Reading and Writing

I got around to reading Free Culture this weekend and I honestly couldn't stop myself. I read all the way up to chapter two before checking the course packet and seeing that I had gone too far. It was good stuff. The man was bringing together some very strong stories to support his case. The parts about the Wright brothers and FM radio were good, but what struck me the most was his chapter about the doshinji industry. Walt Disney copying has only come so far in America and it is slowly rolling to a halt, especially on the internet. On youtube, people are making five minute parodies of cartoons and movies. A video called "Yugioh: The Abridged Series" started the fad. The Youtube user Little Kuribo began making these videos where he pieced together bits of episodes of this cartoon and dubbed his own voice over. To people who used to watch the show, it was hilarious! He sparked dozens of other copycats and the views of his videos rose to over 1,000,000 people. Then, at about his fifteenth "episode", disaster struck. Youtube began to remove his videos for copyright infringement. THIS is exactly what Lessig is talking about! Some one is making the equivalent of a doshinji, keeping only likeness and changing dialog, story, and character personalities. He isn't even making any profit and his largest audience is 1,000,000 views, but apparently he is enough of a "threat" to a television show that isn't even on the air anymore that he needs to be squashed. It's absolutely ridiculous! We're not required to, but I plan on reading this entire book because I like the way Lessig thinks. He's got some valid opinions and points that need to be read by more people!

That takes care of the reading portion of my title, the writing involves my essay topic, WoW!!! Yeah, who would have thunk it? The one guy who plays World of Warcraft is going to write his essay about it! That's a shocker! I know it was in the examples of things you could write about, but I guarantee I would have come up with it anyways! I just need to come up with a good point to argue. I also need to figure out what the questions to consider were. I thought they were going to be put on the 108 blog, but they're not there yet! Now I have to try and write two paragraphs about a thesis I haven't come up with using questions that I don't know. Awesome. Well, I better get writing it. Till next time.

An interesting article I stumbled across.

I'm not usually big on making updates when i don't have to, but this really struck my interest.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=322407

A Nintendo employee got fired for talking trash about her co workers on her anonymous blog! Apparently, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. Many other companies have fired employees for posting in completely anonymous blogs. I just thought this could be an interesting article to discuss in class, so here it is!

Miis!!!

STEVEN COLBERT!!!