Looking back

This has been quite the semester. It continued to the trend of every semester seeming to fly by faster than the one before. I truly feel like this is the semester that has pushed me the furthest as a student, having to balance school and two jobs while trying to maintain the high grades I'm used to. I'm glad to have taken the CAR class and its definitely been a learning experience for me as a student in general and more importantly a better journalist. Here are a few things I wish I would have done differently over the project and things I enjoyed about the class in general.

1. Got a earlier start on interviews. I put off interviews way too long, giving a mound of stress to deal with when the project started to get going. Also, I feel like I could have had follow up interviews with the people I interviewed if I had started earlier. 
2. Made it to class. Unfortunately, the busy schedule I had took a tole on me and I didn't make it to some important classes and I have no excuse for it but its something I know I will be better about going forward in my academic career. 
3. Blogged earlier: Once again, I didn't manage my time efficiently during a large portion of the semester and left myself almost all of my required blogs in the last two weeks of school. Also, I found the blogs helpful in reflecting on the material I've been researching all semester.
4. Things I can take away from the class
1. Researching ability 
2. Use of the Internet to find sources (people)
3. Use of multimedia 
4. Using social media websites to my advantage 
5. Use of Google in a way I never would have thought of
6. Knowledge of so many useful websites I never would have used (Web2.0)
7. Critical thinking improved tremendously 

Overall, I really enjoyed the class and am definitely better off for taking it. 

Top piracy websites

Here is a list of the top-10 'piracy' websites to be taken down according to a theinquirer.net article posted in early 2012.

1. Napster: What it is a legitimate music service now, sent shockwaves through the music industry when it first surfaced in 1999 as a P2P file sharing service that was a pirating haven. Metallica and Dr. Dre were frontrunners in a large group of artists to levy legal actions against Napster and eventually the website was shut down. 
2. The Pirate Bay: Started in 2003 and was raided in 2006 by Swedish police. In 2008, the web site's operators were charged with contributing to copyright infringement and in April 2009 Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström were sentenced to one year in prison and a large fine. 
   Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15x9g)
3. Newzbin: A members only website that allows users share links to copyrighted movies, music and computer games.
4. Kazaa: Another peer-to-peer network, created by the men behind Skype, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, that allowed users to download all types of files, not just music. 
5. MegaUpload: One of the biggest website takedowns in history. Kim Dotcom, the websites founder, was arrested on charges of money laundering, racketeering and copyright infringement. 
6. Limewire: Peer-to-peer network that started in 2010 and the idea still lives today in the form of Frostwire. 
7. Suprnova: First popular bit torrent search engine, setting the stage for ThePirateBay. 
8. TV Shack: Run by UK student Richard O'Dwyer and had links to thousands of TV shows and movies but did not directly host them. After having computers seized from him by UK and US police, he shut down the site. 
9. Ninja Video: Ninja Video claimed to protest inflated prices of films and television shows, but it also made a fair amount of money from advertising its links to uploaded video files while it was operating.Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15x99)
10. Audiogalaxy: Ran during Napster's reign over the free-music market and hid in Napster's shadow for quite a while. Eventually shut down, the website rose again into a music streaming service. 

Profile story: the beginning of it all

This is the source of my inspiration to do my project over online piracy and the SOPA bill. A fraternity brother of two of my roommates by the name of Jack Rieck. I first met Jack at a party at their fraternity house of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and he was in charge of the music there. Normally, you hear about the same 20 songs at any given fraternity party but this time was different, the music really caught my attention.

So after the party, I talked to Rieck about where he got his music and it quickly became apparent that he was not some guy just picking music off of iTunes. Rieck showed me his set up, which included hundreds of dollars in software and thousands of songs, many of which he mixed together using the software he invested in. Modern day DJing is the best way to describe it and it has taken college campuses by storm in the last four years.

Rieck was so serious about DJing that his services began to be heard at fraternities all over campus and eventually he got a gig to work a rave at the new bar in aggieville, Johnny Kaws. Rieck said that the experience at Johnny Kaws was unreal and inspired him to push to become even bigger.

That break would eventually come, on fratmusic.com, where a playlist created was selected to be a part of the website. The website is commonly used by, big surprise, fraternity and sorority members but it has a much broader audience and I've even known parties that have used playlists on this website for a party.

A few days later, I ran into Rieck and we started talking about the SOPA bill and to my surprise, he was just as aware of it as I was. It shouldn't have been a surprise, looking back on it, the SOPA bill got people screaming censorship, why wouldn't someone who's hobby largely depends on a foreign run website be worried as well.

After talking to Rieck about this in depth, it was clear that this bill could have unintended consequences and that I needed to look more deeply into it, which is why I chose to do my project over this subject. It wasn't until I started researching that I realized the depth of the argument for and against the bill.

Interview in review #5

One of the last interviews I did for this project was Josh Peiffer, a student at K-State double majoring in political science and history, that I knew through a couple classes I've had in the past with him. I didn't originally intend on actually interviewing Josh for my project but I ran into him one day and the conversation of SOPA was brought up and he had quite a bit to say about it. I didn't use a lot of the interview with Josh in my project but he was useful nonetheless. Here are a few things I got from the interview with Josh.

