Since we are still working with Flickr, I thought I'd post another photo of a squirrel attempting to use technology. He does have a tripod, so he is not totally clueless.The idea of Mash-ups seems a natural one with entire idea of Web 2.0. Web users are merely taking information from different data sources and making it into something new, something different. It's a Web collage. It's creative, innovative, and allows programamers to combine and remix data from different Web sites. I like a quote from Business Week from July 25, 2005 called "Mix, Match, and Mutate" (one of the links from the Wikipeda article on mash-ups found through Thing #6) that calls this the "Wild, Wild Web", and Alan Taylor, a Monster Worldwide Inc. Web developer says "It's the Wild West all over again".
These mash-ups provide endless possibilities, and illustrate Web 2.0's main thrust. I am going to quote the Business Week article again. It says, "People are seizing far more control of what they do online".
What are the problems? Again, the Business Week article cited above lists some and as librarians we can understand.
1. Using the data without permission. What if there is a copyright? What if the data is used in ways that it was not originally intended (with negative results?)
2.Some of the mash-up software presents potential dangers to users-makes hacking easier.
Another article from our tutorial is called "Mixing It up on the Web: Legal Issues Arising from Internet "Mashups", by Robert S. Gerber from Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal (August, 2006). He discusses licensing application programming interfaces, the legal issues involved with using someone else's information, contract law issues, copyright, trademark issues, patent law issues, unfair competition and false advertising, obscenity issues, etc. Eee, gads! It is the wild, wild west!!!
Seriously, though, as new uses of technology and information arise, how we react in a legal sense and how we "protect" information has to be sorted out.
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