Archive for the ‘responses’ Category
don’t you hate it when weekends end just as they get interesting..?
Comments (1)Alright, I’m totally for the idea of the Digital Media Club. I had mentioned it in the afterminutes of class that I wouldn’t mind writing the constitution. I don’t wanna do it alone, however. I think Danielle said she wanted to do something with it as well. As a matter of fact, why don’t we have as many people as we can to help put this constitution together. I don’t think it’d be out of line for me to give you all my e-mail so we can decide how we’d go about it. We can meet on campus and talk about what we should put into it or just e-mail back and forth. Hell, we could even instant message. Whoever wants to do this can e-mail me. I’ll be more than happy to do all the typing. You can get me at DanielColonna@gmail.com. Until then…
–dan
this film is not yet liberated…
Well, I saw the movie and I loved it.
The film rating system is totally corrupt, it drove me nuts to see just how they manage something like that. I still want to know where they get off rating films the way they do. I think the part that bothered me the most was the fact that the government wasn’t involved at all. Trust me, I’m no fan of federal censorship, but it would at least ease my mind to know “Okay, the suits are always like this with media.” However, these decisions are all being made by the financial heads of the industry and church leaders(?!). Kirby did a good job of breathing down the neck of the system in place and challenging the credibility of both the raters and the appeal hearers.
I never knew that something so unofficial could be propped up on a pedistal to the point where one would be surprised to hear that it isn’t run by the government. I was personally surprised by this – I always thought the government interfered with film ratings the way they’re beginning to interfere with video game ratings. But the government can only be linked to the film industry (in this case) in two ways – one being Valentin’s former position in the government, and the other being the way the Pentagon only allows a certain number of movies to use the name of the Armed Forces for the good of its image.
What didn’t surprise me was that there are church leaders who help make the final call on what rating should be given to a movie. This fact actually angered me more than anything. I’m not anti-religion, but it does bother me how the church finds itself in places it rarely ever belongs. These people know nothing beyond “there’s nudity? R. there’s sex? how much? okay, NC-17.” Religious figures don’t usually condone such depictions for the sake of artistic expression in a movie. They’ll usually just mark it as porn. I’m afraid to see what happens to the next movie that says something negative about a religion. It’ll probably get an R, since children should never know anything besides what their religious reading has to say.
Why shelter the names of these raters? Who are they, murder witnesses? I understand protection of your employee, but when a movie is being released to the public, the public should know who has effected the final product of what their seeing. Hollywood can’t seem to grasp the idea that it is not as important as the government. Until it does, there will only be an increase in the amount of movies that aren’t released below NC-17 for a flash of pubic hair during an intimate depiction of a couple in the deepest bowels of emotion.
In short, this rating system is bullcrap.
–dan
unfair to fair use…
This idea of fair use has been taking a beating since the release of Napster. Although downloading music illegaly and mashing music have little to do with each other, lawyers and music production companies are relating the two very closely in legal terms. My biggest question to the music industry is this:
Why hate on mashups when there are many known artists out there using samples from existing songs in their new work?
To put it simply, these artists are doing exactly what amateur mashup artists are doing. Sampling from existing tracks, adding a new beat and new music to these tracks, re-releasing it as their own. Although the fact that major artists usually use only beats, they sometimes do not credit the original artist for these beats. An early verision of this can be seen in Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” versus Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” The beat between these two songs is almost identical, but Vanilla Ice never once credited Queen for the beat. He actually goes as far as to say that the beat in his song is different than Queen/David Bowie’s. Listen to the two, you be the judge.
In a mashup, the artist may use copyrighted original lyrics and beats, but mashup artists always always credit the original artists. Also, many mashup artists do not make a profit on their work. Most of them make these mashups for the sake of looking at this music from a different direction. Stealing is when you take someones work, add a different beat and rename it as your own. Stealing is not editing existing art and crediting the original artist for their work.
user-generated content is…
In his blog, Derek Powazek immediately attacked the term “user-generated content.” He felt that the term degrades the idea of someone adding their two cents (or five dollars, depending on the person) to the internet. Powazek feels that when someone posts a picture, blog post, product review, etc… on the internet, it should not be seen as random input. Rather than this, he thinks that this input should be respected, and taken away from the frighteningly generic label of “user-generated content.” “Calling the beautiful, amazing, brilliant things people create online ‘user-generated content’ is like sliding up to your lady, putting your arm around her and whispering, ‘Hey baby, let’s have intercourse,'” says Powazek.
Frankly, I can’t agree with Powazek more. Using the term “user-generated content” reminds me of what happens when something drastic happens in the world, and the government needs to give it some kind of generic term that looks good in the news. It gives being a part of the internet community this feel of classification and exile, being a seperate part of the world entirely. To be realistic, the internet is becoming more and more public everyday. There’s just more experience to be had online than there ever was, and it’s going beyond being marketable. Being a generally cost-free experience aside from paying your monthly connection fee, the internet is now seen as inviting; rather than being some place that only computer nerds and sci-fi geeks can embrace. There are more people, and even more forms of input going in and out of the online community. To label the result of this interaction as “user-generated content” is synonymous to calling it “that crap people post online.”
-dan
whilst we ponder
everyone is still getting a handle on how to use wordpress, so while they do that lets discuss why i use the online tag, “danomak.”
to be honest with you, it’s not a very interesting story. it goes back to highschool though – and that ensures the emotion of embarrassment.
my friend nick decided that it would be funny to relate me to a professional wrestler. granted, the wrestler and i had nothing in common…at all… but this is what he decided to do. by taking the name of shane-o-mak, he created my nickname danomak. and then he always called me danomak from that point until graduation.
interesting stuff, huh.
-dan
dan\'s freakin\' blog 