1. Josh helped walk me through the 80-plus page SOPA bill and really helped me to understand the logistics of the bill and the amount of help this did for me can't be overstated. 
2. Josh had a good understanding of history and politics, and was able to put both in perspective where most people are knowledgable of one or the other or none at all. 
3. The SOPA protests had nothing to do with partisanship or bias, like most political discussions now a days. 
4. The time it takes a bill to actually come into effect, especially with the Internet, the problem may have evolved by then. 
5. Its not the musicians necessarily fighting for anti-piracy laws but more likely the recording labels who make more money on music sales on the margin than musicians, while musicians make the majority of their money on concerts.
6. This is an issue that isn't going away anytime soon and more than likely we will see the government expand their regulation on the Internet. 

Interview in review: Interview 4

My fourth interview was with Dr. Steven Maxwell, a K-State music professor who teaches the History of Rock and Roll class, and Dr. Maxwell was very helpful in giving me a musical perspective of how the Internet has changed the music industry. Here are a few things I got from the interview.

1. Rock and Roll radio was the biggest mass medium to have a major impact on the music industry until the Internet came along. 
2. ITunes was instrumental in the music industry's adaptation to the digital age after Napster debacles in 1999 that caused many people to think the Internet would ruin the music industry. 
3. ITunes made it very easy for anyone to be able to buy music legally in a cheap fashion. iTunes was modeled after by many other companies. 
4. Certain musicians like Korn, Kid Rock, Pete Segar and Garth Brooks have been hesitant to join the Internet craze. The Beatles just recently got onto iTunes and a reason a number of these artists refuse to do so is because their music was built on albums and not on the sale of singles. They feel like it destroys the artistic idea they are creating. 
5. Another reason artists were hesitant to get involved with iTunes is that it takes a large cut of sales on top of the huge cut that their label takes anyway. But once iTunes became the main platform for music sales, artists started to give in and take the larger cut for the larger sales. 
6. Its hard to tell what kind of impact, positive or negative, the Internet has had on the music industry. It has definitely gone back to the focus on singles and not albums. 
7. The Internet has really helped artists get noticed, like Wiz Khalifa, but its becoming harder as more and more artists turn to the Internet and water down the talent online. 
8. The Internet has really benefited artists who use websites to get information out there as well as free songs to lure them into their music and hopefully bring them out to concerts. 
9. The Internet has helped reemerge pop music with the easier ability to create songs with technological advances. 

Interview in review: Third interview

My third interview was with Jason Walters, a graduate student in economics, who is doing his graduate paper on online piracy. Jason was very helpful in giving me angles of the subject that I never would have otherwise thought of and greatly enhanced my project. Here a just a few things I took from the interview.

1. Every online company doesn't work the same, business wise, and the SOPA and PIPA acts would have different effects depending on the website. 
2. The history of legislation on piracy has contradicted and undid previous precedents as technology has evolved. (AHRA vs. Millennium Copyright Act) 
3. Cloud computing would be greatly altered by SOPA and PIPA acts through storage facilities like Google and Amazon run, and these companies would be violating SOPA and PIPA if piracy occurred through them. The main example is the MegaUpload site that is a perfect example of what could happen. 
4. People that had legitimate files on MegaUpload lost all their files they had on the website when it was shut down. 
5. Google has come up with a solution, in their eyes, to the problem in the form of the OPEN act which basically allows you to argue and kind of have a judicial process about your storage facility website. The problem with this is many websites wouldn't have the capital to go through those types of litigation processes and so they won't continue to run the website. Consequently, Google has created a monopoly while crippling the industry.
6. Another problem the SOPA and PIPA acts run into is peer-to-peer network sites, which are inexpensive to set up and you don't have to pay for storage because every user is essentially storage so SOPA and PIPA would be ineffective in changing peer-to-peer networks because they can start up so easily. 
7. Peer-to-peer networks, however, have a greater incidence of malware so if SOPA and PIPA would have passed you would see a shift of file-hosting sites towards peer-to-peer networks and there would be a higher incidence of malware. The overall problem wouldn't have been solved, just redirected. 
8. With the black market, like online piracy is a part of, statistics are not concrete and empirical studies  involving online piracy usually have some sort of flaw. 
9. Movies and music are not the only industries that are affected by online piracy, software is another large industry affected. 
10. Piracy can have a positive effect, like in software. 

Interview in review: Interview 2

My second interview was with Andrew Wagner, who is a graduate student that focused his graduate paper on net neutrality. Andrew's interview was just under 20 minutes and was probably the most helpful interview I conducted through the entire project. Here are a few things I got from the interview.

1. Andrew's interest in doing his paper over net neutrality came from his interest in in Internet commerce, or the easy availability to buy nearly anything with a computer. 
2. The economic issues surrounding the Internet has been around for over 200 years in the form of the railroad.
3. The current net neutrality rules basically say that everyone deserves the chance to have their voice heard and preferential treatment is not allowed. In other words, anyone can start up a website free of charge, encouraging innovation. 
4. The SOPA and PIPA bills could potentially violate the net neutrality laws that have been laid down.
5. If it costs to start up a website, sites like Facebook may have never been created due to the costs of starting it up. 
6. Most of the Internet websites were created by individual people and not large corporations, a product of the net neutrality rules in place. 
7. The net neutrality rules keep companies like Verizon and Comcast from offering specialized networking and creates competition that benefits the average consumer. 
8. A lot of the companies against the SOPA and PIPA bills were companies that benefited from the net neutrality rules. 
9. Is it fair to punish the websites like Google for links to illegal sites?
10. Net neutrality rules may need to be expanded as the Internet continues to evolve, only for certain circumstances though. 

Here is a link to Andrew's paper which goes into more detail. 

http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/13598