"Culture of Anarchy"...and Piracy stuff

I never knew that piracy was such a big problem in our world. We always hear about piracy in the United States and with the ability of people to sell things online in America I could see where piracy can be a huge issue for us. With overseas countries and even Mexico, I wouldn’t think that piracy and burned DVD’s and CD’s would be such a popular economy. For a country that does not have the technology to creat and produce movies the way Americans would, or a country that doesn’t have the technological advancements that our country has, you would think they would be researching how to catch up, not wasting their money on a small in-home burn station. Nor would I think that the amount of people buying from them would be as large as it is! When I think of places like India I think of a movie we watched in my images and experiences of childhood, entitled “Born into Brothels”. Two people from America go to Calcutta to film children that are raised in the red light district and grow up there under the rule of their parents. They are forced to cook and clean. They clean allot because they don’t really live in houses, they live in squares and have no running water and there is lots of drugs involved. Places like these I don’t see being the first people to spend their week’s wages on pirated music and videos. The part that interested me was when they were talking about how to stop this piracy. The author stated that this wasn’t stopped until there was going to be equal economies. Meaning United States would have to come down and India would need to go up. I guess the hardest part for me to understand, or maybe I am misunderstanding is that the technology is out there. It is not like it does not exist. It is the people of India and Mexico that have different priorities in their government system and they are not as focus on progression in the digital age as some other countries. Why is that fair then, because they choose to act on other matters, that they can copy and sell these electronic resources and their government just turns their heads. If they put an end to the majority of this piracy and black market economy they might have the opportunity to bring it into their own country and bring that revenue of CD’s music and DVD’s into the nation’s economy and not into the home pockets of its citizens so they can produce more. The government sees this black market as a means to keep their citizens content while they focus on other matters at hand. I think they need to put a stop to this and hir these piracy making people to work for the government and add a slight tax on the product and then the nations economy may have a chance at one day’s catching up to America.

Dear Mr. Frank R. Wolf,
My name is Rebecca Grau and I am a concerned College Student at George Mason University. I am writing to propose that you and your colleagues reexamine bill H.R. 4137. Passing this bill will only end in a devastating outcome for all involved. If a college does not comply with the ban of file sharing and government funding is taken away from schools, we will essentially be segregating colleges and universities into children of wealthy parents or planning for very poor graduates drowning in debt. For schools that choose to comply with the file sharing ban i feel we are going to be restricting the learning opportunities of those to follow. As a future teacher of America i am concerned for the teachers that will follow. If funding is cut for the schools or schools need to spend a massive amount of money controlling peer-to-peer file sharing the focus of their spending will turn away from the actual education of the students to all of the politics and legislation laws they need to abide by. There is no possible way to trace these file sharing transactions and i feel that this bill will bring great controversy to the college and take the real focus off of learning.
Thank you for hearing my concerns and i hope you will take this seriously into consideration in the very near future.
Sincerely,
Becky Grau

Prosumer approches, crisis of value and the political economy

** This blog is probably not very coherent, but I’ll try my best. My father was in the ER this weekend with what they thought was a heart attack. My Family is in CO so I spent all weekend waiting around by my phone freaking out. But I’ll try my best.

