Thoughts on the Course Review

            By far the toughest thing about writing the blog entries for this class was finding a way to start. It was tough to find a way to link the current events I found to the reading assigned and covered in lecture because it was never really expanded upon. The only thing that really made the writing structure of this class feasible was the group recitation that took place after the lecture. It served as an opportunity for all of us to bounce concepts off one another and get numerous angles from which to view our initial ideas. I think what we all agreed in class is true, that more discussion and guidance for the writing would make a great improvement to the class as a whole.

            I feel like the things I learned the most about were as a result of talking about them in the recitation. A lot of the information put forth by the book was kind of dry on its own, without relevant current events to act as examples and provide a realistic take on the media theory we were studying. And the content of the lecture didn’t really add much to what was immediately apparent from reading the book. On the other hand, it was really helpful to talk about things like that in the recitation portion of the course, and I was much more likely to remember the things we talked about there than the things that were talked about during lecture.

            I remember being much more interested in the discussions on the differences between the different types of media, like television, newspaper, and radio, when we compared them to one another, and much less interested in actual media events that seemed irrelevant when they were brought up in lecture. Often times, when the professor gave us examples of current events that we could write about, he didn’t draw any connections between the event and the course material, so it was difficult to write a blog entry on the topic because there wasn’t much to go on. Going to recitation afterwards helped considerably because it gave all of us the opportunity to figure it out by cooperating and pooling our ideas. Often times one person would have a vague idea of something and someone else would contribute their own vague concept and by putting them together we were able to come up with something we could work with. I guess in that way, we learned a bit about professional development by needing to cooperate to decipher what exactly it was that the professor actually wanted.

            Looking back on that now, it seems like I cultivated some fairly useful skills in group brainstorming and productive discussion, but at the time it was kind of annoying that we had so little input and direction as to what we were supposed to write. I really liked the idea that we came up with about submitting current events before the lecture, discussing how they relate to the reading in lecture, and then going into more depth in the smaller recitation groups. I feel like that would make the blogs much easier to write and would make the class as a whole much more constructive and productive. We would have more opportunity to talk to one another and the professor in a giant group to gain insight into what he expects of the whole class, and then still have the chance to dig deeper into the issues we discuss and think about what they mean to us personally and develop more-educated personal opinions. I greatly enjoyed talking about my personal beliefs and having them challenged by the points that other people brought up; I found it extremely valuable. This class was a great opportunity for this.

            Overall, it looks like what this course needs is more lecture discussion. If the rest of the class is going to stay the same, there should just be an increased amount of interactive participation in the lectures. More tie-ins from the reading and course content will significantly help everyone in the writing of their blogs, and make it easier to tell what they’re meant to contribute in the writing assignments. Discussion is the best aspect of this course and I think there should be more of it. I found the group talks to be extremely constructive and more communication across the professor, teaching assistants, and students would improve the quality of the course overall. 

            

Television

            Many political scientists have lately been questioning the potency of television. Because of the advent of the internet, it seems that more and more politically-interested citizens have been getting their news online instead of from television. Prime time audiences have been shrinking steadily for the past couple decades as people give up on time-dependent programming and turn instead to services like DVR, Netflix and Hulu, where the programs you want to watch are available to you at whatever time you choose to watch them. For these reasons, it seems that television is becoming obsolete. And yet, in this past campaign, Super PAC spending pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into television advertisements.

            It seems that the television ads didn’t really make as much of an impact as the PAC’s probably wanted them to, because of shrunken view audience. But some of the best (and worst) ads did make appearances on Youtube and other video sharing sites and various web forums and blogs. This is actually an example of the internet underlining and emphasizing pieces of televised media. So while there’s no doubt that television’s popularity and importance has been shrinking and making way for the internet to take over, they’re still capable of complementing one another.

            It’s also very easy to communicate with others about political happenings and public media through the internet’s many social channels. The political debates, for example, became like a sort of social gathering, with people making events on facebook, trying to get their friends to watch the debates as they happened live. Though they weren’t all watching through the same television set, sitting around and talking in person, a lot of people took advantage of instant messaging, blog posting, facebook chatting, and twitter updating while watching the debates. Although people weren’t encouraged to get off the internet and watch TV instead, they were encouraged to at least watch a live broadcast and then use the internet simultaneously to discuss it. Some could argue that this was immensely distracting, and that people shouldn’t be on their phones and laptops while trying to pay attention to a political debate, but it can also be argued that the people who did so gained valuable insight into what other people were thinking. They had their views challenged while they were watching and were forced to think about multiple different viewpoints as they watched. So while the internet is kind of stealing pertinence from television as a medium, it’s also enriching it’s social impact by providing a sort of hybrid medium of live broadcasts combined with live social interaction.

