Prompt #4

There are many online technologies that I use (facebook, various websites, email, skype, online chat, etc) but I think the only one that really matters to me is my blog. My best friend was actually the one who got me into blogging; she started her blog when she was going through an especially rough patch in her life, and reading it was so inspirational to me. Before she showed me her blog, I had no familiarity with the world of blogging, but it's so easy to become a part of the blogging community. There are pieces on my blog that I am especially proud of; I write poetry on my blog because I would not feel comfortable doing it anywhere else (where people I know might see). I share any thoughts, emotions, feelings, and quirks freely on my blog. To me, my blog is the journal that I can instantly connect with; because it saves me the time of pulling out a pencil and opening a leather bound notebook, it seems that I am all the more drawn to it. I used to try and blog at least once every day, no matter how dull or exciting my day was. At first, I would post up to five times per day just because it was so easy to speak my mind without needing a physical audience. My blog is actually like my confidant; my blog is the best friend that is literally always there. I know that sounds really lame and sad, but I'm not really ashamed to admit that my blog really does mean that much to me. Sometimes when I am really upset, I go on a long run so that the pounding of my heart and the rhythm of my feet hitting pavement settle my mind; now, when I am most upset, I also have my blog to turn to. The physical typing on a keyboard helps me relax; I can type as loudly and obnxiously as I want when I sit there and blog. Sometimes there are just things that I need to get out of my mind, and there isn't any particularly perfect moment to do so; my blog is the always perfect opportunity. Sometimes I will just say one sentence on my blog, but I just needed to say that one sentence; I can't do that in an actual conversation with a live person. As I got more and more into blogging, I began to also blog pictures that I found that I liked. Soon, I pretty much blogged about anything and everything that occurred to me. Only my best friend knows the url of my blog because I wanted it to be a place where I never had to worry about being judged, or even worry about appearances at all. I wanted to be an annonymous person with annonymous thoughts, and secretly I wanted people to hear me without ever knowing anything about me. I think that's the best way for anyone to get an honest opinion, so I left my blog public to anyone without actually sharing the url with anyone. Maybe the opinion of millions of strangers couldn't ever matter or affect me, but I still wanted the possibility of my thoughts being exposed in a very veiled manner. I'll never matter to more than a handful of people in the world and I'll only meet a handful, but through my blog I feel like I can reach an audience of millions without ever having to look for them. It's comforting, soothing, and stress-relieving-not too mention how fun I have when posting pictures and decorating my blog. You know those little pleasures in life? This is mine (:

Prompt #3

Please remember to tag or "label" your post with your name. I *think* this will allow you to quickly check to see if someone responded to your post.

For this week, I'd like you to write about the kinds of online technologies you use, how, and why.

So - I'd like for you to move beyond, "I use Facebook to see what my friends are doing". Say more - HOW do you use facebook? Do you post videos? pictures? do you tag pictures? plan events? subscribe to games? and why do you do these things? How did you learn how to do these things?

Prompt #3

Free Write:
I can't really say that I have a full thesis yet, for I'm still unsure about my topic being a mash-up. I want to do something that revolves around parody films, (Vampires Suck, Scary Movie 4, Disaster Movie, Dance Flik ect). If I do this subject I wouldn't be questioning the legality of these movies, for I'm positive that these producers and so forth pay a lot of money to be sure that they have no legal trouble. What I intend on doing is possibly comparing these movies to mash-up music videos and how money is of an unreasonable amount of money big time producers can make these movies and create new ideas out of some one's work but mash-up artists such as Girl Talk, are prohibited from creating their own version of a song with a different meaning. I think that these two industries have many of the same attributes and that the legal issues that these mash-up artists are facing are seemingly all based on money issues with the artists. But if the artists is already

For now my tentative thesis would probably go something like this, although knowing myself it will change about 100 times before I feel okay about it:
Mash-ups have recently created much controversy with their explicit illegal behavior, even though in the past the government has stood behind piracy and allowed the illegal activity to go on without any serious repercussions. What needs to happen now is change, the law now is obviously not working with the advancements in technology, and if they don’t adjust the laws, then there will be an ongoing battle between the public and these businesses.

prompt #3 response.

Free Write...

I never thought of mashups as copyright violations; for example, if you mash up crime data with Google maps so that people can look up all the pedophiles in their area, it is actually considered copyright violation. This makes no sense because you are in a sense harming the community more by not allowing this than you are harming the creator for taking his original work. Plus, I doubt that the crime statistitians would be offended if you “used” their work without permission. Sometimes you have to think about the purpose that the work is being used for; for example, why would crime statistics be published if the publisher did not want them to be made known to the public? Isn’t the publishing of these crime statistics for the benefit of the greater good? By knowing these, it can help keep families safe. These statistics can dictate where new schools should be built. It could dictate which bus route you take on the way home from work. It can dictate where you want to raise a family. It can tell you a lot about a neighborhood. It can potentially save your life if you avoid the places with high crime rates. It can make you better prepared for emergency situations should you come across one.

My tenative thesis is "Copyright law that restricts access to educational material should be reformed to allow free usage."

The problems with this thesis statement based on what ran through my head during the free write is that this seems to be too general of a statement. What is educational material? (What is considered "educational" versus "not educational") Where in copyright law does it dictate rules for "educational material"? (I feel like that may mean going through all hundreds of pages of the document...) I am not sure this thesis can be strongly supported within 2-3 pages simply because a bulk of it would need to be clearly defining the parameters of my meaning. Based on the ideas that I can up with in my free write, it seems that I would most be interested in focusing specifically on internet mashups...but that in itself may limit my topic too much. I feel that the ideas for support of internet site mashups that I have come up with are very shallow, like surface ideas that are easily stated in just a sentence. I kind of want to center my claims around the idea of improving well-being, but I am having a hard time narrowing it down into specific aspects that can actually be elaborated on. For example, when I say "we should allow internet site mashups that show the criminals within a 5 mile radius of schools because this will help keep kids safe", it's one of those "well duh" statements. I mean, who is really goig to argue that we should allow pedophiles to be near kids? I really don't have much I need to elaborate on there. I am coming to a road block in coming up with ways to prove that these internet site mashups can be beneficial, particularly by picking reasons that may not seem so obvious. Any ideas??

 Is anyone specifically focusing on the "multi-layered" aspect of remixed video files? I feel that we could probably bounce ideas off each other because they are sort of similar to the idea of internet site mashups (: