Chapter 4

Much like advanced search features, I had a basic understanding of how to search for information on the web, but I didn’t efficiently use filters on a Google search. I previously just typed “2023” into my query and skimmed around until I found recent news. The low cost of publishing on the web is a double-edged sword to me. On one hand I like that it’s financially viable to have an individual or small team to have a blog, but on the other hand I feel that the low cost might spread misinformation. A bigger news website must worry about sponsors and their reputation, but some guy making a blog might not care about fact checking. I didn’t know that Yahoo was a news aggregation website that had a variety of sources. I assumed it was all in-house authors.

I appreciated that the book mentioned finding up to date weather information. I’ve tried using several different weather websites and each time I get bombarded with ads and pleas to turn off my ad blocker. I didn’t know that some websites sell their weather data. I think I just assumed that every small T.V. station had their own weather data. While I’ve never used Careerbuilder.com, it functions almost exactly like I expected. I’ve used the web for medical information. I think a lot of people have had the experience of searching for a mild symptom and then being concerned about a serious condition. While I haven’t used the web to search for a home, I have used it to search for many hotels/Airbnb’s and it’s a similar process.

Reading about copyright was quite a rabbit hole for me. As I read about how works created after 1977 are protected for the life of the author plus another 70 years, it reminded me of a conversation my brother and I had about when Mickey Mouse enters the public domain. I actually used the advanced search features from the previous module to research it a little. I was interested reading about fair use. That term gets thrown around on some movie review YouTube channels I watch, and I didn’t really know what it meant. That explains how they’re able to show clips from a movie trailer, but not necessarily small clips from the movie itself.

I’ve never heard of Project Gutenberg or Bartleby.com, but I have heard of The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Stock images and audio files I was familiar with. There are a few stock sounds I can pick out when I watch a movie, like a specific creaking noise when a door opens. I was surprised to find out that the infamous “Wilhelm Scream” that’s in a lot of movies isn’t actually public domain.