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.