paper 3

Jose L. VazquezO. Quimby Melton

English 206

March 23, 2006

Hard Time for a Song

File sharing should not be labeled or penalized as being felonies. They do not have the impact that the music industry and the movie industry claim on sales.  MPAA claims that sharing a movie is tantamount to stealing a car or committing another serious crime. This should not be so, you can’t compare people sharing a movie over the internet to stealing a car, stealing a car effects in many ways the person from whom the car was stolen. It can lead to many things which adversely affect the owner of the car, for instance, the person can lose his/her job by not being able to go to work because they don’t have their car. He/she might lose their lives for they are unable to go to the hospital in an emergency and might die before the ambulance gets there. We can go on for ever pointing out the many instances that can severely affect a person who had their car stolen. Trading a movie between friends would not cause such a severe impact on the film industry.

The RIAA is making basically the same claim as is the MPAA, however, Research clearly indicates that although the trading of music through the internet or other means has proliferated, CD sales continues to be high. Research conducted by Harvard university and the university of North Carolina indicates that file sharing has minimal to no affect on CD sales, furthermore, the slowdown of sales in CD’s that the RIAA claims may be attributed to the lack of spending during the recession and the increase competition from other sources of entertainment like are DVD’s and videogames; which have grown during the same timeframe according to an article by John Borland on Cnetnews.com.

The economy has a lot to do with CD sales. According to information provided on the RIAA website CD sales saw a downturn between 2001 and 2003 the years recession hit the
US economy. The same information indicates growth in CD sales in 2004.

 

Works Cited

Borland, John. “Music Sharing doesn’t kill CD sales, Study says” CNET News.com. March 2006. March 23, 2006. < http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5181562.html>.

RIAA. “2004 Yearend Statistics.” 2004. March 24, 2006 <http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/pdf/2004yearEndStats.pdf>

Technology in the present and in the future

How technology continues to change our lives

An article on Newsweek magazine 11/28/2005 talks about how technology is changing the way in which we learn.  In today’s world of immediacy, technology is ever evolving, we now use a variety of tools to communicate and transfer information. This has come to influence even the way in which we learn, now some universities and individual professors are taking advantage of the internet and services like podcasting to provide lectures for students who might have missed a session.

 

So far according to the Newsweek article, dozens of colleges around the country have embraced what is called ‘course casting’ some of these are; Drexel, Stanford, Duke, and American University. It has become popular practice for students to use them. Many use them for the convenience of not having to be there ‘wasting their time in class’.

 

However, even though it is convenient, some experts in the article indicated their concern because of the lack of interaction which can result in students not being able to create and keep a schedule, it limits contact with professors, and it does not do much to keep the drop-out rates low or controlled. Some professors however, are doing other things to try to control the problems they see because of the lack of student attendance which were stated above. They are now implementing visual components which can not be easily replicated in audio.

 

Both points of view have their pros. However, I would side with the later. I think that interaction with professors is crucial to the success of a student, the wide use of technology to replace that interaction is detrimental to our society as a whole. Professors can serve as mentors to students and can further encourage them to pursue a higher education. Another form of interaction is that which takes place between students, I mean students with students. This will most likely be also affected.

 

US education is no-longer the same it used to be, we now have some of the lowest numbers and grades compared to other parts of the world, the propagation of this technology will further erode our education.

 

Technology not only affects our education but as the article on Slate tells us, it is also affecting our future, and will affect us when it comes time to look for a job. Once more the proliferation communication is affecting us. Technology is not bad; it is great that we have access to instant information. However, in several cases technology has been used to in ways which are detrimental to our access to things like a job or school. Using ones blog or personal website should not be used to determine ones ability to perform at work or school.

 

As I said above, technology is not bad; it only becomes bad when it is used for negative ends. And nothing should replace personal interaction in the classroom or work.     

Paper 2

Jose L. Vazquez         
O. Quimby Melton
English 206

February 16, 2006

No more bureaucracy, just Music

            Not long ago, before the proliferation of the internet, writers, musicians, and other artists had to endure and arduous process to get the piece of art they had created from an idea to something their intended audience could read, hear, and see. Although this process has not been entirely eliminated, for many up-coming artists the process is not the same. We now live in a world of immediacy, the internet and other forms of communication have revolutionized the way in which we do pretty much everything, including the distribution of ones art. The process of distributing music has been revolutionized with the aid of the internet; it has become much more simple for up and coming artists to be able to express themselves. Both processes will be compared and contrasted.