Article on “Why TV Still Matters.” http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/08/dead-tree-alert-why-tv-still-matters-in-politics/

            There’s also a great number of people who use television programs to get most of their political news, but not in the form of news broadcasts. Not nearly as many people watch the nightly news as did twenty or thirty years ago, but political comedy shows are becoming increasingly popular. Shows like The Colbert Report and even Saturday Night Live frequently poke fun at the political atmosphere and sometimes even raise interesting points about controversial issues. Shows like these are a good way to get a more satirical, humorous view of everyone’s current political standing, and sometimes they’re even preferred as a news source. But while these shows are written, recorded, and basically designed for television, they’re not always viewed at the television-programmed time. You can watch episodes of The Colbert Report at his website, colbertnation.com, and most SNL skits are available on Hulu for free. So when someone on a blog you frequent draws your attention to a great political parody that you should really see, you go look it up online. You find that skit on Hulu, or the Colbert episode on its respective site. You can probably even find that hilarious political ad on Youtube for free, too. So while the internet can emphasize elements of television, it often takes them out of the environment they were originally designed for. A television clip will be viewed hundreds more times on the internet than it ever would have been viewed on television.

            Even though the internet more or less depends on television for a lot of material it distributes, it kind of takes the credit away from the original source. If a tv clip like a political ad goes viral on the internet, chances are good that the original creator and publisher of the clip won’t get the reward that the internet receives. Television relies on its ratings to stay high in order to be able to continue to function, and when something becomes incredibly popular in another arena, it’s not quite fair, in a sense. Ratings are based on how many viewers a channel has, so when millions of people use the internet to watch something that was on a TV channel, it’s not carried over in the channel’s ratings. This makes for an awkward combination of healthy contribution and imbalanced viewership between television and internet. Obviously they’re both still valuable resources for political news and he like, but it’ll be very interesting to see how that awkward imbalance pans out for both of them. 

Additional Sources:

Bettina Fabos, Christopher R. Martin, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 8th Edition. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Print.

Radio

            For a long time, before the technological advent of television, radio was the best way for the American public to get their news. Now that most news is on television, or even the internet, fewer and fewer people rely on radio shows to find out what’s going on in their town or state or country. Most people now listen to the radio for music while they drive, but there are still a good number of insightful radio-based talk shows out there on the air. Hearing a story on a radio show is still vastly different from seeing one on a television show, and even more different still from reading a story on the internet.

            When you read a news article on the internet, it’s pretty isolated and impersonal. You’re alone when you read the story, it isn’t directly told to you by someone else, and it doesn’t necessarily have much of a good chance to stick in your mind afterward since usually you’re off clicking another link almost immediately. There are also numerous distractions from the story you’re reading, in the form of ads. Sites have to host ads from outside sources to pay for their website, and they also often advertise other affiliated sites and other articles within the same site. So while you’re reading about that woman who drove drunk, listened to her GPS too carefully, and drove into the sand trap at the local golf course, you’re also seeing an advertisement for Snickers bars, a middle-aged man telling you to shop at Home Depot, and six sidebar links to six other articles about politics, the latest football game, and Disney buying Lucasfilm. It’s difficult to be focused on that initial article, even if you sincerely care about the woman in the sand trap. In most cases, there are too many impersonal distractions for internet news to be very emotionally impacting.

            Television has similar issues, though not quite to the same degree as internet. There are advertisements, but they’re cordoned off into their own time slot. The ads don’t get aired alongside the news stories, but often they’re more colorful and attention-grabbing than the news show itself, so they still serve as more of a distraction than anything. Someone is as likely to remember the latest Geico commercial as they are to remember the pictures of a car driven through the bushes and into a sand trap. Advertisements aside, television is also fairly impersonal in the way it portrays its stories. A viewer will get a thirty-second or one-minute clip about the woman in the sand trap; they’ll mention the town she lives in, the town the golf course is in, the fact that she’s in custody for driving under the influence but more or less unharmed, show a couple pictures of cars and maybe some people putting on that golf course, and then move on to the next story. You don’t really feel anything much in particular for the woman in the sand trap. There’s just not enough time for you to let the story sink in and consider what it means before they’re on to the next information tidbit.

