Media Ethics and Law

On October 26, 2010, a U.S. federal judge granted a request from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to completely shut down LimeWire due to its charges on online infringement which included downloading, distributing and sharing of songs occurring through its clients. LimeWire had been one of the world’s largest, most installed file sharing application, but as a matter, it has now ceased its entire operations due to charges of illegal copyright infringements to the music record companies. It is said that the company may be fined a total amount of more than a billion, as the final damages are yet to be assessed and the case is to be resumed in January, 2011.

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My opinion: There are always alternatives for everything, downloading and sharing songs being one of them. LimeWire may be permanently shut down, but what about the others! Will there be actions taken on those software companies as well?

Propaganda in Advertising

The techniques 'weight watcher' commercial uses here are:

Beautiful People:
The type of propaganda that deals with famous people or depicts attractive, happy people. This makes other people think that if they buy a product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be happy or successful.(Wikipedia definition). In this advertisement Jennifer Hudson is used to show how she lost weight getting in to the weight watcher plan.

Ad nauseam:
This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited or controlled by the propagator(Wikipedia definition).To some extent the word 'I can' is repeated which assures the audience that it is possible to lose weight joining weight watchers . Even the background music says 'I can'

Internet

The social networking websites that are listed in wikipedia.org, numbered to 194.

The sites I've heard of are: blogster, facebook, flixster, flickr, friendster, google buzz, hi5, last.fm, mySpace, orkut, twitter, and windows live spaces.

There are no websites I know of, that isn't listed.

I did a research on "faceparty" and what I found out is that, it is an open UK-based social networking website, generally to those above 18 years old, where you can create online profiles and interact with each other through forums and messages like emails.

I use social networking websites for keeping in touch with friends, families and people I know. Facebook is what I use the most. It defines 'what's going on' with everybody. You get regular updates of people you know, events that are happening, and new posts that you are likely to be interested in. I've also used twitter, orkut and hi5. I once organized a dance party at a club in my hometown and posted the details in my facebook profile. In less than an hour, I got comments, reviews and lists of people who are attending or not attending the party, which really helped. It is that much effective and efficient now days.