            Before the internet, artists had to first perform for the recording of their demo. However, it is not that simple or it is not just a process of recording your music onto a tape. It in it self is a long and in many times expensive process. As Trubridge tells us, the recording of a demo takes time and money, the artist must be cautious to be rehearsed for the longer he/she takes the more money the studio will charge to produce the demo (p. 163). The internet has for some eliminated this hassle to the purchase of music recording software which costs a fraction of what studio time would. It may not be the same quality, but it serves the purpose of allowing the artist to record his/her music in order for it to be distributed.           

The Demo, No More

            A quick search on Google for “home music recording program” returns 52,500,000 results for software and services which are designed to facilitate the process of recording ones music at home. Amongst some of the first programs that show up are products made by cakewalk, they provide home recording software for home musicians called ‘Music Creator 3’ this software is available for $29.00 downloaded. According to the description it is supposed to be easy to operate and productive. Another program which is fairly popular is the Apple Garageband available for $79.00. These programs offer up-and-coming artists the ability to record music at the price of what a recording studio charges per hour in many cases. The purpose of these programs is to be able to edit ones music as it would be at a recording studio, sound effects can be added and the music can be fine-tuned.

Demo submission

            According to Brabec, the submission of ‘demo tapes’ at one time was simple, as he tells us “music publishers had staffs who listened to… [Demo] tapes” (p. 383). The tapes they used to listen to were unsolicited, but “because of an increased number of infringement suits against publishers” (p. 383) that practice was eliminated or greatly reduced. This placing even more obstacles in an unknown artist’s possibilities at being recognized and getting a contract with a major record label. Even if the artist was recognized, now he had to deal with another problem, the bureaucracy. Many cases recommend a lawyer immediately. An attorney is recommended because as Barrow tells us the “Artist who avoids paying a lawyer…do so at their peril…a badly worded contract could cost the artist dearly in later life, and that small saving will be regretted forever.”(p. 59) Many times the artist is not really concerned or is unknowledgeable about the legal jargon connected with contract negotiations or signing. His or her main concern is making music; the lawyer being experienced with entertainment contract negotiations is an essential component of the artist’s career. He makes sure the artist has the best possible contract terms before he/she signs. This whole process takes place even before the artist becomes known. Technology has eliminated this stressful process, now the artist can bypass most of it. They can literally go from recording their music in their garage onto a recorder fine-tuning it on their home PC and posting it on music distribution programs.

Music Distribution

            The process of distributing music after the long and dreadful process of signing a manager, getting a lawyer, finding a record company, which is really long has been cut down to minutes of doing an online search for music distribution services. A Google search for ‘Online Music Distribution” returns 28,000,000 results. This is not the only resource, an artist can setup a website or blog and promote his/her music with no cost other than the price of the software mentioned earlier and the internet connection fees. Some file sharing programs available online have groups, and these groups are composed of a lot of people around the block or around the world. Since these programs provide this, the artist can share his/her music with them in order to be able to promote the work. One such program which is now no longer working is Audiogalaxy, when Audiogalaxy was operating people with different interests in music could form groups and post their music online for the group to share. Although as stated Audiogalaxy is no longer working, there are several other examples which still permit file sharing between members. Another program that is popular nowadays is podcasting, this service allows for people to post their work online and for the download of their music by who ever is interested. There is no question that technology has streamlined the process of making ones music available to the intended audience. Now with out having to worry about all the legal hassle the artist can concentrate on making good music.

            Many artists may now follow this process to make the way to initial recognition less difficult. However, the initial action of posting ones music online for free does not mean the artist wants to give away their music for free forever. If the artist is good enough he/she might land a contract or offers for one from recognized record labels. But he/she has options. The work may still have to be copyrighted but that may be the only or one of the few legal processes required for the promotion of their music. Now there are services online which allow the artist to sell their music directly online for a nominal fee.

