral’, not necessarily culturally motivated, manner to become more conducive to the pursuit of cultural diversity and taking into account the changed reality of digital media. The article also looks at other facets of the profoundly fragmented culture-related regulatory framework and underscores the critical importance of intellectual property rights and of other domains that appear at first sight peripheral to the trade and culture discussion, such as access to infrastructure, interoperability or net neutrality. It is argued that a number of feasible solutions exist beyond the politically charged confrontation of trade versus culture and that the new digital media landscape may require a readjustment of the priorities and the tools for the achievement of the widely accepted objective of cultural diversity.

Managing creativity: the tensions between commodities and gifts in a digital networked environment

In this paper, I critically examine the management of creativity in a digital networked economic and social environment, which broadly comprises high-speed Internet connections and a diverse ecology of devices and other infrastructure. The non-rivalrous and non-excludable characteristics of information, in this environment, pose distinct challenges for the industrial producers of creativity (such as film studios, publishing houses, record labels). The paper uses the case of media and entertainment to pursue two analytical goals. The first is to conceptualize the networked environment as a seedbed for myriad ‘Internet gift economies’, which are broadly defined by decentralized social production and sharing of resources within networks of computer users (or peers). The second is to consider the extent to which Internet gift economies can be regulated in a fashion that incorporates scope for some degree of commodification. I therefore seek to identify potential routes towards more balanced ‘peer-based’ models, which combine the power of Internet gift economies with the ongoing reproduction of industrialized creativity. There is a brief conclusion, where I comment upon the challenges facing the long-term expansion and legalization of Internet gift economies.

Phoenix rising: new models for the research monograph?

ABSTRACTThere is significant evidence that traditional university presses are continuing to face financial crises. Outlets for research monographs are drying up, print runs are being reduced and monograph costs are increasing. The combination of the digital networked environment and openarchive initiatives may, however, provide the opportunity, through institutional repositories, to rethink the role and nature of the distribution of research monographs in a university setting. The adoption of new models, untrammelled by the structures of the past, while still retaining editorial and refereeing standards, could revolutionize the access and distribution patterns of research knowledge within university frameworks. Ultimate success will depend, however, on programmes of scholarly advocacy in scholarly communication with the academic author as both creator and as consumer.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an extremely complex piece of legislation that makes major changes to U.S. Copyright Law, specifically in the digital networked environment. Many legal and practical issues are addressed in this legislation that have an enormous impact on the library community. This session will outline the key issues for libraries and alert serialists to the issues that directly or indirectly affect their work. Whether we are concerned with access, delivery, preservation, or archiving, the DMCA affects what we do on a daily basis. In the near future, as the law is being applied and tested in court, libraries must actively identify its impact on their mission and goals, and work to assure proper protection under the law.

The new US anti-circumvention provision: Heading in the wrong direction

On 28 October 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 1 a complex law which makes major changes in US copyright law to address the digital networked environment. Title I of the DMCA amends the Copyright Act to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, adopted at the WIPO Diplomatic Conference in December 1996. Both treaties require contracting parties to provide legal remedies against the circumvention of technological measures which protect authors' copyrights. To comply with this requirement, Congress added a new chapter, Chapter 12, to Title 17 of the United States Code (USC). The new chapter passed by Congress is much more balanced than the Administration's initial proposal, which was introduced in Congress in 1997. Nonetheless, the final provision still contains deep flaws which will hamper legitimate uses of technology and copyrighted works.