Creative Copyrights and Me

I guess for me, my concerns with copyrights and the material I create are just beginning.  I am concerned with what is going on with Shepherd Farley and his 'hope' poster with Obama.  I currently use images from the internet as templates for my designs.  For instance, I just finished a project using Curtiss P-40 Warhawks (war planes from the WWII era) in a propaganda poster.  The final project is a recreation of the airplane in the photo I found online and is very similar to the controversy of the AP photo Farley used as the basis for his 'hope' poster.  He is dealing with lawsuits because of his derivative use of AP photo that he did not have permission to use.  I worry about this because I also use photos as templates and the photos become derivative of the picture.

I have also used mugshots as templates for digital recreations.  I wonder if you know if those are fair game because they would be considered public domain.  I figure photos in that public domain area could be used as opposed to AP photos or any other rights managed photos.  I want to use my elements legally but those lines can sometimes be foggy and I don't fully understand.

Online Shopping and Me

I have to start this off by saying that a I don't do an extraordinary amount of shopping online and when I do, it tends to be on Amazon.com.  I use that site because of the vast inventory of items, security and availability.  I have bought books, speakers, DVDs and harder to find music on Amazon, but don't tend to buy much else online.

The thing that I buy the most online is music and my go to is iTunes.  Just another way that Apple is so much cooler than everyone else (wink wink, nudge nudge).  I love iTunes because you can usually find anything you are looking for including obscure band, live albums, "imports", EPs and so on.  I also find the more-often-than-not price of $9.99 for an album to be a great price compared to the standard $15-$20+ for a CD when I was growing up.  Some albums are even as low as $5-&7 and you know that the digital file is clean and won't harm your computer.  I feel this was the positive payoff of the settlement between illegally downloaded music and music stores.  Instead of getting endless amounts of music for free, albeit lower audio quality and a potential virus carrier, I can now download the safest and highest fidelity music at a much more reasonable price.

The convenience of iTunes is also a huge selling point.  Not only can I shop from home, but I can listen to samples of the music before purchase, read customer reviews (although skewed and inaccurate at times) and load it directly on to my iPod with no real technical issues.  As a music lover I find this to be the service I have always wanted.  Fast, easy, accessible and reasonable.

Horizon What What!

Way to go Horizon... stick it to the man.  After the earth shattering effects of a negative tweet about said company, a just and fair lawsuit was created to punish the evil doer.  In today's high-tech society, a single tweet can be responsible for social uprising, political upheaval, and corporate espionage.  Does the defendant even know how irresponsible and damaging her tweets were?  Does she have no sense of dignity?  The defendant made malicious and unforgivable comments about Horizon reality that was made available to the millions, if not billions of unsuspecting tweeters that will never think of Horizon in the same light again.  This act of ignorance has cost the company an uncountable amount of sales dollars that may never be recouped.  I only wish we lived in ye olde London times so that we could give her a good tar and feathering in public, which would immediately be followed by a stoning ceremony and a prolonged period of extreme name calling.

She should consider herself blessed that she only being sued for a mere $50,000.  What is this world coming to?  All of this technology with the intrawebs and the www's makes my head spin and I feel that it will bring the end of days.  If she could do this much damage and hurt on twitter, just imagine if she had wrote a blog or made a post on facebook.  I motion to hack the planet and end the injustice that twitter is causing!  If there was no twitter or public forum to spit this venomous hate, our friends at Horizon would still have a job.  Tweeting breeds sneak thievery and shenanigans. Harumph!

Blogging n' Journalism

I think that it is fairly obvious that blogging has influenced and affected modern journalism.  For starters, the media in which we get our news has changed drastically over the past 10 years.  T.V., radio and the paper were the norm before the the internet hit... obviously.

Now, newspapers have been condensed because of online papers and most news papers have an online counterpart that will most likely take over eventually.

I think a good example of the contrast of old journalism and new blogging journalism is the  events of 9/11.  It was only a matter of time until multiple conspiracy theories  surfaced and blogging and internet journalism was the soap box for these theorists to tell their opinions.  If you search online, you will find numerous blogs and sites dedicated to these amateur detective's search for the truth.  Ideas, footage, news articles and interviews can now be shared instantly creating a communal data base for the people to share and build upon ideas.