Music sales online

            An artist can wait to land a contract from a big record label, but this can take time and the unfortunate truth is that they might in fact not get a contract with a recognized record company. For these people there are options. There are a variety of services online which distribute their music; many offer services which allow the artist to sell their CD online for a set fee, allowing the artist to set the selling price of the CD. They in many cases provide services like pay-for-play in which the listener pays for listening to the music of the artist. They also have pay-per-download which charges a fee to the listener for downloading music from the artist. According to information provided by a website called armydriller.com, since the artist’s set the price on their music and most of the music distribution services and other forms of bureaucracy are removed, new musicians can be making dollars instead of cents on their music which is what a record label pays for their music. These mentioned online services are obviously not as well know as are EMI, SONY, or any of those other large well known music record labels; however we must keep in mind that the internet is an ever-expanding network which will increasingly in the future become even more widely used and people will be able to be head in even more corners of the world.

            There is no question that the internet has changed the world, we see this in the way we communicate and in many other ways. The internet today has become an integral part of our society and by this I am not referring to American society only, but world wide. Artists can now easily setup a website and post their paintings, writings, and in the case of musicians, their music. The freedom of expressing our art has no boundaries or restraints. The world is more dynamic, even comparing it to ten or twenty years ago, it is a world of now, and so will our whole lives be for time to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Armydriller.com. 2005. Sell Your Music Online 05 March 2006 http://www.armydiller.com/musichosting.htm>           

Barrow, Tony, and Julia Newby. Inside the Music Business. London: Blueprint, 1995

Brabec, Jeffrey, and Todd Brabec. Music, Money, and Success The Insiders Guide to the Music Industry. New York: Schimmer, 1994.

Hull, Geoffrey P. The recording industry. New York: Routledge, 2004

on blogs-n-stuff

Writing on a blog for me at least requires a bit more care, I always have in mind the fact that other people, not just the professor are going to read my horrible writing. However find that in most blogs people who write do it in a very informal way. Some write about just things that in any other situation might appear to be insignificant or down right ludicrous. It is however, interesting how this blog thing has just taken off and a lot of people are doing it.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, I try to write in not such a different way on a blog than I would on regular papers. I try. There is also this concept of what you write on a blog remaining there forever. Even if I decide that after this class is over I am going to not use my blog account, the postings ive made will remain.

Another thing I just thought about is how it is kind of cool that the postings I made will be there forever, because in the future when some time has passed since I wrote what I wrote the work will be there for me to look back at and possibly notice the improvement. Thinking about it, I can look back 5, 10, 15, or 20 years from now and that work will be there, I will be able to remember a lot of things about now, in the future.

 

Because of the possibility of the work one posts on blogs being there forever, it might not be a bad idea to start some kind of online diary.

 

But returning to the question of what I thought was the difference between writing traditionally and writing on blogs and WebPages. I personally think that blogs are less formal but can however be used how sees fit and with the formality or lack thereof as well.  

Composition paper 2

Jose L. Vazquez         

O. Quimby Melton

English 206

February 16, 2006

Artists Will Always be Rich

            Even though new media has revolutionized the way in which people can express themselves, it will never be able to completely eliminate the possibilities of artists making a profit for their work. I for one believe that people, especially artists should not be made to provide their talents for free, it is one thing to show ones work when initially attempting to gain recognition such as by broadcasting their work through means such as podcasting and websites but  a whole other to deprive them of the profit which they merit from their talent. There has been many examples of musicians, writers, and other artists who began promoting their work through the internet with all of its available sources. We have and have had services such as Kazaa, Limewire, Audiogalaxy, and Napster just to mention a few which have been used by several previously unrecognized artists. With the advent of the internet things became easier for many people who wanted to express their talents. With today’s abundant use of the internet, and the ease creating ones own website, things will become even more streamlined. One interesting new product which can be used for this end is iTunes or podcasting. Now one can simply record ones musical performance save it as a music file load it up to the internet and post it on either a website, blog, or iTunes. This initial approach as I said before can be used to promote ones music if that is what is being promoted, but afterwards, ofcourse the artist has to receive financial compensation.