The prosumer approaches to new media was very hard to focus on because it jumped around with all the different links and side notes and trying to listen to what the guy was saying was all a bit confusing It wasn't very clear to me what exactly he was talking about when he mentioned "Nontextual communication". I understand it is basically the video and photo use to relay terms, ideas and thoughts without a written docuement, but what are the boundaries for nontextual communication? What all is included and what all is excluded? And what exactly is a prosumer? I understand a consumer, but I’m a little confused as to what the term means and why he chose it as part of the title.
I thought the sound snippets over the September 11th video really put in perspective how important sound is to a video. The video reminds me of the article from a couple of weeks about on The Five Principles of New media and how he had the student's works as examples for his teachings. As well as the Photoshop article that also used students examples. I thought the idea of the video paper for the end of the year assessment was a great idea and allows the teacher to fairly grade them based on what they have learned in the class. This is also an idea I can take with me into my teaching career.
The other readings were a good bit wordy and a little confusing! I’m still confused as to the plain definition of an ethical economy. The "definition" he lays out about ethical economy is that he called it this "Not because I necessarily believe that it is inherently better or nicer than the mainstream corporate economy. Instead, my choice of the term ‘ethical’ refers to the fact that this economy is largely coordinated by respect, peer-status, networks, friendships and other forms of inter-personal recognition; and it is geared towards the accumulation of such forms of interpersonal recognition, what sociologists would call ‘social capital’." I kind of understand what he is getting at but think that I am a bit confused. He says that the economy is driven by social status and the respect of my peers? I can see how some people would purchase something because it is cool or the "in" thing, but I just figured that was a phase people go through and that when you get old you get mature and stop doing that. I find it hard to believe that I am that highly influenced by my friends and peers as to what I will purchase, how I am going to spend my money.

In class Video Clip 11/01/2007

The video in class made me think in terms mostly of those that relate to my life in the most. Microsoft and the iphone. In History, how does the line between copyright, creativity and a monopoly become clustered together in a large grey area where lines are defined on a per-case basis? With microsoft, you have to pay for the product, but the product only, you dont the codes to your product to try and better it after you have paid a large sum of money to microsoft. I was also once told that there are other programs you can download for computers besides microsoft office, home ect. I have never heard of them before because most commonly in life everyone uses microsoft. SO, since they comtrol the computer population and do not release the codes with your purchase, only the product and in the sense of real-life usage, wouldn't Microsoft be considered a monopoly for it's use of copyright and high priced product? What other options do we really have that are accepted in today's society? When i purchased a new computer recently i then had to purchase the microsoft package that comes with it. I felt like i was being robbed for the simple fact that to get by in school and get my homework done i had to fork out this $150.00 so that i could type my portfolio and work on my powerpoint presentation. I had no other option.
On the contrary working in the cell phone buisness, we sell you the phone, you pay for the phone, and you sign a two year contract with us saying you'll stay with us. However you can only use that phone with T-mobile network. UNLESS..... you can get the phone unlocked. Because of third party dealers and strong competition you can find people to unlock your phone and use it on other people's network. Or because the object is a physical one, as opposed to a software code, you can physically take it apart and do a hard-wire unlock. This is what has happened with the iphone. It was only a matter of days that people we able to play around with it and get it unlocked. The cell phone buisness I would not consider a hard manopoly in the terms that there are other options to keep the prices competativly cheaper. You can always search or bargin for a good deal. However, once cingular and apple realized that the phones were able to be unlocked they sent out an over-the-air patch that would automatically re-lock the phone to the cingular network and a new un-lock code will then have to be found. This again pushes the manopoly and copyright line. If i purchase the iphone (some were $600.00) why could i not choose to use it for my own purposes? You have my money and i have the product, should the rights be mine now?
Perplexing to me though is that i would never think of purchasing a book, and using their words for my own. But why not? I bought the product, can't i do what i want with it? However to me i would think of the books and words on a separate platform than technology.

