My Thoughts On... News Ownership!

Who owns the news?

That is a good question. Even though I would like to believe that the mass consumer audience has a say in what is and what is not news, I tend to think that money-heavy corporations, including the likes of CNN and Fox News control the news (who am I kidding, who actually watches Fox News?!) They have a choke-hold on news distribution and present the news with a certain bias, according to their views and beliefs. Their news consists of what they deem appropriate for the mass consumer audience. Since these corporations are mainstream and recognizable, they tend to garner a large amount of viewership and traffic to their websites. It is a shame that the “big suits” control our news because they have more money and power than the rest of society. News should not be biased; not be controlled. It should be a democracy, not a dictatorship.

The case with the New York Times removing their RSS feed from an iPad application called ‘Pulse’ just shows how corporate conglomerates think they control the news, even when ironically they are actually getting free promotion and traffic to their website. The ‘Pulse’ application on the iPad was actually doing a good thing, combining news from different sources to give the user a more complete range of dynamic news. In a way, the NY Times can be perceived to be preventing readers from actually reading their news, which is an aspect of control. They believe you should actually purchase their newspaper or visit their website to get their news, instead of it being available on a 3rd party application. The NY Times main argument was that ‘Pulse’ infringed on the NY Times copyright terms of using the company’s news in a product that charges a fee for download. This is reasonable, but when you take into account that they were actually gaining more viewership and attention, they decided to pull their news from the app.

Just the fact that news costs money (i.e. paying for newspapers, paying for content on news websites, etc.) is the problem alone. News should be free and available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime.

My Thoughts On... Piracy!

Since I've been doing blog responses for one of my other classes, someone recently pointed out to me that I should post those responses on here. What a great idea!

So, this is the beginning of a series of posts called "My Thoughts On..."!

This week. Piracy.

Should copyright be protected even in an age of streaming and online piracy?

Personally, I believe that that should be the case, although that tends to be difficult in our ever-advancing technological world. For me to fully understand the effects of piracy, I tend to put myself into the shoes of those that actually make or produce the music and/or films that are being pirated. Say you were a struggling musician. Piracy basically affects your way to earn a living, taking away part of your income. You can also look at it from the other way; that big artists or film makers already have enough money and that downloading a song or a movie won’t make a difference in the long run. It can be a double-edged sword. Looking at it from another point of view, Hollywood employs 2.5 million Americans in 50 states. These are middle class people that need their job and piracy could cause them to lose their jobs. But in regards to copyright, I believe that it is being protected pretty well already in this advanced technological age considering the amount of piracy on the internet. A prime example being YouTube; they use extensive copyright procedures and are always scouring the site to find copyright infringements and delete these videos. Being on the topic of internet videos, here is one of my favourite internet flash animations, directly related to piracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBoOLR7WoN8 (Don’t worry, I’m not going to Rick Roll you.) I’m not going to lie, as I have participated in piracy before. But the key question is, who hasn’t?

Does piracy create a more democratic society where anyone has access to new music and video products? I would not look at the society that piracy creates as “democratic”. It is more of a “free-for-all”, if you will, with anyone having access to new music and movies at any time, all the time. As a result, it has created a dominant and prevailing force that has taken the internet by storm. This could even be related to the news that Blockbuster in the United States has filed for bankruptcy. Online piracy of movies and television shows could be a direct result of this. People find it easier to look online for movies rather than spend money at their local video store and could cause video chains that depend on the distribution of movies to close, causing more job losses. In my eyes, that does not seem very democratic at all.

Baby Dead Over Facebook

I guess I was just waiting for the right article to spur my anger and disgust. And now, I have found it.

It seems a baby has been killed from being shaken to death because the boy's crying interrupted the mother's game of Farmville on Facebook. Don't believe me? Read for yourself here.

Has it really come this? That we are killing our infants because their are disrupting our time on Facebook? Apparently so. This is downright disturbing to someone like me who has been born into this digital era where everything is fast and convenient. Technology should not take precedence over human life, especially your own family.

The paper also reports that she told investigators she shook the boy, smoked a cigarette to compose herself and then shook him again.

All this over a game of Farmville? You have got to be kidding me.

What is wrong with the world?