            I see it this way, when a person is talented that person must be compensated in which ever way that person sees fit. Whether it be monetarily or what ever may be the case, this will motivate people to continue to be creative and by this person being creative he/she will help the development of society in general. Can you just imagine someone whos talent is to write, sing or any other thing having to worry so much about actual work that they disregard their art…we would have no books or music and our society could not function. This has most likely never happened before and it should not start now, we need people who are creative and we need to have an incentive for them to produce their art.    

Trees will continue to die!

Although, I first of all can’t say I speak for everyone else when I say paper literature is preferred when it comes to reading, I will venture out and say it for myself. Trees will continue to die on my account. It is just, for me at least somewhat more difficult to concentrate on reading electronic literature. When ever I have reading assignments that a professor has posted on electronic reserves they must always be printed on paper…just cant concentrate on reading off a computer monitor.

 

For some reason for me it is not the same. This is an issue I have been pondering for a while now…why cant I concentrate on reading from at screen. I was thinking that it might be because I always have the distraction of the internet right at my fingertips, I also do check my email account’s about 20 times a day or more. So that’s a distraction too. Just like one thing I just did, just right now…I just looked at my phone to check for messages. That is really distracting. I must also admit that I am pretty dam busy; I’m involved in several different organizations and started an organization on my own which has kept me pretty busy too. So always checking my email or phone is excusable.

 

Working on the second composition paper for this class I was doing some research on e-books and found that there are a bunch of them and wonder…am I the only one who doesn’t like to read of a computer screen? I hope not.

 

On another note, I think that the attractive thing for me in reading from a paper is my ability to do things like highlighting, writing on the page, keeping easy tabs or flags on books I’m reading I can go back to with ease. Yes highlighting can be done on documents on a computer screen but that’s kind of time consuming. And, I’ve never read an e-book but I’m guessing that keeping track of your readings or the page you are on is not as easy as just flagging the page you left off on.

 

So call me a brutal tree killer, I’ve never considered my self a tree huger…lets leave that to the flower people.    

The Snail is KING

There are many differences between writing a letter and writing an E-mail, first of all writing a snail-mail letter is more formal; because of this writing a letter is the continued practice of people such as lawyers and other professionals. Writing an E-mail will never replace writing a letter in professional fields; email is mostly useful for instant communication.

 

With the rapid expansion of the internet and communication becoming quicker everyday, the world seems to be getting smaller. Over the internet one can talk with a person from any part of the world in real-time the role of traditional snail mail seems to be diminishing and its importance becoming non-existent. However, you can’t recreate the same feeling when receiving a hand written letter from a relative to receiving an email.

 

A hand written letter can employ creativity and artistic skill, things which can’t easily be reproduced in an email or typed letter. Most people keep hand written letters and treasure them for a long time, and email can also be kept but it’s not a tangible object as is a paper letter. Writing a letter takes a little bit more effort and therefore is received with some sort of joy that in most cases an email can bring.

 

However, I will admit I for one try to write my letters over email of course in a more formal fashion even if it’s just a couple lines I’m writing. By this I include all email communications on my part. I do this because I think it’s necessary to try to perfect the writing of a letter that being paper or emails.

 

When people eventually graduate from college and eventually enter the work force the ability to communicate correctly and clearly in speech and writing will be valued by any prospective employer. Being able to demonstrate simply your ability to quickly and efficiently compose a soling piece to communicate information through any means will be rewarding in ones career possibilities.

 

I will however continue to stress that, never will email be able to substitute communication in a professional level. And also that the feeling one gets when opening the mailbox and seeing a hand written letter from mom will never be duplicated when fulfilling that daily chore of viewing ones email inbox.   

 

paper 1 final

Jose L. Vazquez
O. Quimby Melton
English 206

23 January 2006

Copy and paste plagiarism

              Although plagiarism has proliferated with easily available and accessible electronic media, I don’t believe that plagiarism will play a really strong role or become engrained in US society. Unlike other parts of the world where in several instances plagiarism is according to some, accepted and maybe encouraged. Acts such as these are frowned upon very strongly in the US and other western countries.  

