Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Altruistic Scholarship for Kayla
Dear Kayla,
I noticed that Dr. Burton already helped you out a bit, but I thought I could do some more for you, since you seem to have piqued my interest. A lot of these articles look really informative.
The Boundaries between Citizen Journalism and the "Real Thing."
Shifting Boundaries This article looks at the theoretical bounds of professional and amateur journalism and how they interact.
Citizen Journalism Just as Credible This is based on a study that found that students do not differentiate between professional and citizen journalism.
Enhancing Citizen Journalism This article argues that there are no differences between citizen journalism and professional news sources.
Whose News? Whose Values? This study evaluates attitudes of readers and journalists towards traditional journalism standards.
Opportunities and Limits This article uses a theoretical approach towards analyzing citizen journalism.
Citizen Journalism in other parts of the world:
Citizen Journalism in Nigeria This is an article about the pros and cons of emerging citizen journalism in a developing country.
I Can Do Better This is based on surveys of professional journalists in various European countries. The primary conclusion of this study was that journalists claim to act out of duty rather than the need for individual expression.
Gatekeeping and Citizen Journalism this article is specifically about the Arab Spring
Reporting the Voices of the Voiceless This article compares the history of non-mainstream news reporting during a miners' strike in the UK in 1984 to citizen journalism today.
Thinking about citizen journalism has reminded me of something. When I was in the fifth grade, there was a show on PBS called "Liberty's Kids." The premise of the show was journalism during the American Revolution, or rather three kids who want to be news reporters that get an inside scoop on the people and events of that war. At the end of every episode there was always a little tag that said something along the lines of "You can be a journalist, too! If you see news happening, report it!" You can watch most of the episodes on You Tube if you like, and here is a link to the show's web site. I think it might have something interesting to say about how certain parties want to present news and encourage news reporting, especially in media geared toward younger audiences.
Glad to be of Service,
Lizy
Monday, October 28, 2013
Copyright Infringement Hits Close to Home
This is going to get very personal.
So, around thirteen years ago, right after Pixar's Toy Story 2 came out, Disney and Pixar came out with a 2D animated television show called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. It showed on ABC's One Saturday Morning alongside Recess and Fillmore. It followed the adventures of a version of Buzz Lightyear that the toy in the Toy Story films is supposedly based on. I wasn't much of a Toy Story fan, I'll admit, but I fell in love with the show. Deeply. It was funny and cool to watch. My brothers loved it, and I remember my mother telling me about how she came home from work late one night and stayed up late with my babysitter just to watch it Buzz Lightyear.
But, like all good TV shows of my childhood, Buzz Lightyear eventually stopped airing. All my family had left were the direct-to-video premire and a few tapes of the Saturday morning show, but gradually we forgot about them and lost interest. The only show that got remotely close was Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but then Disney bought Lucasfilm and canceled that too--and rumor on the street is it ended on a cliffhanger.
Then last year, feeling a need to reconnect with my childhood (another long story), I looked up the show on YouTube. The best resource I found was a YouTube channel called Radio Free Planet Z (reference to Zurg's headquarters in the TV show), which featured the entire series premire and whole episodes in single youtube blocks, mostly recorded off the British Disney channel Cinemagic. Let me tell you, that was a glorious, albeit indulgent, summer. And not only did I find episodes I was familiar with but also episodes and plots that I had never been aware of. (And my mom was very excited)
This past summer, I wanted to introduce my roommate to the show because, for crying out loud, it's awesome, and this is what I found:
YouTube account RadioFreePlanetZ has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including:
But as we have begun talking about copyright in our Digital Culture class, I have realized something. Disney has not come out with the episodes on DVD. If they did not make Buzz Lightyear available for fans publicly--in fact, there are a lot of classic TV shows that aren't available publicly--what did they expect us to do if we wanted to watch it?
