With all this talk of digital literacy, you may wonder what exactly it is. It can be defined as a "complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, involving reading, writing, and communicating (Selfe, 1999)."
As literacy is a measure of how well you can read and write, digital literacy is a measure of essentially the same skills through a digital medium. Notice at the "welcome" page, I said that you were at least somewhat digitally literate. Obviously, some people are more so than others. Many of us communicate through social networking sites; some of us design these sites.
With today's technology i.e. computers and the Internet, there is no denying that the potential of sharing information has risen exponentially in the last two decades. Information sharing through digital technology brings the world closer together through bypassing physical boundaries. News can travel around the world before you can even finish reading this sentence. Why do we feel the need to do this? As Clay Shirky says, "Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group (2008)." We share information not only for the sake of the group, but for our personal "street cred."
At a glance, information sharing does not seem like a bad thing. It keeps us in touch with the world at the click of a button and it can aid us all in researching and gathering information. But as with everything else in life, we must take the good with the bad. As this sharing spreads news, research, entertainment around, it also acts as a vector for plagiarism, pornography, and piracy of music and software.
This brings me to the purpose of this website: The piracy of music and software has become an epidemic due to our digital literacy. It has especially caused a disruption with the record industry who claim they have lost a significant amount of money because of it. With all the problems that arise from our modern style of information sharing, is it worth it?
One of the biggest issues is that the authorities are trying to take care of this modern situation in an obsolete manner. They have done this ever since the initial disruption of the industry.