Thanks to the electronic media revolution that has engulfed the world in recent time, the line defining plagiarism has gotten somewhat blurry. Plagiarism is commonly known as the taking of someone else’s work and representing it as ones own. Plagiarism is a Latin word for “Kidnapper”. According to Joseph Gibaldi in the Modern Language Association of America handbook plagiarism is “the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind, and presenting it as one’s own” (30). Plagiarism is defined in much the same or similar way in most other citation and information sources such as the APA, Chicago, and Columbia. Plagiarism is not however a legal offence, but rather an ethical one. It is held to high esteem in most parts of the world but western countries hold it at more stringent value. Plagiarism can get you expelled from school or at the very least get you into a lot of trouble. One example of this is how this class’ instructor and others indicate the severity of committing plagiarism and the possibility of one receiving an “F” for the semester.

 

Webpage’s, Blog’s and plagiarism

However, what happens when people start plagiarizing outside of school like in their blogs or websites. How do we control this? Or better yet should it be considered plagiarizing? Well, I think that plagiarizing in personal websites or blog’s is a more complicated problem to control and furthermore poses a greater challenge. It would be good to analyze the occurrence of plagiarism in new media and how it should be handled. There can’t really be any kind of effective regulation on personal sites or blog’s it is really up to the owner’s sense of ethics.

In today’s electronic world, plagiarism is still looked upon with disfavor and as mentioned above is punished in most instances when practiced in acts from which one looks to get personal credit for a work one does not own. However, plagiarism in personal WebPages or blogs is a different issue. It is more difficult to determine which steps to take towards someone who performs classical plagiarism in today’s world of copy and paste. Because plagiarism exists and at times is infringed upon by people for purposes of lets say…designing their webpage and or blog; in many cases I think that plagiarism should be only castigated when some one is looking to benefit from this act. This can be done when someone tries to use a work of someone else to…get an A in the term paper or essay. There are certain types of plagiarism that should be punished because it demonstrates a lack of character and ethics. I don’t think that plagiarism should be a big issue when it is being used in things like personal webpage’s or blog’s. The act of using information from others in these instances, I don’t think should merit negative sanctioning. I believe that it should only be done when someone knowingly uses information and looks to profit from it in some way. However, I don’t think that plagiarism should be allowed in a professional site under any circumstances. 

 

Music, movies and more

What to do with the copying of information in today’s instant world in which we have programs like Kazaa, Lime wire, Audiogalaxy, Napster, amongst many other services and programs which facilitate the transfer of intellectual property? Some people might not feel they are doing anything really wrong when they download a movie or at least they don’t feel it is that serious. In class there was a question asked, this question was whether downloading a movie or song from one of these file sharing programs could be equated to the stealing of a car. Well I don’t think so, it is completely different as some one mentioned a car is something tangible, if someone doesn’t have their car because someone stole it that person is going to be walking and it will definitely affect his/her life. On the other hand, if I download Munich, Steven Spielberg won’t feel a thing. No, I am not condoning the stealing of intellectual property; I guess it’s up to like I said before the ethics the person who is perpetrating the act. This was just an illustration aimed at pointing out the consequences and or differences of stealing a car and stealing a movie.

Papers, essays

Plagiarism is most of the time readily detected and punished in schools with new tools available to instructors. Tools which can be found with a simple Google search by typing in “Detect Plagiarism” which returns 265,000 results on tools to detect plagiarism, such as programs and other services which for a fee can aid instructors in the quest of eliminating plagiarism. Others are taking a new approach to the problem of plagiarism, a UNLV Political Science professor named John P. Tuman now requires students doing research to include with their final draft, copies of the title pages of the books from which they gathered information.

According to Denise Hamilton, in academia there are several types of people who plagiarize. Students who “claim they are too short on time, or that the assignment is ‘bogus,’ or that the course isn’t within their major and so it doesn’t matter anyway. Some overachievers fear that what they write themselves won’t be good enough, and then there is the contingent of students who are just plain lazy.” (56). There are rules which indicate what to do with students mentioned above which are understandable and logical.

