Mirror Articles: Amanda Todd

A couple of news stories about the case of the Amanda Todd suicide: http://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/amanda%20todd

BBC SOPA Article

Link to BBC article on SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16596577

Steve Albini On File Sharing And Piracy

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/td90c/i_am_steve_albini_ask_me_anything/c4lm8cq

Steve Albini:

I reject the term "piracy." It's people listening to music and sharing it with other people, and it's good for musicians because it widens the audience for music. The record industry doesn't like trading music because they see it as lost sales, but that's nonsense. Sales have declined because physical discs are no longer the distribution medium for mass-appeal pop music, and expecting people to treat files as physical objects to be inventoried and bought individually is absurd.

The downtrend in sales has hurt the recording business, obviously, but not us specifically because we never relied on the mainstream record industry for our clientele. Bands are always going to want to record themselves, and there will always be a market among serious music fans for well-made record albums. I'll point to the success of the Chicago label Numero Group as an example.

There won't ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that's fine with me because that industry didn't operate for the benefit of the musicians or the audience, the only classes of people I care about.
Free distribution of music has created a huge growth in the audience for live music performance, where most bands spend most of their time and energy anyway. Ticket prices have risen to the point that even club-level touring bands can earn a middle-class income if they keep their shit together, and every band now has access to a world-wide audience at no cost of acquisition. That's fantastic.

Additionally, places poorly-served by the old-school record business (small or isolate towns, third-world and non-english-speaking countries) now have access to everything instead of a small sampling of music controlled by a hidebound local industry. When my band toured Eastern Europe a couple of years ago we had full houses despite having sold literally no records in most of those countries. Thank you internets.

To summarise:

- File sharing is a very effective and cheap way for bands to get their music heard. In fact it can be more effective than large record companies who demand ridiculous sums of money from the artists.

- Distribution of music has created a huge growth in the attendance of live performances which is where bands work the hardest and make most of their money anyway.

- The reason that the major record companies are experiencing an economic downfall that they will likely never recover from is because of their reluctance to utilise file sharing, they are so afraid of piracy that they pose strict rules and regulations on the sale of music online because they are terrified of losing profits.

- Asking people to treat music files like physical objects to be sold the same way that CD's and vinyl are sold is ridiculous and is simply not going to happen.

- It makes much more sense for an artist to manage their own careear rather than depend on record companies, distributors, promoters etc because those individuals are trying to squeeze as much use and money out of the artist as possible and cares more about making a profit than making music heard and treating their artists fairly. With advances in technology it is perfectly feasible and effective for a band to record and distribute their own music and make a good profit off of it, they can even sell their music for free, something that a major record label would never allow because it wouldn't make them any profits.

- No matter how popular file sharing becomes their will always be a large market of "music nerds" who will want to buy physical records for their collectability and simply because it feels more satisfying to own a record, it feels like your property that you own rather than a file that you downloaded which feels much more artificial and un-organic.

Do You Believe That There Should Be More Control Over Social Media?

