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.