Copyright Laws Out of Date?

I can see the value to this on both sides of story. The original artist worked extremely had to create their original piece of artwork. For some it would probably break their heart to have someone come along and "destroy" it with their own edits. Then after the original is destroyed, the new piece is given credit to someone else. How is that fair? I mean you spend hours, even days creating something and all of a sudden it's seen to be profitable by someone else so they come along and change it?
However, that person doing the editing is an artist themselves. They can see a different side to the original art piece. They can make it be different that it is and maybe even convey a different message. How many cover song are their out there? They make the song a little different than it was. What about making a collage? I think the important thing is to give credit back to the original artist. I believe that is what the new copyright laws need to do. They need to protect the original artist, but also give the new artist rights to change the piece of work as well.
I wish I had the skill or know how to edit his work, because Steven Colbert's Report would be fun to edit.

The Long Tail

While reading the article I found it extremely interesting to think about what you can buy in a local store. I love finding music off the beaten path, but I see to find that when I go to a local store I can't locate the music I want. I am a bit technologically behind. I use a mp3 player that is easily six years old. I use a desktop to do my school work and my phone doesn't even connect to the internet. That being said I love to have connection to music not played on the radio. I hate hearing the same songs every day. I hate Nicki Minaj and all of those other artists referred to as music. So I prefer to listen to a cd with my music choices.
I believe since that article was posted it's becoming even less common for people to buy music in a store. Now people listen to Pandora.com at  home and have satelite radio in their cars. It has come to a point, where basic radio is rarely listened to. I unfortunately do not have satelite radio, so I have to either listen to a cd or listen to the radio. When I am at home I only listen to Pandora. They play music you like, with no talking, low ads and it's static free. I feel like that makes it much better.
No matter about the choices of online books, I still prefer to have a physical book in my hand. I do believe that Amazon.com is hurting the book industry, because it is much easier to find books online than it is in the store. A lot of what was said in the article is true. I believe we will continue to evolve multimedia, just like we have over the last century.

What is Podcasting?

"Podcasting is delivering audio content to iPods and other portable media players on demand, so that it can be listened to at the user's convenience." http://www.podcastingnews.com/articles/What_is_Podcasting.html
However after listening to the introductory podcast on iTunes I found that there is much more to podcasting. Anyone can create a podcast and call it that, a podcast. However one thing that I got out of listening to the Podcasting for Dummies podcast was that a podcast has to be about some sort of content. You cannot just ramble on about your daily life and call that a podcast. That would be considered an audio blog, because it does not have a set topic.
Another important part of podcasts is that they are not a one time thing.  You cannot make one podcast about a subject and be done with it. They must be part of a series. Much like a new tv show, their must be new ones for the listeners to tune into.
I personally do not like podcasts. I find that if I do not have something to watch I tend to lose focus easily. I have never liked talk radio. I find I cannot focus on what is being said. I hate sports radio the most, where they try to play a sporting event over the radio. Who cares about that awesome catch if I cannot see it? I do not know if there are others out there who feel the same way as I do. What about you fellow classmates? Do you like podcasts?
~Heather

Alright so here is my attempt a my second video blog. To film it we attached the camera to a tripod that was strapped into the backseat. It's not perfect, but it gave a decent idea of the town.
~Heather

So here is my first attempt a video blog. It was taken with a Nikon Coolpix in my bedroom so the quality really stinks. Oh well here is is.
~Heather

Kindle 2- Does it Cross the Line?

After reading the articles this week I think that the Kindle 2's text-to-speech is breaking copyright law. A person writes their books and gets the book copyrighted to be sold as an e-book. However, they are not being paid for it to be an audio book. If they wanted it to be an audio book they would have released it as such and have copyrighted the audio features of that audio book. I believe that Amazon has gone too far with their text-to-speech option. It would be one thing if people could record their voices reading a book and listen to that, but they are essentially getting an audio book without paying the audio book prices. That is not fair to the writer of the books.

Plagiarism and CCV

Many times when I am writing a paper I forget that paraphrasing also needs to have a citation at the end of a paragraph. I often find myself avoiding or not using paraphrasing so that I don't get into the very gray area of plagiarism. It is so easy to steal another one's ideas and take them as your own, but you need to remember the time it took for that person to come up with idea.
However what I find to be most difficult is what as accepted as common knowledge. Common knowledge is the idea that something has been around for so long that it no longer needs to be cited. If was the to say the earth travels around the sun and is a sphere I would not need to cite my source, because every human being now accepts that as a fact. However if I wanted to go into more detail about the size and/or function of the earth I would need to cite a source. This example is easily understood, but their are so many gray ares out there are difficult to understand.
I wish that the videos from Rutgers had gone into more dept about what do with facts that considered to be common knowledge. They talked a lot about using direct quotes and paraphrasing, but they left the areas of grey areas that most college students tend to get into the most trouble for. Feel free to correct me if you think that I am wrong about this.
~Heather