            With radio, though, news seems a lot more personal. Their ads, like television, are also cordoned off from the rest of the show, but usually don’t grab as much more of your attention, as is the case for TV. Radio ads are actually pretty easy to tune out for the most part. You get used to listening to the talk show host speaking in a conversational, moderated tone, so when the ads come along with some voice actor talking really fast about a car dealership right down the road, you can basically just put him on ignore and wait for the host to get back on the air. Ads are usually a good opportunity to think about the last story you just heard because they don’t demand all of your attention like television ads seem to do. Radio also spends more time telling a story than the television news shows do. Instead of talking for only a minute about that woman in the sand trap, they spend five or ten minutes on her story. The listener gets more involved in the event and can more easily imagine it happening to them or someone they know. Because they’re not distracted with images of the aftermath of the event, they can better imagine the event actually happening. It becomes easy to understand how embarrassed she must be now, and how chagrined the golf course owner must feel. Instead of seeing a fairly attractive person sitting at a desk talking about this story in a distant monotone, you only hear someone’s voice speaking personably to you. You imagine it happening to someone you don’t like and you laugh, or you imagine it happening to yourself and you don’t. Radio has the ability to be more personal because of the lack of distraction, and the presence of the type of sensory input that allows the listener to imagine what it all means in reference to himself or herself. It’s just like storytelling always has been for people since before written language.

            And because of this vast difference in medium, the same story can have completely different tones depending on where it’s broadcast. A couple of days ago, Mitt Romney gave his final GOP talk scheduled to happen before the election takes place. Many of the issues that were considered during the primaries weren’t addressed in his final radio talk; he avoided mentioning abortions and birth control. He mainly spent his air time bashing the economy and Obama and telling people to vote for him instead. The internet article gave a brief run-down of what Romney talked about, television coverage would have probably done about the same, and a radio show would probably have dwelled upon the ramifications of it for a few minutes and maybe taken some call-ins from listeners and made a discussion about it. So while radio can’t really broadcast as much news as television or internet, it seems that the news that comes from radio has more of a human quality to it. I definitely think that radio news and talk shows are a valuable form of communication that should be preserved in our culture.

The internet article on the radio broadcast: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/11/03/Romney-delivers-last-pre-election-GOP-talk/UPI-26751351978705/

Additional Sources:

Bettina Fabos, Christopher R. Martin, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 8th Edition. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Print.

Internet and Political Censorship

     According to an article at GalesburgPlanet.com, the internet has gained the more traffic as a source of political news than any other category of mass media. Cable television is still the most prevalent, but the internet has grown the most in popularity, by a significant margin. A great majority of adult Americans has access to an internet connection in this day and age, so it makes a great deal of sense that it would become more convenient to get notified of political goings-on via internet. Indeed, there are a lot of subscription programs that an internet user can utilize to be notified of anything new that happens on a site they frequent. Content is available at any time you look for it, unlike cable television where a viewer is required to tune in at a certain time. The internet is capable of providing media of varying formats as well, from articles to videos, that pertain to a wider selection of topics than television is capable of portraying. For reasons like this, the internet is becoming a very attractive conquest for various political interest groups to target. Especially in this most recent presidential campaign, presidential candidates have been heavily using internet to get their points across, gain favor, and attempt to win more votes than the other guys. But also for reasons like this, politicians are having trouble with the lack of censorship on the internet. 

Media format article here: http://galesburgplanet.com/posts/19870

     One of the most striking examples of this was a campaign slogan Ron Paul ran under during the primaries this year. He had TV ads and banners and bumper stickers made that said "Google: Ron Paul." He recognized the fact that most of the modern political information available to the general public was available via the internet, and he wanted to get his name out there in people's minds. He knew that the easiest way to get the average person to learn more about him and his stances was to have them simply do a web search. And he was right. Most people spend more time on the internet daily, reading political articles, than they do channel surfing and looking for political news programs. And even if they do prefer to use television as a source of news, political news isn't constantly being aired. Usually, because there are multiple news blocks in a day, you can spend hours on end watching the news and get repeated stories. They often repeat the same popular story for each news block, because usually a person only watches one news block a day, if they watch any. In short, there's a very limited amount of political news one can gain from watching television, even if they spend a long time watching. Ron Paul made a pretty strategic move by turning the attention of his potential supporters to the internet. It made it easier for him to educate them about his actions and plans, and made it more convenient for them to educate themselves about it all. I can imagine how much more willing they were to get news this way, especially considering the fact that Ron Paul just told them to look at everything that existed about him, instead of directing their attention to certain chosen aspects through a televised speech or some other focused media outreach. I think it was a good move, even if it didn't exactly pan out for him. 

