The most interesting “reading” for me was Copyright Criminals.

After completing all the readings for this week, I still am not sure where I stand on Digital Music Copyrights.  On the one hand, I feel that artists’ rights should be protected, but on the other hand it’s not really the artist who is being protected, it’s big business.  Time and again in Copyright Criminals they talked about using a certain artist’s “sample.”  But it was not James Brown or Clyde Stubblefield and the like who were getting the money for the rights to use samples of their work, it was a record label.

I agree that some songs are not different enough and should be taken to task fro that.  The Gilbert O’Sullivan “Who’s sorry now?” song was a good example of this to me.  If you are going to use the entire soundtrack of a song or the majority of the lyrics, that is copyright infringement.

It just doesn’t seem that the way copyrights are currently being enforced in the music industry passes any kind of common sense test.  (Not that the law has anything to do with common sense but there is certainly a common sense factor in copyright issues in print materials.)  It seems that nothing is in the public domain and that the rights are held by businesses not artists..

The problem with leaving who can have access to what decisions in the hands of record labels is that they have no interest in creativity.  Their focus is going to be about the bottom line, or at least the potential for profit.  I feel the people who are using samples have a legitimate complaint that it costs them more to use 3 seconds of a drumbeat from a song than if they were covering the song.  Copyright law is supposed to protect creativity.  Under the current system, mimicry is allowed (as long as it doesn’t drastically deviate from the original) but true creativity is banned or made extremely difficult.  There are only so many combinations of drumbeats or notes that can be made that are pleasing to the ear.  At a basic level there are no new combinations of notes left out there.  Taking 3 secs from a song is taking a series of notes that are often not at all recognizable as the original song.  How is that “stealing?”

In chapter 7 of the textbook, the guidelines for using print media and even movies were basically that if you only use a little bit and especially if you use a lesser known part of the work from a lesser know artist or author, you will be ok.  So why is digital music so different?  It has to be because the potential for profit is much larger.  And that the record labels are the ones calling the shots.  It’s 3 secs of one part of a track.  It can’t be about protecting artists rights or creative processes.  And that’s the true crime.

The Wikipedia article I chose to judge is Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.

Evaluation of Sources:

Resources

• Link to DC Council Members page was broken, had to redirect to the DC Council home page.  Had to poke around the site to find the current council member for Ward 6.  Site was cumbersome to use.
• The link to CapitolRiverfront.org will probably be useful for my research but the cite had some issues. For one, it wasn’t readily apparent when they came into existence. It was clear that it is a group of businesses uniting to improve the “Front” as they call it. The .org domain does give it a certain amount of credibility.  They blog regularly about projects etc.
• A Transformed Neighborhood Awaits Stadium and Contesting a Stadium’s Power were Washington Post articles from August 15, 2005 and February 20, 2006, respectively, and appear to be reliable.  The articles will be quite useful.
• jdland.com was interesting and many of the references refer back to it.  It is run by a private citizen who lives near the park and has been tracking the changes to the area. The site lists numerous awards it has received and is sited on other resource sites, including the Washington Post.  It appears to be very credible.  It was last updated on 19 September 2012. This site could be very helpful in my research.

Most of the 19 sources cited referred back to those listed above.  Based on the sampling of the resources I cited and looked into, I would say that the resources were credible and current and from a wide range of interests and backgrounds.

External links:

• A Neighborhood’s Evolution is an interactive map by the Washington Post displaying what type of projects are planned where, from parks to retail to government buildings. The site didn’t look quite right but was usable.
• JDLand.com was cited several times in the Resources Section
• CapitolRiverfront.com was also cited several times in the Resources.

The external sources were repeats of the Resources list.

Evaluation of Discussion

There was no blog talk on this page and it hasn’t been updated since 28 July 2012.

History Evaluation

There was steady input on the page from 8 December 2006 until 24 July 2009, at which point the the updates slowed to fits and starts averaging out to changes every 2 or 3 months with the last one occurring on 28 July 2012 .  I was surprised there wasn’t a separate page covering the renovation of the waterfront area or at least more interest in updating the site.  It is possible that there have not been any new businesses etc to open since the last update.

So while the webpages for the resources/external links are current, this article itself is not quite as current, despite the ongoing nature of the changes happening near the Navy Yard.  If I had to give the page a letter grade, I’d give it a B, deducting points for the broken link, lack of blog, and the lack of recent activity on the site.

The most interesting reading to me was Photography as a Weapon by Errol Morris.

What Hany Farid had to say about how our brain processes images compared to how it processes written words was thought provoking. As was his statement, “What seems to emerge from major events and eras are one or two images that effectively embody the emotion and rage, the happiness and anger. The whole thing somehow is enfolded in there. The brain is just very good at processing visual imageries and bringing in memories associated with images.”   And apparently we do it on a collective level.  Two or three images that embody an event like the Vietnam War?

This got me wondering; so I Goggled some events in history, to mixed results.

