Increases in the speed and bandwidth of broadband services has allowed internet users to upload content that is more complex and of a large size, such as multimedia files.
Web 2.0 has allowed dedicated file sharing websites to evolve and subsequently file sharing communities now exist. Due to the ease of use of some of theses dedicated file sharing sites copyright has become a significant issue for Content Sharing.
Content Sharing is a straightforward activity.
You prepare your content on your computer and you upload it to the Web.
Big Deal right?.......WRONG
Content Sharing communities work collaboratively to catalogue and annotate the content that is uploaded. For example tagging is one such practice. By tagging uploaded content further context can be added to the uploaded material. In some cases this can drastically alter how we perceive the uploaded content. This social tagging is widely known as Folksonomy
When you upload content to a content sharing website you are generally given the option of tagging it. This metadata is non-hierachical and it is the central ingredient that allows folksonomies to develop.
Folksonomies are basically the exact opposite of Taxonomies.
Folksonomies are:
- non-hierachical
- flexible
- created collaboratively
- bottom-up
- user driven
Taxonomies are:
- hierachical
- inflexible
- created by an authority
- top-down
Folksonomy as Symbol (Weinberger 2006) examines the symbolism of Folksonomy and importantly shows that it is not the panacea to providing order to the content on the internet.
Geo-tagging is a way of providing location metadata to uploaded content. This allows anyone to search for content by location, rather than a category or key word. Flickr allows content uploaders to be very specific about their geo-tagging, they can record the exact moment in time and the place a photo was taken. This allows for very specific searching to take place.
A blog on Content Sharing would not be complete without mentioning Youtube.
Copyright issues have always been a topical discussion when talking about youtube.
A recent example was when Viacom posted a billion dollar suit against youtube as discussed in this news article.
Mashup websites are also places where content is uploaded and tagged by communities. Mashups are also providing copyright issues as sometimes they contain several sources of copyrighted material. These derivative works can be extremely good in their artistic and creative endevours however, the law can sometimes stop them in their tracks.
Creative Commons is a way of creators of content to provide a less restrictive form of protection to their work. The preface being that it increases sharing and improves collaboration (2 of the main facets of Web 2.0).
Due to its ease of use youtube is also a very good vehicle in the spreading of internet memes.
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