No Class on Monday! (Last Post)

         I'm very glad I took this course. Aside from the topics we have covered, blogging has been a fun experience. Sometimes I find myself wanting to comment on something and typing is way more entertaining than paper and pencil, so blogging is the perfect outlet. It also makes it way more enjoyable to write when you don’t have to worry about the structure or the technicalities of it. We were required to keep up with the Times and other blogs which is a habit I hope I will continue. I feel more knowledgeable about the world and what is going on when I read the news. And it doesn't take much either, just by checking a few headlines and reading through a few articles I get more connected. It's also more studious than checking dearblankpleaseblank or iwastesomuchtime every hour. I'll probably always think about the ideas of writing we discussed with Harris when reading and writing now too; having learned and discussed it, now it’s part of my vocabulary. This last essay prompt also expanded my thinking. Tracking a story over time through blogs and various media was really interesting; I never thought to think of it all as the same story. And it was cool to see how in the end, the conversation had turned to something completely different yet still related. If anything, I think this class has taught me how to interact with and get the most out of the internet. I was never one of those people who end up having a million tabs open from following a bunch of links, but I think that’s changed!

Unit 2 Essay: Final Draft

The Many Lives of SOPA

                Have you ever played a game of Telephone? For those who haven’t, it goes like this. A number of people sit down in a circle and the starter comes up with a phrase. They whisper it in the next person’s ear, and it travels around the circle this way until the last person says it out loud. In a good game, the phrase gets twisted along the way and ends up as something completely different. The media likes to play Telephone. When an event happens, all the varying outlets reporting on it take different angles to the point where the original story is no longer the focus, and by the end of its life, usually has brought some greater social question into being. This ability to add to and develop a story is a relatively recent feature brought about by the internet. Online, anyone can comment or post about the news, and with millions of people logging on each day that is like a million people in a game of Telephone. Jeff Jarvis commented on the new development of a news story. In the past, an event happened, a journalist reported on it, it was printed in the paper, and then the story was tossed the next day. With the internet, the process doesn’t stop at the story; if anything that is where it begins. As Jarvis said “in print, the process leads to a product. Online, the process is the product” (Jarvis). As a story is reposted and altered from blog to blog, the new approach taken is what is important; it is another talking point for the conversation.  To illustrate the many lives of a news story, we can look to the SOPA/PIPA narrative and see how it progressed over time.

                The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced to the House floor on October 26^th of last year. The act was designed to protect intellectual property such as movies, television shows, and songs from being accessed illegally online. It included provisions to ban search engines from linking to pirating sites, to order internet providers to block those same sites , and to shut down websites entirely that infringed on copyrighted material. A similar bill, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) was introduced in the Senate earlier last year. In December, the SOPA/PIPA story entered the news as a blog post for the New York Times. The article, headlined “Media and Entertainment Companies Add Support to Proposed Antipiracy Legislation,” reports on the entertainment corporations view that piracy online is hurting the American economy (Chozick). As it was written for a prominent newspaper, the author’s main purpose was to provide factual information to the public. Not exactly front page news, this piece was probably oriented towards followers of politics and business.

                After a lull, the SOPA/PIPA story took off. With big names like Google and Wikipedia confirming a demonstration of censorship, the approach of the coverage turned from the facts of SOPA to the protests against it. On Wired, David Kravets posted an article confirming the upcoming blackout of hundreds of websites. He informed the reader of the protest taking place and why it had escalated this far. As his blog “Threat Level” is described as a “daily briefing on security, freedom, and privacy” it is fitting that SOPA should appear on it (Kravets). The international implications of SOPA and PIPA and the provisions of the acts to seize websites are directly linked to security and privacy. Kravets successfully targets his audience by providing pertinent, topical information on his blog.

                With the occurrence of January 18^th, the day of the blackout, the story took another turn. Not only reporting on the protest anymore, many pieces appeared about Wikipedia and the affect it was having by shutting down. NPR published a piece on their blog “The Two-Way” that acknowledged peoples’ reliance on Wikipedia. Included in the article were several ways that Wikipedia had provided to get around the blackout, such as accessing Wikipedia on a smart phone or disabling JavaScript (Memmott). This story relayed information useful to active internet users, a generally younger set of people.

Following this same plot line, the story developed further on NPR the next day. Discussion had appeared over whether or not the above mentioned article had undermined the protest by posting ways to get around it. In response to these comments, Edward Schumacher-Matos posted an article defending NPR’s position.  On his blog “Ombudsman Perspective,” a site that hosts a writer without ties to NPR for an outside view, Schumacher-Matos wrote that the post in question had simply restated what Wikipedia had provided on their own page, NPR was simply forwarding the information. With these two posts, the SOPA/PIPA story progressed from the protest as a whole, to Wikipedia’s influence, to a discussion of the reporting being done.