WWII:  4 images of the flag raising at Iwo Jima on the first page of images!  That is easily the iconic image of WWII. This is particularly interesting because the photo is actually a reenactment of the actual event. In essence, reenactment was one of the ways photographers “Photoshopped” before Photoshop.  We know it is staged, so by some standards a fake, but we don’t care.

Korean War:  If you don’t count the images of the Korean War Memorial in DC (which I didn’t) no iconic image stood out.  This wasn’t exactly shocking since it is often referred to as the “Forgotten War.”  Perhaps that is why it is forgotten.  There was no one image that stuck in our memory.

The lunar landing, July 1969:  Even though we’ve sent many men to the moon, this image is readily recognizable as Neil Armstrong and his “One giant leap for mankind.”

9/11:  Various versions and angles of the World Trade Center in flames and a couple of the firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero.  Again, two strong images dominate the first set of images.

So if Farid is right that images, even ones we know are fake, stick in our memory, it makes a twisted sort of sense that Iran would want to release a glorious picture of success instead of the “3 out of 4 ain’t bad” reality. Even if they knew they were going to get caught. And they had to know they would get caught. Their own media branch released both pictures!

With Photoshop being just the latest in a long line of photo “manipulation” for propaganda or other purposes, what can be done about it?  Must something be done about it?  Are we all Wile E. Coyotes hiding under our Acme umbrella of “seeing is believing?”  And if we are, maybe that’s ok. After all, he always manages to rise from the ashes and give it one more try!

I explored Archive Finder, but the building of Nationals Park is too recent (2008) to have any archive references.  I found ProQuest Historical Newspapers database much more helpful and was able to find many pictures on Flickr, though not all of them were able to be re-posted to my blog due to copyrights.

The first article I looked at in the historical paper archive was Nationals Have New Owner, And Baseball Turns Big Profit from the 6 May 2006 issue of the New York Times.  Several things interested me about the article:

1. It was the New Times and not a Washington DC newspaper. Apparently, the Washington Post is not a part of the archive?
2. It recapped how baseball returned to Washington, including the DC City Council squabbling over which bid Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball, should accept. I had forgotten about the “Renting some blacks” comment and other accusations of racism leveled against the Lerner group–the eventual and current owner of the Nationals. It covered the financial end of the deal, both for the club and for the stadium.  I didn’t know what a huge sum of money Lerner paid to bring baseball back to DC or the amount of money the DC City Council committed to building a new park.
3. It discussed broadcasting issues that were keeping local viewers from seeing the Nationals play–an issue still percolating today.

The next article I looked at was In New Home, Nationals Can Finally Work on a Foundation from the 27 June 2005 issue of the New York Times. It was an overview of how much better the team was doing in its first year in Washington, DC, playing at RFK stadium (the former home of the Senators before they moved and became the Texas Rangers and to the Redskins before they moved to Fedex Field.)

The last article I found in my initial search was Nationals Look for Fresh Start at New Stadium from the Mar 29, 2008 issue of the New York Times, just days before opening day at Nationals Stadium. This is the first article I’ve found that specifically addressed the changes in Southeast Washington DC. Not surprisingly, the locals were unhappy about the dramatic increase in their property taxes. What was surprising to read, though, were the complaints that SE hadn’t changed as a result of the Stadium and the new businesses moving in. They complained that “The Projects are still here, the drugs are still here, the shooting is still here.”

Here are some of the great pics I found on Flickr.

This is a great reminder that baseball isn’t the only thing that happens at Nationals Park!

How did the building of Nationals Park affect Southeast Washington DC?

Some links from ProQuest Historical Newspapers:

• New Ballpark in Washington Anchors an Area’s Revival
• Revitalizing the Banks of Washington’s ‘Forgotten River’
• Formulating a New Game Plan

Some pics:

• Washington Navy yard [with Nationals Park in the background](by hieroglyphics)
• Artist’s rendering of the new DC ballpark.

The most interesting part of our homework to me was the video:  History of the Internet.

As a History major, it is always fascinating to me to see how world events shape innovation and change.  I was unaware that it was the launching of Sputnik that drove the Defense Department to launch DARPA or that the Cuban Missile Crisis spurred the need to figure out how to decentralize the network.  So often in history it is National security interests that spur governments to pour money into research areas or projects and National Pride that inspires scientists to band together for innovation.  In the modern age, the assembly line, the atom bomb, the airplane, and the race to the moon are just a few examples of the “war-machine” advancing technologies.  And now I can add the internet to that list.

The other point I found interesting was that different needs from different global sectors drove the research necessary to make the internet a reality.  Commercial, Scientific, and Military communities and interests worked together to create something that changed the world, not just the commercial, military, and scientific worlds, but the World.  Three segments of the population, working toward their own ends, for their own purposes, fundamentally changed how the world works in every aspect of society.

The video made me wonder if the internet would have come about on its own at the same rate if there hadn’t been a Sputnik or missiles in Cuba.  How much do security interests and National pride play in technological developments?   How much should they play?  And is there a better way?

As for three topics of research….well, that’s a tough one as my interests are varied, but here’s what I’ve come up with:  Quilting, the Washington Nationals, and the Magna Carta.