Blog post on Photoshop 10/22/2007

After reading all these things about Photo Shop it was amazing to think of what gets changed and goes unnoticed on a daily basis! I am a complete freak for gossip magazines, but shocking to me was that people magazine was able to Photoshop a picture of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt together to make it look like they were together! Some people would see that cover and never think twice about what they saw and the thought that it could be an altered image. What really bothers me is that we don’t have any nationwide laws against things being published. Most upsetting to me is the fact that people came change and alter pictures of American troops overseas. Out of respect for those risking it all so that you can sit here in your warm house on your fancy computer and alter those pictures, you wouldn’t disgrace their names and their values because you think it would be funny.
It’s just amazing what America has come to these days. America is preached as a free nation with freedom of choice however, you give people too much of an opportunity to all speak their mind and do as they personally feel, you lose creditability as a person in regards to allowing people to do as they please. It becomes a big joke and there is no definitive line separating the truths and the lies. Who do you believe?
In a court case, can you put up a big enough argument that no video or pictures should be used as the defendant you feel like the photos and videos may have been altered by anyone at any time? How do we maintain that level of honesty in such a large independent nation? What sources can we trust to be creditable? The Website for the History of Digital Tampering in the Media, Politics and law had some of the most wide-know journalist companies our there! If we are getting lied to on the front cover of Time, Newsweek, TV Guide, Redbook, Star, Men’s Fitness and National Geographic who can we trust to give us the real picture, the real information.
I took complete offense to the DOVE commercial. I love that they promote real beauty and real women. The Photoshoped, warped look of the girl after several hours of hair, make-up and on screen air-brush she looked beautiful and fake. That’s not what women want to see! Women care about using a product that works on real women. Not something that works on a supermodel who never had the problems before anyways. Photoshop can be a very devious and tricky thing to detect. We need to find a better way to hold people accountable for their changes.

Five principles of new media

The readings on “The Five Principles of New Media” were a very confusing reading. I’m not sure if it was the style of presentation or the material. I get really confused when it comes to the technical terms of computers and technology, so I got really confused with the in depth look at the Five principles of numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and transcoding.
I understood numerical representation as the way a computer is ran. It is run off of numbers and all the numbers and codes are equated to the pictures we see and run programs we use.
I understood modularity as the pieces of a computer that work together to form the big picture. I would think of it as a file saved in my documents. I save my homework in a certain file but the computer saves pieces of this files code throughout the computer and when I click to access that file at a later time, the computer pulls all these pieces from all over the hard drive into one piece that is my homework.
I understand automation to be the basic function of movement and our own creative edge on a file. Most common example of this would be the ability to add motion to a PowerPoint presentation with moving words and pictures that fly into the presentation from every angle.
Variability was a hard one for me to understand. I think I understood it as the ability to have a varying response to the same action. Each time I added a color to the paper, the squares would appear in different arrangements and different sizes. They never appeared in the same shape in the same spot two times in a row.
Transcoding seemed to be difficult as well. The overlying idea was that it was the merge of our culture with technology?!?!? The first thing to come to mind was as if I were to take a picture of a modern day pop star and used Photoshop or another editing program to warp the picture and create a shimmery, distorted, but still fully understandable picture or the same pop star.
Overall I didn’t understand exactly how this incorporated into the other readings we’ve had this semester. I thought it was kind of a throw-off to switch the subject and style of reading right before our mid-term evaluation. I was thinking we would be getting a great article with a story to dispute or an idea to argue, but this seems to be factual information on how computers work and a greater vocabulary lesson on its components.

Case Studies

I though most of the group presentation today delt with technology in today's world and privacy issues. The only ones that didn't real fit that title were the librarian as a keystone species, and the one about the gardener. I was alittle lost on the librarian one because i felt that most of the conent was lost in the video aspect of the presentation. I also wasnt too sure about the gardener presentation, because i felt they didn't describe exactly what type of gardener they were talking about up-front. The other presentation delt with privacy of computer use of students, privacy with rooms of a job, and when is too much freedom too much.

After these presentations today i have a better understanding of what is expected of our iundividual projects and what else i need to focus on my research. I now better understand the keystone species and location. The keystone species is what is present to allow all of this stuff to take place. I also learned that locality is the objects within the ecology and how they are used based on the topic of your ecology. The computers used in the video servalenced operating room would be different from those kids that loved playing "Pueblo" and again different from the hi-tech school where the photo-shopped class was taking place.

Overall i enjoyed learning from most of the presentations today, i just found a couple of them hard to follow as the group presented based on thier choice of presentation style.