• I believe that sharing sites such as Reddit should be better moderated. Sub-Reddits such as Creepshot and Jailbait are a clear invasion of peoples privacy and should be removed by the creators of the website, the creators and moderators of Reddit often claim that monitoring offensive Sub-Reddits is not thier business as Reddit is largly auser created site and moderating Sub-Reddits would be imposing unfair restrictions on the Reddit community. While I understand their argument and don't believe that they should censor their website for profanity or legal forms of pornography I also believe that the creators have a responsibility to remove illegal activity from the site such as Creepshots and child pornography.
• While I sympathise with cases such as Amanda Todd I also believe that people need to realise that cases such as Amanda Todd are isolated incidents, cyber bullying is a serious problem that needs to be addressed but it is extremely rare that people experience depression or even harm themselves due to cyber bullying. The media and tabloid newspapers will often jump at the chance to exploit a story such as Amanda Todd's to appeal to the paranoia of their audience and often an issue such as cyber bullying can be made to look much more damaging and wide spread than it really is.
• I support the idea of exposing trolls to the public, some argue that this method is no better than trolling itself but that is precisely why I think it is a good idea, if you expose the troll to the public and they recieve criticism for their actions they will know how it feels to be abused online and will fully comprehend how much pain online bullying can cause. Also, similar to the "Scared Staright" programs in American prisons, the online outing of trolls will be a warning to others that these are the consequences that you could face if you bully someone online.
• I believe that some people need to realise that online abuse and opinions that they do not agree with are just a feature of free speech that we have to get used to. For example when gay marriage was legalised in the state of New York the Fox News online forums were filled with offensive messages from homophobic users of the website threatening homosexuals,while I fully support gay rights and have absolutely no respect for the homophobic users of the Fox News forums I would not try to censor their beliefs, online or anywhere else as this would essestially be facism; I would be forcing my beliefs on other people, if I have the right to support gay marriage then other people should have just as much right to oppose it. Just because somebody disagrees with someone elses belief that does not mean that that persons beliefs are wrong. Free speech means just that; you are free to say what you want, and the great feature about free speech is that if you disagree with someones opinion you have the right to disagree with them.
• It is important to allow people to express their opinions but also monitor people for offensive statements. The case of Azhar Ahmed is a prime example, I believe that if Ahmed had worded his Facebook message more appropraitely then his case would not have been as controversial. If he had been fair and balanced in his message and stated his reasons and evidence for not supporting British soldiers in a civilised manner, that would have been perfectly acceptable as an opinion. Instead Ahmed merely stated "All soldiers should die and go to hell". The Facebook message that he actually posted was a sweepingly derogatory term where he offered no evidence to back up his argument and generalised all British soldiers, I believe that his actions were very foolish and he has discredited people who have legitimate reasons for not supporting British soldiers. Ahmed's case is a prime example of why society needs to find a comfortable middle groundwith censorship, a lack of censorship would mean that Ahmed would get to voice his opinions in a manner that is offensive as he did, too much censorship would mean that Ahmed would not have been able to voice his opinion at all.
• Reddit moderator Yishan Wong condemed Adrian Chen for outing an online troll saying, "We stand for free speech, we are not going to ban distasteful Sub-Reddits". I fully support free speech but I also support peoples right to privacy, saying that banning a sub-reddit would be a violation of free speech is just a defence for not eliminating popular sections of Reddit that provide the owners of Reddit with revenue. The owners and creators of Reddit seem to be the worst kind of Vulture Capitalists, they allow offensive sections of their website to remain open to the public purely because it generates their revenue, any human being with common decency would remove sections of their website that contain child pornography and unconsensual pornographic photographs. If we allow users of Reddit to post illegal and offensive material with the defence of "it's their right to free speech" the owners of Reddit will continue to make money off of illegal material being postedon their website, everybody has their right to free speech but when people take advantage of that right by using it to post illegal pornography on the internet with no consequences this is when some steps need to be taken to ensure that people are not posting and making profits off of other peoples suffering.

New and digital media offers media institutions different ways of reaching audiences.

Consider how and why media institutions are using these techniques. (48 marks)

• Media can use the internet to you interact with their audience, to promote or improve their film or to get feedback. 
• Can reach a younger audience as there are lots of teenagers on the internet. 
• You can target teens by advertising on facebook, Twitter, youtube.  (EXAMPLE)
• Allows more people to access what institutions want us to see.
• Different platforms can be used to promote a film for example APPS (EXAMPLE) 
• Faster to communicate with audiences.
• Mass promotion between institutions - teaming up to promote something.
• Niche and specific audience. 
• Customers can be made to feel special, like a priority.
• Audience can access the media at any time because of the availability of the internet. 
• E4+1 anmd dejavu - audiences are more up to date.
• Audience have freedom.
• 'The audience narrative has changed as they are able to enjoy a very specific diet of programmes or films that they are interested in.'
• Can access MEdia anytime anywhere and therefore people are able to see new promotions etc immedietly.
• Direct interaction with fanbase eg:  email subscriptions.
• online services  - version online.
• Love Film - promotions offered to entice customers in. 
• Once customers are signed up for something, their details are there for institutions. 
• Websites are becoming more advanced in their ways of interacting with consumers. (EXAMPLE)

