Google 'Fights Piracy'

The entertainment industry has been long criticizing Google for allowing users to download entertainment illegally. So as a solution to this problem, Google has added extra measures so that links pointed to illegal content will fall lower in the results, when being searched. As a reporter said, "The best way to combat piracy is with better and more convenient legitimate services." Which is definitely understandable. I understand how difficult it is for any music artist now-a-days to go 'platinum' because of how many illegal file sharing sites there are on the web. It must be very frustrating to devote all your time and life into doing what you love, and making music and then for someone to go download it all for free. But we got to understand, Google can only do so much, it really comes down to the people and their own decision-making process.

Advertisements

We, as consumers, are confronted with all kinds of different advertisements any and every way we walk, look, or hear in our daily lives. Advertisements present an abstract world, in which they promise more than they can deliver (Pg.265). In a consumer society, we are surrounded by tons of goods, and advertisements for those goods, that are constantly changing to keep up with society. The idea that consumer products will offer self-fulfillment is crucial to marketing and consumption (Pg.269). That is exactly why I don’t like marketing, because companies say what you want to hear, but then put the side effects in very small print at the bottom, which is what you don’t want to hear. Especially when you see something that looks really good to eat and it’s for a very cheap price, and then you go to that place and it’s something very tiny that won’t even fill you up, that is exactly why advertising is dumb. But everyone is in it for the money, so I guess companies got to do whatever they got to do to get customers over there.  

Importance of Categorization

Women, Fire and Dangerous things. All have something in common, right? Wrong. I mean, I'm sure you can find some common boundary between each one of these, but what George Lakoff describes, is that things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common, with the idea that categories are defined by common properties. (Pg.5) It has come to realization that categorization is far more complex than that. A new theory has emerged, called prototype theory. As Lakoff describes it, When we intentionally perform any kind of action, we are using categories. When we move about the world, we automatically categorize people, animals, physical objects, etc. They aren't categories of things, they are of abstract entities. After reading this article, it changed my whole outlook on my thoughts about categories. The way I experience and imagine categorization, I think of it as far more than just simply items with common characteristics. It is now more of a prototype-based conception in which we categorize.

String of Puppies

This particular issue was discussed in Chapter 5 of POL, in a case of Rogers v. Koons. This copyright issue occurred when a photographer took a picture of a man and women holding a bunch of puppies and used them for postcards and other goods. Then, an American artist, Jeff Koons, sent a copy of that image without the copyright label, to an Italian studio to be produced into a statue. After Rogers tried suing him, the court's ruled in Koons favor saying it was derivative and not transformative. I don't know if I necessarily agree with this topic, because if a photographer is really going to go through all that work to take a photograph and crop, edit and publish it and for someone else to take the credit for that, it's not really fair and I think that is one great example of an image reproduction that takes away from the quality and integrity from one's work.