Why Teach ESL in Korea?

Response to sarajnewman

Response to sarajnewman

I really like the passage you chose that highlighted the major motivations for piracy.  I feel as though sharing in an online community and sampling in the form of remixing songs go hand in hand.  Today, it is common to find music that is sampled from others music, including within the well known band Led Zepplin.  They used rifts and ideas from others songs to create some of the most well known music.  Now with technology available to the whole public, we are able to download music freely and use that music to sample and create new songs.  All music is a form of art and building off ideas in art to make something completely unique is a part of that.  Because music is an art, it should be being shared within the public to listen and create off of.  Copyright laws protect the rights of the artists claiming the music as their own.  We as a the public who participate in piracy are not violating laws because we are not claiming we wrote or performed the songs.  You also made a point that I addressed in response to another podcast which is the expense of music.  I'm a poor student and would not have been able to afford the thousand plus songs on my ipod, but does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to listen to them? Or should I settle for listening on the radio with advertisements playing every other song? As if we aren't surrounded by enough.  

Response to sperrier686

Response to sperrier686's Podcast

You make a good point when you say that money is required in this world and because of this artists should be rewarded for their fruits of labour.  While I agree with that as being true to our society, there is still radio coverage which they are paid for every time their song is played, as well as concerts and other ways to make money with their music.  People seem to be so concerned for the artists and producers in the music industry and while they should be rewarded for their efforts, we cannot deny that the ones who become popular, whose music is most pirated, are still making millions through various different means.  When music is pirated people are not stealing it and claiming it as their own, they are appreciating the song and the easiness it takes to download it online.  In this day in age I really cannot see piracy online changing so I feel as though it is irrelevant to say they 'should' be making money of the songs that are pirated, because they aren't and will continue to lose money because people will continue to download music for free.  

Response to afcallaghan

Response to afcallaghan's Podcast

As much as I would like to agree with you and spend the money to purchase music I have to say that I don't.  Maybe it is because I grew up downloading music off the internet on sites like Kaza since I was 11 years old that makes the difference.  I found that when I did purchase full albums at stores like HMV I would not even care to listen to full albums only the songs I like.  I understand that iTunes allows you to buy singular songs but as a student I honestly cannot afford to buy every single song.  Why is it that we are able to listen to music for free on the radio but it becomes a crime once we download them off the internet?  We are now so used to downloading that we even use the internet to watch movies now, causing retail chains like Blockbuster to be closed down.  We are moving into an age where copyright laws are harder to keep track of because of the immense data on the Internet that are copied.  Music started out as an art but as soon as we were able to commodify it, we did.  I understand paying to go see a concert because their is the experience of seeing them live, but in this day and age I really don't think we should need to pay for music when it is so easy not to.

Podcast

These actions are reflected by the means with which the Big Five record companies (EMI, Universal, Sony, Time Warner and BMG [Bertelsmann]) have extended their market dominance to the Internet. The Napster system of peer-to-peer sound file trading posed a serious challenge to the existing recording industry, but the decision in  A&M Records et al.  v. Napster firmly established the on-line intellectual property rights of entertainment industry conglomerates and reinforced the Big Five’s existing market oli-go-poly. The defeat of Napster puts an end to one form of unregulated Internet market exchange. The question remains what the new platform for music distribution will be, and what flexibility and sharing of roles between creators, publishers and consumers will be allowed.

https://soundcloud.com/gforsythe-1/alexa-reads-for-comm-2f00

Sharing our Ideas

Throughout each century, society’s ideals, norms and cultures have dramatically changed. First information was able to be freely accessed and then copied, next society focused on physical ownership such as owning property and resources, but as we have moved into the 21st century, ownership transferred from physical property to abstract property including ideas, information and patents.  We entered into an age where products and ideas are bought and sold, so copyright laws are put in place to protect people's assets as copying is much cheaper than creating an original. As discussed in Kirby Ferguson's documentary  ' We hate losing what we've got'.  I remember when I was a kid how big of a deal it was if somebody copied your idea, it was even tattle tale worthy.  We have no problem copying if we are the ones doing it but as soon as someone tries to copy an idea, we become very territorial, wanting all the credit for our own cleverness.  What I should have listened to as a child and what we should remember when discussing copyright laws is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  If we are sampling riffs from other songs like artists have done time and time again, it is only because we think it is good, but is that enough? 

Music and movies have always been an ongoing sociological factor throughout history and expresses the mentality, values, and ideas of culture: the reflection of society.  They also reflect a huge amount of existing material as Ferguson discussed that through social evolution we copy, transform, and combine ideas to create new or better ideas. With the advancements in technology, our society has changed, placing creativity and expression in the hands of the everyday consumer, and allowing the sharing of ideas and information to become effortless.  Through downloading, sharing and sampling, editing, music and movies have changed with each decade, becoming more technologically advanced. There are even musicians now who only base their music only on sampling, such as Girl Talk. With the ease that it takes for regular people to create and edit media, it becomes harder for the system to control copyright laws over material on the Internet.  This allows us to create freely accessible cultural commons on websites such as YouTube.  We now have to power to put out our own versions of songs sampled and remixed from others without too much thought to copy right laws.  That being said there is the fear of copyright laws that probably hinder a large portion of the population from playing around with sampling.  We have more power now than we ever did before, if every person was to be sued for the sampling they put out online, then the government would have to go through the effort of locating all of the culprits.

We have come so far with the advancement of technology that it is about time power is given to the people in the form of editing and creating.  All ideas are interwoven anyways so the notion that we cannot take a previously recorded song and mix it with others seems silly.  Musicians and movie producers have been basing ideas on previously invented ideas for years so why should we be hindered from mixing our own ideas and freely distributing them on the Internet?

Moving Pass Borders

Both Jenkins and Miller discuss in their articles on New Media convergence the concept of new media and how it changes Canadian society for the good and the bad.  With new media comes a whole new kind of community, one that has no borders and exists purely online.  As Pierre Levy states with the rise of common technology, "Not everybody knows everything, but everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity."  This collective intelligence he speaks about, binds us together making us equal in the fact that we can all access knowledge, but at the same time exploits us as we are not in power of that knowledge, instead five media conglomerations monopolize most of what we attribute as "common knowledge".  Here Miller's ideas come in as he believes new media is first a new form of commodified consumption and second form of exploited media labour.  When we take Canadian media as an example, you see just how much it lacks in Canadian identity.  This is because of the five companies that control our Western media, and the Americanization of Canadian media.  Like Miller discusses this is a form of exploited media labour, leaving us with a lack of national identity. Our borders are so blurred with the rise of media and the Internet, that our neighbours to the south engulf our media.  With the rise of new media convergence we have to wonder if it is a positive or negative aspect of Canadian media.