                As the likelihood of SOPA and PIPA passing successfully through Congress died down, the conversation in the media took another turn. In a post on “Moneybox”, the Slate hosted blog about business and economics, the topic was the democratic process. Titled “5 Lessons From the SOPA/PIPA Fight,” the article hits such points as agenda control, the significance of deep pockets, and “in America, always bet on change not happening” (Yglesias). Notice how the act itself is no longer the purpose of the discussion; this piece took SOPA and used it as prime example of American government.

                Mark McKenna thought to approach SOPA in another way. As a law professor at Notre Dame with a focus on intellectual property, McKenna came into the conversation armed with the current property and piracy laws in affect. In a contributing piece on Slate, he used SOPA to enter the subject of the legislation in place that was overlooked in all the media coverage. He writes, “I’m hoping this week’s backlash will focus future discussion on the many ways in which intellectual property law is already causing the harms that made SOPA and PIPA so terrifying, because many of the objectionable features of those two laws are already in use” (McKenna). As presented in that quote, McKenna is calling out the media to change its focus. This post took the SOPA story down the avenue of current piracy laws. With the credibility of a law professor, he is well equipped to kick start and educate the public on this neglected topic.

                Almost four months after the publication of that first New York Times article, an AP wire story entered the blogosphere. Picked up by many, including The Huffington Post, the piece presented online piracy as the entertainment industry’s problem, not the consumers. The author, Martha Irvine, attempts to discover the root of the issue. While acknowledging that people are guilty of pirating, she proceeds to blame the entertainment business for not providing content readily online. Irvine described this as a “radical notion,” stating “what if young people who steal content weren’t viewed as the problem?” She suggests that instead of pushing for strict, anti-piracy laws, the entertainment industry could find a solution in working with the consumer and openly providing content through things like licensing agreements (Irvine). While this story certainly belongs in the SOPA/PIPA debate, the only mention of the acts is in the fourth and tenth paragraph by the words “anti-piracy bills” (Irvine). This article illustrates the extent that a news story can be removed from its origin.

                To continue the SOPA/PIPA discussion, I would take my cue from Irvine. In the whole online piracy debate, the focus has been on penalizing and preventing illegal downloading of copyrighted property. I believe this is the wrong approach. Instead of trying to keep songs and television shows and movies locked away, entertainment outlets should be focusing on making their product more available. People don’t use pirating websites just because they are free; they also use them because they are easily accessible. These websites have anything you could ever want to watch or listen to available on demand. If legitimate entertainment companies provided these sites, people would get their product the “right” way and they could even charge (a reasonable price) for it. If I could watch any episode of Hey Arnold! at the touch of a button I wouldn’t mind paying a few dollars for it. iTunes is an excellent example. The iTunes store is an easily navigated interface that contains movies, shows, and songs for a reasonable price. Ever since I got an iPod, I use the store and get all my music the legal way. I find it much easier to search and click “Buy” than to find a site to download off of and convert the file. Pirating sites are currently filling a need in our society. People like to have access to what they want, when they want it. Most content isn’t made available online through legal means, so pirating websites provide it. If entertainment companies stopped holding on for dear life and just let go, they could be filling that need and cashing in.

               Once a story is released into the world, the ideas of millions go into reshaping it. Like a game of Telephone, the content is turned this way and that, until the end product is noticeably different. This process has no limits; it can last anywhere from a few days to a few years. The one thing you can count on though is that somewhere someone will comment on it; the Internet has ensured that. Online news sites and blogs have made information more accessible now than ever. Anyone can get online and trace a subject, and anyone can write an article and post it. The internet creates the setting for this discussion; each new article, each new angle brings a talking point to the conversation. As opposed to traditional news of old where the process ends at publishing, this continuing development usually leads to a sort of epiphany. The SOPA/PIPA story took many forms over time. Beginning as a report of battles in Congress, the story brought the current legislation to the forefront, and finally someone questioned our overall approach to online piracy. A story is simply a tool to initiate thoughts of a larger subject; the resulting online dialogue serves to filter out important questions and maybe find some answers to them.  

Chozick, Amy. "Media and Entertainment Companies Add Support to Proposed Antipiracy Legislation."Web log post. Media Decoder. The New York Times, 13 Dec. 2011. Web. 26 Feb. 2012.

