Dawning Light Design

When a person creatively designs a product, art or musical property they then work to share that design in such a way that they can get credit for it. That credit usually includes pay for their time and effort and the value it is for others to use. They may need to obtain trademark, patent, copyright, etc in order to officially stake a claim on their work. Ideally others would pay for or at least credit that person for their work.

I chose econedlink.org for Napster vs Metallica information. The information is a lesson on Economic Education, a “teacher’s version.” The lesson includes a link to the opinion of the Metallica Band. www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=514 They not only wrote, performed and recorded the music; they paid many technicians and specialists along the way to produce the music. They worked hard to earn the respect to begin making a living at this and so did all of their production crew that became a part of what they do. They were shocked to find out Napster had their catalog of songs and was giving it away for free; without ever asking. Some of their new music came out before it was published in the movie it was written for, Mission Impossible 2.

Interestingly http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20000612/ai_n10136611 is an article from other artists who liked the idea of Napster giving their work out for free. They felt labels were charging exorbitant fees and requiring impossible contracts to promote them. Maybe free downloads would get their work better known and sell more of their own concerts, CD’s and MP3’s.

http://www.forbes.com/2000/04/14/mu4.html talks about Metallica including Universities in the lawsuit for working with and encouraging Napster. Napster responds that they are trying to help struggling musicians. The recording labels joined in the complaints because all of their artists were being featured on Napster without compensation or permission.

The story of 18 year old Shawn Fanning, college dropout, is told at http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2000/10/02/napster.html . He combined the capabilities of a Internet Relay Chat, file sharing and high power searching and filtering engines to create his program. At first having great trouble convincing anyone it was worth anything, his creation has ranked among the greatest internet applications ever.

Personally, I think it was amazing that he was able to do the study it took to create the program that did all of this. It was quite a feat of focus and production of coding to create the work that he did. The article pointed out that it is okay to purchase and then copy your copy for yourself, but not others. My inclination is toward honesty that allows proper compensation to the artists. Certainly the work that Shawn did in his creation is a case in point. His talent should be appropriately compensated in an honest venue.

My own experience with intellectual property issues was in working with a real estate firm with over 90 agents requesting design work from me. I would sometimes get requests to use famous characters or reference to well known songs or movies in advertising and flyers. There were a few times I had to go to management. That well known company did not want their name drawn into a controversy and I was the knowing professional who could not cross the line. The owner agreed that they were not willing to take the chance the ads would not be seen by people who would question permissions. Interestingly enough some of the agents downloaded pictures and created ads of their own anyway. But then it was their personal responsibility if caught and still the chance that using the company’s name could bring them into controversy. It also brings into issue the quality of the representation to both company and agent. Their work was often done with low res and stretched out of proportion images.

EconEdLink, Council for Economic Education. (2000, December 12). Online Mayhem 1: Metallica Versus. Napster Teacher’s Version. Retrieved November 9, 2009 from http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/print.php?lesson=186&page=teacher

From the EconEdLink the following links are referenced as resources.

The Official Metallica Website: Here you can read what the band members have to say about Napster.
www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=514 [1]

The Journal Record Article Written by Alec Foege (June 12, 2000): The Musicians on the Napster Bandwagon.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20000612/ai_n10136611 [2]

Forbes Article Written by Amy Doan (April 14, 2000): Metallica Sues Napster.
www.forbes.com/2000/04/14/mu4.html [3]