A question which was raised in class was whether it was wrong for someone to plagiarize a professor or if it should even be considered plagiarism. Well I think that in some way that act is plagiarism in most circumstances and if proven should be penalized. I for one feel comfortable in saying I have never done it. I always try to give credit where credit is due. If someone for example is doing a paper and uses an idea which he/she got from a professor, it should be mentioned and that professor should be given credit, for the person presenting the information is doing it to get credit. I guess that what I’m basically saying is that, if you are going to receive credit lets say in the form of a better grade or in the form of recognition in the public sphere, then you should give credit to who deserves it.

Plagiarism in the US not as rest of the world

I don’t believe that new media will make the US into a place were plagiarism is condoned or accepted in the academic level or in times when work is being reproduced for profit such as burning CD’s or movies. Such actions will continue to be looked down upon.

Although in some instances claims by some might be over inflated when they say that in some parts of the world plagiarism is completely accepted. I don’t believe that in many cases they are correct but there are exceptions. Some cases are well documented. For instance a Christian Science Monitor article stated that China is “a country where shops are well-stocked with pirated movies, music, books, and other stolen intellectual property.” (Plagiarism). Kathryn E. McDonnell says that “In may Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and First Nation cultures…knowledge is believed to belong to society as a whole, rather than an individual…” this is an excuse people use in some countries to justify their plagiarizing.

The problem of plagiarism at a grand scale (and by this I mean outright selling of pirated material in the street) is and will continue to be limited to less developed countries where laws are non-existent or hardly ever enforced. This claim can be backed by the fact that in western Europe such occurrences seem to never happen. And for this reason, the problem will remain in under-developed countries.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers 5^th Ed. New York: MLA, 2000

Hamilton, Denise. “Plagiarism” Intellectual Property. Ed. Jennifer Peloso. 75 Vol, no. 5. USA: H. W. Wilson Company, 2003

”Plagiarism in China fuels debate on intellectual theft.” Christian Science Monitor 22 January, 2002. 1 January, 2006
McDonnell, Kathryn E. “English Language Teaching.” TESL 501 English Language Teaching I. Summer 2003. 1 January, 2006

Fallacies in politics

The past presidential election was filled with fallacies and personal attacks. It seems as though our politicians no longer have an agenda on which they can legitimately get elected to office. Now it’s on perfecting one’s strategy and coordinating attacks on your opponent in order to just get into office and afterward develop your agenda or just simply fail to have one that is effective. The later of which could describe the current situation in the white house.

Now according to Karl Rove the strategy for success is to attack your opponent’s strengths, he being a master at this.

President Bush used many types of fallacies to discredit John Kerry during the last elections. I will try to point out a few.

When President Bush claimed, or attempted to make people believe that if Kerry were to win, they would loose their right to have guns; he was using an Ad Populum Argument. He basically said something like this: “If Kerry wins the presidency he will take away your guns which are guaranteed by the second amendment of the constitution.” He is appealing to people’s belief that they should keep their second amendment guaranteed right and that their guns should not be touched and furthermore that if he where to be re-elected the second amendment would stay and for this reason they would kept their guns.

Fallacies are used all the time by both parties in the US. Another example of this is how people who were against the Patriot Act are branded as un-patriotic. This is very simple. The name of the bill says it all, whenever anyone challenged or questioned the Patriot Act because they either believed it was infringing on civil rights people were called un-patriotic and were branded as being with the terrorist and as being against America. This type of fallacies is called a false dilemma:

“Either you are for the patriot act or you are with the terrorists”

The person who is speaking out against the Patriot act might be doing it because he/she as mentioned might be concerned with civil liberties, but has nothing to do with terrorism.

Another case is the ongoing Muslim protests against the cartoons depicting Muhammad as a terrorist. Some in the US may say that Muslims are over-reacting and to some extent they might be right. However, people don’t realize this is just the tip of the iceberg. They, the Muslims might see this as salt being added to the wound. What people need to realize is that these people might be reacting this way because they might see this as the drop that spilled the glass of water. People have to take into consideration that these people are also really upset over US policy towards the Middle East and its continuous support of Israel. They could also be venting at what they see as Western occupation of their lands, such as the continuous occupation of Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq. This could be a Bandwagon appeal by appealing to the cense that intends on making people feel that Muslims are irrational people and that they are demonstrating this by violent protests over a simple cartoon.

Decisions, decisions.