Withe new and digital media it is a lot easier for an institution to directly interact with their own fanbase, for example, on the Rolling Stone website you can now listen to the new Deftones record in its entirety before it is even released, this is an effective way of marketing the record, the fans are allowed to sample the record before they even buy it so the fans feel priveledged and have a greater loyalty to the band. In fact, marketing music on the internet in general is a good business strategy, nowadays a bands entire discography is usually located on itunes and other file sharing websites and it is a lot easier to access music, especially obscure muaic with a niche audience, in previous years to listen to a bands full discography you would have no choice but to hunt down the individual records so consumers nowadays have a lot more convenience when trying to access product. The same thinking can be applied to the world of film, Netflix allows you to stream movies directly to your TV which is a lot more convenient than going to the movie theatre or waiting for the movie to be relased in stores on DVD or Blu-Ray. All of this added convenience means that people are more inclined to access media such as movies and music becuase it is easier, this of course means greater profit for the institution that produces the media so these marketing stratef=gies are benificial for the producer and the consumer.

What Opportunities and/or Disadvantages do New and Digital Media have for Audiences

In recent years new and digital media has brought many advantages and disadvantages to regular people. I am going to discuss the pros and cons of new and digital medias effect on modern society.

With new and digital media it is much easier for people to voice their opinions on a subject than in previous years, with online forums on most movie websites and the ability to rate movies and post your own reviews on websites such as iMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, you don't have to be a professional critic for a magazine or a TV show to voice your opinion on a new movie, band, TV show etc. This also allows for much more debate. However debates can easily turn into arguments and often a person will post their opinion online only to be shot down by another user who will employ all manner of brutal tactics such as threats and intimidation to make the other person feel inferior, as if their opinion is wrong or doesn't matter.

The advent of sites such as Wikipedia make it much easier to find out trivia and other facts. Nowadays if you want to find out about a movie and the people who worked on it you don't have to spend much more than a few minutes searching and reading on the internet before you know a variety of details on the movie, its actors, director, where it was filmed, other films that the actors and director have worked on etc. However often the information on these sites is submitted by the users, user maintained sites such as Wikipedia are not monitored regularly by administrators and will only take down articles if they are offensive. The information on these websites is often false and not regualrly checked so often people will repeat the knowledge found on these sites as common truths when in fact the knowledge was fabricated.

Advantages and Disadvantages of New and Digital Media

Advantages
1. Easier for the regular person to voice their opinion.  For example with trailers and comments on youtube.  SPECIFIC EXAMPLE FROM YOUR CASE STUDY.

- Can easily turn into arguments where peoples opinions are devalued and the people themselves can be left feeling as if they don't matter.

2. find out information more easily eg:  views, trivia, information about the films.  For example, wikapedia articles.  IMDB for miscellaneous information. 

- This information is not always accurate, especially on sites such as wikipedia where the users contribute their own knowledge which is not checked by the administrators of the site.

3. You can share your life with people.  For example on Twitter and with photos.  Social interaction and discussion.

- Identity theft and stalkers are a huge problem on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

4. Validation of your existence and self esteem booster.

- Not neccesarily healthy, some people may become so obsessed with this cheap self esteem booster that they spend more time on social networking sites than actually interacting with people in real life.

5. if you want to be famous it's easier.

- This devalues the concept of celebrity, if anyone can become famous that means that websites are filled with people trying to make their opinion heard.

1. You can share your interests and meet other people who have the same passions as you.  youtube posting comments back and forth.  Vital BMX - so people with a similar niche interest can easily find groups of likeminded people. 
2. For some people they may see it  as freedom to act in a way that they want and to be able to say what they want.   Gives people confidence because they can be anyone that they want.
3. Allows another platform to access Media - you can watch things on the internet more easily.