CNN Article Written by Karl Taro Greenfeld (September 25, 2000): Meet the Napster- Shawn Fanning was 18 when he wrote the code that changed the world. His fate, and ours, is no in the court’s hands.
www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2000/10/02/napster.html

http://www.blockstar.com/blog/blog_timeline.html

http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/

Blogging began as lists of websites in 1993 with NCSA and Netscape. Then there were the beginnings of news sites for specific groups. Jorn Barger first coined the term web log in 1997. Camworld came out with a list of web log sites in 1998 and Peter Merholz began the term wee-blog which got shortened to blog in 1999. In July 1999 Pitas.com offered the first free build your own blog web tool. A month later Pyra released the popular Blogger software for creating blogs. In 2002 blog information affected some lives in a big way. Heather Armstrong, fired for blogging started “Dooced” which became the verb: “Fired for blogging.” Senate majority leader, Trent Lott resigned when a blog reported his racially charged comments. In 2003 an Iraqi blogger gained worldwide audience during the Iraq war. Advertising began on blog sites and Google began content oriented advertising. In 2004 Meriam-Webster declared “blog” the “Word of the Year.” In 2005 a study discovered 32 million Americans read blogs. The Huffington Post was launched. Someone sold his blogs to AOL for $25 million and an estimated $100 million worth of ads were sold. 2006 Time released a blog on their website and the Huffington Post surged to become fourth most-linked-to blog. Interestingly enough it seems everyone became too busy blogging to record any more recent history on blogging.

It seemed surprising to me that Twitter is being used as a business tool. I have not gotten  involved in Twitter and the little I knew about it seemed like it would be a waste of my time. Clearly I will have to visit Twitter and learn more.
My field has been print with flyers, brochures, newsletters and ads. Print and photography inventions  play a big part in that. The changes and improvements made it possible to do this job more efficiently. Earlier efforts were done with a mimeograph machine. Typewriters were used to cut text into stencils. Plastic raised templates were used to rub graphics into the stencil. Photos were rarely used but had to be prepared by a specialist at a printers. The stencil was rolled onto a drum and ink poured into the drum (one color only) to get the newsletters out. The drum was hand cranked. This is what we used on the first newsletter I edited as a teenager.
Wow, the changes since then. The in-house printing went to photo-copiers which degraded as we made copies of copies. Then came the large photocopier connected to the computer. The first one was so full of bugs, I spent half my time getting it to work, but loved the merge feature, especially when printing 750 certificates for high school students. First the certificates were printed and we did have copier that could have ink color changed…a Reisograph machine. So we had some two color certificates. Then merged the students names and program names on each individual one. I could do the whole vo-tech high school in an hour or two instead of several days to a slow laser printer. The software itself has improved from Publisher and PageMaker to In-Design. Photos are much simpler to use with digital photos. As cameras improved resolution and quality improved. Photoshop became an invaluable tool. Photos that may have been considered unusable in the past could now be cleaned up and enhanced, even fabricated into something more than they started out to be. Cluttered backgrounds could be removed.
In Real Estate, I was asked to removed garbage cans, dumpsters, clip hedges, make a patchy lawn prettier, and close the garage door. I was even asked to remove the reflection of the agent’s car and the reflection of his body and the flash of the camera from the picture window. Today’s technology makes it possible to avoid an extra trip out for more pictures. BUT…it also requires the designer to learn more software and be able to keep up with the times.

It is interesting that Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol recently came out, also about 2012. The article at the Huffingtonpost.com says 2012 “signals the impending transformations of our human minds into their true potentiality.” This follows the Mayan belief as reported in My Way News. It talks of the “cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal.”

It seems that the 2012 controversy will be generating all manner of books, movies and surely commercial items for sale. The movie by Sony already has a website with multiple opportunities to become obsessed with 2012. There is an Experience section that takes the viewer to their choice of interactive websites. The About section includes downloads for wallpaper, twitter and buddy icons.
There are Iphone apps, one for free and one to buy. Iphone apps are becoming a necessary part of media to hook in the consumer. A survival game is offered on the website to test your survival skills. There is also a Sweepstakes to become involved in. All of these are media types that communicate to different types of consumers. Iphone has a short history having been released in June of 2007. Online actually started in 1969 with Spacewar and by 1972 the University of Illinois computer system “could host about 1,000 simultaneous users.” Online video began in May of 2005.
Of all the information I read on 2012, I found the Huffingtonpost.com information to be most interesting. Yes, some of that is still a little out there, but much of it refers to research and other sources. Their view seemed to be positive and forward moving. No doomsday!
The movie is pure entertainment for those who like tricks and visual effects and may get a heart tug at the disasters and near disasters of the characters they become involved with. It remains to be seen if they can pull off the emotion in the characters that would really happen with such an event. Considering the many times the world has been predicted to end and not, I hope no one really takes this seriously. Past events have had whole communities uprooting their lives for nothing.