Irvine, Martha. "Online Piracy: Youth Shaping Future of Online TV, Movies, Music." Web log post. TheHuffington Post, 18 Feb. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Jarvis, Jeff. "The Press Becomes the Press-sphere." Web log post. BuzzMachine. 14 Apr. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Kravets, David. "A SOPA/PIPA Blackout Explainer." Web log post. Threat Level. Wired, 18 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

McKenna, Mark P. "Don't Stop at SOPA." Web log post. Slate, 20 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Memmott, Mark. "If You Really Need Wikipedia Today, You Can Get To It." Web log post. The Two-Way.NPR, 18 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Schumacher-Matos, Edward. "The Wikipedia Blackout and the 'Scabs' at NPR." Web log post.

NPRombudsman. NPR, 19 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Yglesias, Matthew. "5 Lessons From the SOPA/PIPA Fight." Web log post. Moneybox. Slate, 20 Jan. 2012.Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Unit 2 Essay: Rough Draft

                                                                       The Many Lives of SOPA

                Have you ever played a game of Telephone? For those who haven’t, it goes like this. A number of people sit down in a circle and the starter comes up with a phrase. They whisper it in the next person’s ear, and it travels around the circle this way until the last person says it out loud. In a good game, the phrase gets twisted along the way and ends up as something completely different. The media likes to play Telephone. When an event happens, all the varying outlets reporting on it take different angles to the point where the original story is no longer the focus, and by the end of its life, usually has brought some greater social question into being. This ability to add to and develop a story is a relatively recent feature brought about by the internet. Online, anyone can comment or post about the news, and with millions of people logging on each day that is like a million people in a game of Telephone. Jeff Jarvis commented on the new development of a news story. In the past, an event happened, a journalist reported it, it was printed in the paper and then the story was tossed the next day. With the internet, the process doesn’t stop at the story; if anything that is where it begins. As Jarvis said “in print, the process leads to a product. Online, the process is the product” (Jarvis). As a story is reposted and altered from blog to blog, the new approach taken is what is important; it is another talking point for the conversation.  To illustrate the many lives of a news story, we can look to the SOPA/PIPA narrative and see how it progressed over time.

                The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced to the House floor on October 26^th of last year. The act was designed to protect intellectual property such as movies, television shows, and songs from being accessed illegally online. It included provisions to ban search engines from linking to pirating sites, to order internet providers to block those same sites , and to shut down websites entirely that infringed on copyrighted material. A similar bill, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) was introduced in the Senate earlier last year. In December, the SOPA/PIPA story entered the news as a blog post for the New York Times. The article, headlined “Media and Entertainment Companies Add Support to Proposed Antipiracy Legislation,” reports on the entertainment corporations view that piracy online is hurting the American economy (Chozick). Not exactly front page news, this piece was probably oriented towards followers of politics and business.

                After a lull, the SOPA/PIPA story took off. With big names like Google and Wikipedia confirming a demonstration of censorship, the approach of the coverage turned from the facts of SOPA to the protests against it. On Wired, David Kravets posted an article confirming the upcoming blackout of hundreds of websites. He informed the reader of the protest taking place and why it had escalated this far. As his blog “Threat Level” is described as a “daily briefing on security, freedom, and privacy” it is fitting that SOPA should appear on it (Kravets). The international implications of SOPA and PIPA and the provisions of the acts to seize websites are directly linked to security and privacy. Kravets successfully targets his audience by providing pertinent, topical information on his blog.

                With the occurrence of January 18^th, the day of the blackout, the story took another turn. Not only reporting on the protest anymore, many pieces appeared about Wikipedia and the affect it was having by shutting down. NPR published a piece on their blog “The Two-Way” that acknowledged peoples’ reliance on Wikipedia and included several ways that Wikipedia had provided themselves to get around the blackout (Memmott). Following this line, the story developed further on NPR the next day. In response to comments that the previous article had undermined the strength of the blackout, Edward Schumacher-Matos posted an article defending NPR’s position.  On his blog “Ombudsman Perspective,” a site that hosts a writer without ties to NPR for an outside view, Schumacher-Matos wrote that the post in question had simply restated what Wikipedia had provided on their own page and had even quoted them to prove it. With these posts, the SOPA/PIPA story progressed from the protest as a whole, to Wikipedia’s influence, to a discussion of the reporting being done.

                As the likelihood of SOPA and PIPA passing successfully through Congress died down, the conversation in the media took another turn. In a post on “Moneybox”, the Slate hosted blog about business and economics, the topic was the democratic process. Titled “5 Lessons From the SOPA/PIPA Fight,” the article hits such points as agenda control, the significance of deep pockets, and “in America, always bet on change not happening” (Yglesias). Notice how the act itself is no longer the purpose of the discussion; this piece took SOPA and used it as prime example of American government.