Could you imagine if the net and blogging were around for the Kennedy assassination?  Back then only one piece of footage truly captured the deathblow to our President and the public had far less information about what happened (or could have happened) other than the official report.  If that had happened to day, much like the 9/11 attacks, there would have been numerous videos taken from all angles and bloggers would have used all of that footage and info from the net to build cases or theories as to what happened.  These ideas would have reached many more people by way of blogging.

Top 12

I would say that I practice most all of the 12 point discussed in this article. Generally speaking, I tend to fly pretty low on the radar. I am not on Facebook, I don't tweet, and I haven't blogged until now. I have always thought about how powerful the internet is and how putting loads of personal information out there can be potentially very dangerous. Birth dates, location, preferences, place of education and employment, and many other details are posted everyday. We buy and sell online giving away credit card information, address and phone numbers hoping that the source is secure and trust worthy. All of this information would be very valuable if it fell in the wrong hands.

This article really focused on how important it is to avoid spam and mass e-mails while keeping personal information secure with encryption software, alternate e-mail addresses and a bit of caution. I have been fairly lucky so far, knock on wood, and have not dealt with many viruses or had any personal information fall into the wrong hands... that I know of. I like to think because of my low profile on the web and use of caution, that I have remained somewhat secure, although this could all be wishful thinking and somewhat is hacking my planet as we speak.

Hack The Planet!

As fun as Hackers is to watch, it is riddled with inaccuracies and exaggerations when it comes to computers and and hacking.  The most obvious detail is how the Graphical User Interface is presented in the film.  Hackers would have you believe that when navigating through a site looking for data and backdoors, you are taken on a journey through a neon landscape of data and codes.  Once the protagonists of the story find the important files there screen is flooded with glowing patterns and designs indicating that they have hit to mother load.  Within this inaccuracy I found it interesting that that data shown looked like mathematical equations with greek symbols and so on.  I would figure that within this hyper computer world they would at least show the code as binary, with 1's and 0's.  All this is Hollywood trying to glam up what would normally be mundane and tedious on screen.

Another problem that I found was an extremely common technique of using sound effects for every single keystroke and event that happens on screen.  To make computers more sexy, film makers often over enhance computer technology with bleeps, bells and whistles.  As I am writing this I wish my computer made these sounds.  Another instance of the film makers making hacking more interesting and sexy is the first duel between Acid Burn and Crash Override.  When they are battling in the TV station mainframe, they make it seem as if the two were battling like  two pirates over control over the tape deck.  Mess with the best, die like the rest.

Passwords were a big part of this film and I have a feeling that the most common passwords of the film (sex, god, and secret) are a bit off base.  I would assume that a techno-wizard would know that these passwords of 3-6 characters would be easily cracked by others trying to gain info.  The mega corporation in the movie would most likely not have all of their information protected by a simply 3 character password.  Maybe it's just me, but it seems ridiculous.

"The Medium is the Message"

Post 1

This article about Marshall McLuhan can be summarized by say that all forms of media become an extension of us, all in different ways. What I found interesting was his point that with all of these technology advances to make out lives easier and more convenient, these advances also "amputate" skills and qualities we once had. For example, our archery skills have all but vanished with the invention of guns. This skill was once essential for the survival of humans by allowing them to hunt and provide meat. With the gun, the bow and arrow became obsolete and no longer important to learn.

There was another example in this article how writing skill have diminished with the advent on the telephone and I would argue that these skills have been further depleted in the last few years with the global takeover of the internet and text messaging. Today, people are even opting out of talking on the phone and choosing to write short abbreviated messages via texting. Human interaction on the whole is becoming a thing of the past with the internet and texting. You no longer have to actually talk to someone on the phone anymore, instead you can text, email, chat online, post on facebook or twitter and so on.

I also found the section on how our looks and self preservation (especially in females) has been driven by advertising. I think about this frequently as we live in a major U.S. city and marketing and advertising are literally everywhere we look. Not only that, but the majority of the advertising is sexually driven and always reminding you that you could be better and look better. Advertisers was you to look better so you will subscribe to there ideals and buy there products. The funny part is we should be exercising and eating right to stay healthy, but we probably do it for the looks so we can find sex or a job or achieve more power.