http://www.whowillsurvive2012.com/

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doc-childre/dan-browns-new-book-2012_b_316194.html

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone
http://www.tharsis-gate.org/articles/imaginary/HISTOR~1.HTM
http://www.reelpopblog.com/2006/09/a_brief_history.html

What is Mass Communication to me – The way in which we get the message intended out to the group we intend to give the message to. The message that is to be communicated.
What is Mass Media to me – It is the device or devices used to communicate the message to the groups targeted. This might be newspaper, magazines, e-zines, TV channels or internet web pages that put out the news on a regular basis. Brochures are a media.

Mass Communication – The message from House, the TV show. This show asks the receiver to feel and think how they would feel in the position of the receiver. House is rude to his colleagues and his specific team of Drs. House is rude and outrageous towards patients and their family. The message asks us to reflect on the psychological impact. Where the norm would be to identify with and root for the ‘hero’ or ‘star’ of the show, we are in a quandary. How can we support such outrageous behavior, even if he does often turn out to be right on the eventual solution. So this is also a message. Though he is good at what he does and his team is good at what they do, they actually fail a lot. They keep going. They flail and stand fast. They are outraged and admiring. Ready to quit and challenged to search deeper. What they have also done is show up that he has foibles, for which he may or may not be forgiven. In the end of the last season he had to check into rehab to heal from delusions brought on by drug addiction which exacerbated his appalling attitudes. Message- sometimes there is something actually wrong that needs fixed.
Mass Media – The show is delivered on the TV…BUT we now have choices of when to watch. Missing a show while in class is not necessarily a loss now. We have been able to tape and fast forward through the commercials (messages of what to buy) and stay with the emotional investment in the story. We can now go on the internet to the network or Hulu and get the show within 24 to 36 hours on our computer. Netflix is a way to watch and catch up on an entire season of House…sometimes on instant play, sometimes through a series of discs sent through the mail.

We are the TypeWriters.
My section is internet, which is an incredibly large form of communication. Another section we barely began to develop is software/hardware.
For internet our words were: SMS chats, spam, e-mail, facebook, hulu, wordpress, TED, pay-per-click, constitution, Pandora on-line radio, MySpace, Texting, You-Tube, banner ads and Twitter.

For Software/Hardware: Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Master Suite, Microsoft office, Java, Bit Torrents and c++ Computer, iphone, ipod, jump drive, external drive and much more – recognizing that time ran out for the extent of this subject of communication.

My 5 examples of choice are Facebook, Pandora, You-Tube, Adobe Master Suite and iPhone. All serve as social communication or, in the case of Adobe Master Suite, creating the social communication for most varied venues. Each gives the opportunity to interact on a personal level, take part in and share education and information, purely for entertainment and/or using as a tool for planning and organizing our lives.

Really helps you “understand” the organizational, social and communication “value” of Facebook.
“While digital media offer themselves to rigorous preplanning, too many multimedia pieces lack the sophistication of an underlying structure, and become sprawling messes.” Certainly we see this statement true in all of my 5 examples. Even with intense preplanning that is obvious in Facebook, there are often structural problems and a sprawling mess. Certainly each of the examples are so intensely involved that the very nature of their growth and demand sometimes triggers difficulty with the infrastructure. Just the sheer mass of what there is to learn to use each example of communication creates a deficit of time and skill to fully use all that is offered. Add to that the glitches that come up, one is left wondering who has goofed in getting the results they wanted. Was it the programming or the user?