                Mark McKenna thought to approach SOPA in another way. As a law professor at Notre Dame with a focus on intellectual property, McKenna came into the conversation armed with the current property and piracy laws in affect. In a contributing piece on Slate, he used SOPA to enter the subject of legislation in place that has been overlooked in all the media coverage. He writes “I’m hoping this week’s backlash will focus future discussion on the many ways in which intellectual property law is already causing the harms that made SOPA and PIPA so terrifying, because many of the objectionable features of those two laws are already in use” (McKenna). With the credibility of a law professor, he is well equipped to kick start and educate the public on this neglected topic.

                Almost four months after the publication of that first New York Times article, an AP wire story entered the blogosphere. Picked up by many, including The Huffington Post, the piece presented online piracy as the entertainment industry’s problem, not the consumers. The author, Martha Irvine, is attempting to discover the root of issue. While acknowledging that people are guilty of pirating, she proceeds to blame the entertainment business for not providing content readily online. Irvine described this as a “radical notion,” stating “what if young people who steal content weren’t viewed as the problem?” She suggests that instead of pushing for strict, anti-piracy laws, the entertainment industry could find a solution in working with the consumer and openly providing content through things like licensing agreements (Irvine). While this story certainly belongs in the SOPA/PIPA debate, the only mention of the acts is in the fourth and tenth paragraph by the words “anti-piracy bills” (Irvine). This article illustrates the extent that a news story can be removed from its origin.

                To continue the SOPA/PIPA discussion, I would take my cue from Irvine. In the whole online piracy debate, the focus has been on penalizing and preventing illegal downloading of copyrighted property. I believe this is the wrong approach. Instead of trying to keep songs and television shows and movies locked away, entertainment outlets should be focusing on making their product more available. People don’t use pirating websites just because they are free; they also use them because they are easily accessible. These websites have anything you could ever want to watch r listen to readily available. If legitimate entertainment companies provided these sites, people would get their product the “right” way and they could even charge (a reasonable price) for it. If I could watch any episode of Hey Arnold! at the touch of a button I wouldn’t mind paying a few dollars for it. iTunes is an excellent example. The iTunes store is an easily navigated interface that contains movies, shows, and songs for a reasonable price. Ever since I got an iPod, I use the store and get all my music the legal way. I find it much easier to search and click “Buy” than to find a site to download off of and convert the file. Pirating sites are currently filling a need in our society. People like to have access to what they want, when they want it. Most content isn’t made available online through legal means, so pirating websites provide it. If entertainment companies stopped holding on for dear life and just let go, they could be filling that need and cashing in.

                Once a story is released into the world, the ideas of millions go into reshaping it, turning it this way and that, until the end product is noticeably different. This process has no limits; it can last anywhere from a few days to a few years. The one thing you can count on though is that somewhere someone will comment on it, the Internet has ensured that. Online news sites and blogs have made information more accessible now than ever. Anyone can get online and trace a subject and anyone can write an article and post it. The internet creates the setting for this discussion; each new article, each new angle brings a talking point to the conversation. As opposed to traditional news of old where the process ends at publishing, this continuing development usually leads to a sort of epiphany. The SOPA/PIPA story took many forms over time. Beginning as a report of battle in Congress, the story brought the legislation already in place to the forefront, and finally someone questioned the overall approach to online piracy. A story is simply a tool to initiate thoughts of the larger subject; the resulting online dialogue serves to filter out the important questions and maybe find some answers to them. 

Chozick, Amy. "Media and Entertainment Companies Add Support to Proposed Antipiracy Legislation."

      Web log post. Media Decoder. The New York Times, 13 Dec. 2011. Web. 26 Feb. 2012.

Irvine, Martha. "Online Piracy: Youth Shaping Future of Online TV, Movies, Music." Web log post. The

      Huffington Post, 18 Feb. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Jarvis, Jeff. "The Press Becomes the Press-sphere." Web log post. BuzzMachine. 14 Apr. 2008. Web. 26

      Feb. 2012.

Kravets, David. "A SOPA/PIPA Blackout Explainer." Web log post. Threat Level. Wired, 18 Jan. 2012.  Web.24 Feb. 2012.

McKenna, Mark P. "Don't Stop at SOPA." Web log post. Slate, 20 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Memmott, Mark. "If You Really Need Wikipedia Today, You Can Get To It." Web log post. The Two-Way.

      NPR, 18 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Schumacher-Matos, Edward. "The Wikipedia Blackout and the 'Scabs' at NPR." Web log post.

      NPRombudsman. NPR, 19 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.

Yglesias, Matthew. "5 Lessons From the SOPA/PIPA Fight." Web log post. Moneybox. Slate, 20 Jan.   2012.Web. 24 Feb. 2012.