COM 125 Assignment 2 - Internet killed the radio star

(Let me start things off by saying real quickly that though I may not, perhaps, be the most qualified to talk about this particular topic, I would probably be the one who feels the effects of this most keenly - being a musician myself, whose music is pirated off the Internet.)

The Internet has come a long way in helping budding musicians peddle their wares to the masses as well as record companies. Gone are the days when analog cassettes and demo tapes were the way to go. Today, it's all about ProTools, Garageband, Ipod-dj-ing, and a whole plethora of handy computer tools that make music production the new after-class fad (Fact: Nowadays, you can make music by pressing just one button. True story.) With all this convenient technology at our fingertips though, there is that inescapable fact that you cannot have the good without some of the bad; piracy is especially rampant, when it comes to music.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about Digital Rights Management (DRM), and how it is a bid by both the record labels (the "big four": Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI) and music store owners (namely Apple, Microsoft and Sony) to protect music copyrights and intellectual property owned by music artistes. The sad truth though, is that DRM has not, and perhaps never will, halt music piracy. In fact, with a little bit of technical know-how, unlocking music protected by DRM software is really easy. This, coupled with the fact that on the average, only 3% of the music found in most Ipods is DRM-protected content, is a pretty big indication of one simple truth - DRM technology is really mostly just for show (Jobs, 2007).

What does this mean for content creators, or musicians then? Right now, with the digital age upon us, almost all forms of music have been digitized and can be found somewhere on the World Wide Web. Sites like youtube, myspace and imeem stream digital media for free, whilst bittorrent applications and other peer-to-peer software encourage the downloading and sharing of files, whether legally or illegally obtained. There is no escaping digital piracy no matter how you look at it, simply because the Internet is too vast a place to properly regulate and police. In fact, this extends to all forms of content, not just music - simply put, if you have any content at all on the Web, be it audio, video, or plain text; it is akin to putting it up in the public domain. Even if your content and intellectual property is protected by sites like COMPASS, piracy manages to somehow ignore all that, hiding behind the vast, sheer anonymity of the World Wide Web (my band's album, distributed by Universal Music, was leaked onto torrent servers in March this year).

How then can we accommodate both the interests of the public and that of content creators? To look at the problem from a more specific angle, how can we protect the interests of the public and the music industry? Given the current trends of how music is being obtained and exchanged today, the music industry is facing an unprecedented crisis and might possibly, collapse on itself in the near future if it doesn't adapt to the changes in consumer patterns (Kusek, 2009). This would only serve to limit the amount of new music being produced, which would be counter-productive for the public.

The solution I propose will not be able to halt piracy at all - I think it is very important to be able to accept that whatever the age, some form of piracy will always exist on the Internet due to its' public nature. However, it should be able to serve both the public interest as well as improve the condition of the ailing record industry.

The solution is two-fold: the first part involves educating the public, whilst the second part involves a restructuring of the record industry.

The public should be made aware that the music they download is unsustainable in the long run if the artistes who write them recieve no renumeration of any sort. Things like record sales help fund and encourage artistes to continue writing more music, and helps in the creation of more content. True, there are musicians who would produce music without hope of any form of income; but financially supporting these musicians, and supporting them via album sales rather than pirated downloads, helps promote and create a greater variety of content.

For record companies, I believe there has to be a change in focus. Record labels need to start promoting things that the Internet cannot hope to replicate. For example, the experience of being at a live show, in the flesh, rather than merchandise which can be digitized and put online for everyone to share.

Because though Copyrights still have their use from a commercial perspective, for the average individual, Copyrights are pretty much a thing of the past.

Jobs, S. (2007, February 6). Thoughts on Music. Apple. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Kusek, D. (2009, September 14). Music Industry - Change or Die. Future of Music. Retrieved September 24, 2009, from http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/2009/09/change-or-die/

COM125 Assignment 1: A long time ago, in a military installation far far away..

Ok, so the advent of the Internet did not exactly have grand fanfare and scrolling text to herald it's arrival. Instead, it was a rather quiet affair - evolving slowly from the precursor of the Internet, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), which was a military directive. Most people didn't even realize the significant milestone on 10.30pm October 29, 1969 - when the first message was sent from one computer to another computer on UCLA's grounds, where ARPANET was deployed.

From then on, technologies for the fledging ARPANET burgeoned, with the first e-mail being invented and sent in 1971. By 1973, e-mail traffic made up 75% of the total volume of information exchanged on the ARPANET. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) was also invented in 1973, which allowed files to be sent from one location to another. These advances pushed and encouraged development of ARPANET into something more accessible and readily available for the public and commercial entities.

Fast forwards years later and ARPANET is now one of the fundamental components of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Many of the technologies used and developed during that time now form the basis of the different uses of the Internet. For instance, emails are still widely in use. FTP capabilities have grown cumulatively over the years, and allow for global access of files at speeds previously unimagined when ARPANET was developed.

The Internet today would definitely not have been able to progress at the speed which it did were it not for the development of ARPANET. The technologies discovered in the implementation of ARPANET formed the backbone of the World Wide Web's infrastructure in the early years. These technologies led to the development of other advancements, such as TCP/IP, and SMTP - protocols which have helped stabilize the Internet and from which more uses have been derived.

Today, we can even send video and audio signals over the Internet and talk to loved ones half a world away. All that, from a dingy laboratory in UCLA in 1969.

The introduction.

Introductions are tough. There's always that burst of panic when you're told to put something to paper - to create something from scratch - that just seems to flounder, vex and frustrate the general populace. For some people, perhaps it's because they have too much to say - or rather, there is that need to consciously decide what is meaningful enough to be given voice and life on parchment, papyrus, or even this Internet Window.

But I'm digressing.

Hello.

You can call me Shen, rather than my full Chinese name. Like a few other students here, I hail from the magnificently boring city state of Singapore. Well, boring is how you look at it really, but it is where home is.

In my free time, I like to think I'm quite a bit of a geek. I watch shows like the Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, Little Britain, How I Met Your Mother, and have the uncanny ability to retrieve useless bits of information about fore-mentioned shows at the most inopportune moments. Suffice to say, that is abit of an obstacle for my social life, which is currently vegetative at best.

Besides that, I play in a little band back in Singapore whilst masquerading (yup, it's all a facade) as a hardworking student. You should check it out here when you have the time - we try to / like to think we're cool.

So yes, music and random bits of trivia make up a majority of my life. If you're ever interested, do ask me what rojak is - that'd be the perfect summary for my introduction.

Till then. Have a seat, take your shoes off, relax, enjoy the show.