Hello. As the year is ending and finals are approaching, this will probably be my last post. American studies has felt very strange recently as we are currently covering the time period which I have lived through. As I have barely ever reached much farther than the Cold War in any of my previous history classes, I feel as though we have gone through history's events at a very quick and efficient rate. It is still, however, odd to see the events which I lived through appear in a history book.
     Although disorientating, I actually find it to be very informative to go over the events that occurred during my lifetime. This is mainly because, at the time, I was either too young or too busy to actually understand a lot of it. Also, looking at things in hindsight takes away all of the confusion surrounding a mess of information allowing me to actually see what was happening. I wish we had more time to go over these events and maybe discuss current events.
     One problem with trying to research current events today is that I mainly do this on the internet. The issue is that there are so many differing views shown along with a lot of incorrect information,  that everything just becomes a jumbled mess. This is also an advantage, however, because I have a chance to see all of the differing views and am able to determine what information is correct, and what information is false. Then again, I probably would not even know about many current events without the internet. This is kind of odd, I just completely changed my mind mid-paragraph. I'll just stick with that my current source of information has its advantages and disadvantages.
     Speaking of disadvantages that are also advantages, lets discuss how government legislation works when talking about the internet. The problem with this legislation is that the internet is ever-changing, rendering any law obsolete often the moment it is released. One example of this is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which was created to prevent copyrighted materials from being shared on the internet. The DMCA actually has the power to relocate where add revenue from a webpage goes or to just take it down. This is very problematic in places like Youtube where people will show copyrighted materials, but are protected under fair use. The idea of fair use is that copyrighted materials can be shown if they are changed so that a content creator makes it their own or if the product is used to educate people. This allows critics to submit reviews without being censored, or allows people to make a parody of something. The issue is that, on Youtube, a company does not have to provide any proof that any copyright infringement took place. Instead, a content creator has to prove that they are innocent. The only response to any sort of action in which a video or a piece of content was claimed incorrectly is for the content creator to threaten the company with court. Many people do not have the money to higher a lawyer or become intimidated by large companies and will decide to do nothing, leading to a large amount of false copyright claims to take place. Unfortunately there is no real solution to the problem. Our class had tried to write legislation to regulate the internet and has experienced why it seems impossible. We just need to make sure that these events are made known so that, eventually, someone will stop them.