Frequently, people add someone as a ‘friend’ on social networking sites such as Facebook after having met the person only once at an event. While it is true that many true friendships have formed from the use of such social networking platforms, many of these ‘friends’ are never met in the real world again. This act of ‘friending,’ as it is called on the internet, has been said to ‘cheapen’ true friendship. Indeed, many individuals with low self esteem enjoy having high friend counts to gain a sense of popularity in the digital world.

The controversial side to all of this is when professionals engage in online ‘friendships’ with their clients. This is oftentimes a breach of the professional’s oath to always remain professional. Many consider this type of interaction to be inappropriate, yet there are many young professionals and clients who consider it no different from friending some stranger they just met at a party and will probably never meet again. In essense, Facebook and other social networking friendships represent the possibility of someone being a ‘true’ friend, however it usually guarantees that the person is at least an acquaintance of some sort. So perhaps you can still think of your five hundred ‘friends’ on Facebook as such, as the jury is still out as to whether or not they are truly ‘friends,’ ‘acquaintances,’ or both.

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This article was written after reading and reflecting upon Neil Seeman’s article, ‘Facebook dumbing friendships down?’ in the National Post and Lev Grossman’s, ‘Time’s Person of the Year: You’ in Time Magazine.

The issue is not as cut and dry as some would make it out to be. According to Good Copy, Bad Copy, 57% of American teenagers have created and uploaded content to the internet. In many cases, these productions included sampled material from other artists without any explicit permission to reuse the material. Under most country’s laws, this would be an infringement of copyright law. However, due to the sheer number of people who are taking part in this new culture of creativity, it is very unlikely that they will ever be able to be stopped. Instead, I think this type of creative expression should be embraced by the media industry since it would change their image for the better and thus increase sales by further exposure of their media in the new digital world. The actual percentage of internet users who have used file sharing technologies is even greater, perhaps approaching 80%.

I personally feel that current intellectual property law needs to be rewritten to accommodate the changing legal landscape in the modern digital age. The media industry also needs to rethink how they market their media. I feel that the world benefits from the free exchange of information, and of course this includes artistic expression. Under current law, it is next to impossible for freelance DJs such as those seen in Good Copy, Bad Copy to sample various different artist’s audio for their own mixes. This is extremly unfair as many DJs do not profit from their mixing of audio, yet they have to deal with possible legal repercussions. If intellectual property laws are not revised in the current generation, then I am confident it will be in the coming generations due to the current generation having grown up in a free media world.