I think this brings up an interesting point about copyright. If people care enough about something that isn't available to them, they will make it available for themselves and for other people who want it. And for free. If Disney doesn't care about its old animated TV shows anymore, why doesn't it release them for sale, or for free even, instead of blocking people on YouTube who are trying to do the world a favor. On Radio Free Planet Z's site, there were a lot of comments from people like me who watched this show growing up and loved it. They appreciated the poster's efforts to make this available. I posted pictures from the show from my facebook profile, and people told me--former roommates, cousins, less-than-intimate-acquaintances--how much they'd loved that show growing up. If Disney cares so much about making childhood memories, why must it dictate what we ought to cherish and how? It wasn't earning money from that channel but it wasn't losing money, either? I am sure the company had good reasons to take it down, but it was a big letdown for people who, like myself, gradually came to depend on it for a small, 20 min+ dose of happiness.
That's my beef on copyright. Having finished composing this, I feel more angry than sad. And if you don't understand my angst, here is a video of the lyrics to "Those Were the Days" sung by Mary Hopkins.
So, around thirteen years ago, right after Pixar's Toy Story 2 came out, Disney and Pixar came out with a 2D animated television show called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. It showed on ABC's One Saturday Morning alongside Recess and Fillmore. It followed the adventures of a version of Buzz Lightyear that the toy in the Toy Story films is supposedly based on. I wasn't much of a Toy Story fan, I'll admit, but I fell in love with the show. Deeply. It was funny and cool to watch. My brothers loved it, and I remember my mother telling me about how she came home from work late one night and stayed up late with my babysitter just to watch it Buzz Lightyear.
But, like all good TV shows of my childhood, Buzz Lightyear eventually stopped airing. All my family had left were the direct-to-video premire and a few tapes of the Saturday morning show, but gradually we forgot about them and lost interest. The only show that got remotely close was Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but then Disney bought Lucasfilm and canceled that too--and rumor on the street is it ended on a cliffhanger.
 |
| self-generated meme |
Then last year, feeling a need to reconnect with my childhood (another long story), I looked up the show on YouTube. The best resource I found was a YouTube channel called Radio Free Planet Z (reference to Zurg's headquarters in the TV show), which featured the entire series premire and whole episodes in single youtube blocks, mostly recorded off the British Disney channel Cinemagic. Let me tell you, that was a glorious, albeit indulgent, summer. And not only did I find episodes I was familiar with but also episodes and plots that I had never been aware of. (And my mom was very excited)
This past summer, I wanted to introduce my roommate to the show because, for crying out loud, it's awesome, and this is what I found:
YouTube account RadioFreePlanetZ has been terminated because we received multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including:
- Disney
But as we have begun talking about copyright in our Digital Culture class, I have realized something. Disney has not come out with the episodes on DVD. If they did not make Buzz Lightyear available for fans publicly--in fact, there are a lot of classic TV shows that aren't available publicly--what did they expect us to do if we wanted to watch it?
I think this brings up an interesting point about copyright. If people care enough about something that isn't available to them, they will make it available for themselves and for other people who want it. And for free. If Disney doesn't care about its old animated TV shows anymore, why doesn't it release them for sale, or for free even, instead of blocking people on YouTube who are trying to do the world a favor. On Radio Free Planet Z's site, there were a lot of comments from people like me who watched this show growing up and loved it. They appreciated the poster's efforts to make this available. I posted pictures from the show from my facebook profile, and people told me--former roommates, cousins, less-than-intimate-acquaintances--how much they'd loved that show growing up. If Disney cares so much about making childhood memories, why must it dictate what we ought to cherish and how? It wasn't earning money from that channel but it wasn't losing money, either? I am sure the company had good reasons to take it down, but it was a big letdown for people who, like myself, gradually came to depend on it for a small, 20 min+ dose of happiness.
That's my beef on copyright. Having finished composing this, I feel more angry than sad. And if you don't understand my angst, here is a video of the lyrics to "Those Were the Days" sung by Mary Hopkins.
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