     The internet has also been a distinct target for the political interests that try to bring out younger voters, namely the Democratic Party. President Obama recently did an Ask Me Anything on the popular forum website, Reddit. Members of the forum could comment and ask him questions and he would answer them in subsequent posts. This was really the first political move of its kind, and it definitely brought Obama to the forefront of many internet-goers' attention. But as he found out the hard way, the internet isn't necessarily a gateway to popularity. Just like any other media outlet, it's subject to the judgement of the viewers. Admittedly, there are a great deal more viewers to be had on the internet than nearly anything else, and they have the opportunity to be interactive, unlike most other mediums, but most people were annoyed as a result of the AMA. They said that Obama dodged the questions that people most wanted answered, and planted questions that were convenient for him to talk about. So while it was a good way to get publicity, turning to the internet doesn't automatically result in good publicity. 

Reddit response article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/30/obama-reddit-ask-me-anything_n_1843568.html

     This, I think, is more related to censorship than the internet itself. While Ron Paul used the internet to share everything available about him and his stances, and received fairly positive feedback on this move, Obama tried a similar approach, but tweaked it to his own advantage. That goes so fundamentally against what everyone expects the internet to stand for that he was met with a pretty negative response. It's going to be interesting to see how politics continues to use the internet in future campaigns, because historically many aspects of politics have become a little less than truthful. It's common practice now for politicians to avoid topics that would make them unpopular and hype others far beyond where they need to be. The internet has come to be known as a frontier for uncensored information sharing. Any politician who tries to censor the information available on the internet is going to damage their popularity by doing so. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that fact in future.

Additional Sources:

Bettina Fabos, Christopher R. Martin, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 8th Edition. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Print.

Governmental Conglomeration

     In our day and age, most consumers are familiar with the concept of synergy, even if they don't know it by that name. They're used to popular books being made into movies and other related merchandise becoming available for them to purchase and add to their collections. It's commonplace for a major corporation like Disney to own a television studio, a publishing house, a series of theme parks, an airline, a cruise line, a car rental service, and countless clothing, game, and toy factories globally. As individual people are becoming more and more specialized, major corporations are growing larger and larger, and putting their hands and monetary interests into more and more industries where some argue they don't really belong. And as these big companies are continuing to grow and extend their reach, it seems that the American government is doing the same, following a very similar business model.
     Synergy refers to the sale and promotion of a certain media product across different mediums and usually from different subsidaries of the same media conglomerate. Harry Potter is a prime example. The books were published and became very popular so they were followed by a movie series. Numerous spin-off books were also published and sold by the same publishing company that the original books came from. Wizard Cards and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and Chocolate Frogs became check-out line favors that any fan could purchase on their way out of Borders or Barnes and Noble. Warner Brothers, the company responsible for the movie series, put out Harry Potter editions of Clue, Monopoly, Scene-It, and other games like LEGO sets and jigsaw puzzles. There are Harry Potter themed chess sets and clothing and jewelry and figurines and stationery and mugs and stickers and iPhone cases and stuffed animals and any other kind of merchandise you can imagine, all from one series of books. In this case, Time Warner took that one popular series of books and made money off it through movies, games, and all the other merchandise formats I just listed and more. This is a prime example of synergy and it's very much in large companies' best interests for them to try this route and work as many angles as they can to make a profit.
     Unfortunately, though, this stifles competition. It's very difficult for more than one company to get their hands on the rights to anything Harry Potter-related. Only Time Warner can put out official Harry Potter merchandise because they're the only ones with the rights to it. If that weren't the case, numerous small businesses could benefit from a cultural phenomenon like Harry Potter and the merchandise that resulted would be of a better quality. If two candy companies both made Chocolate Frogs, people would buy the better ones and both companies would have to compete to make their product better. But as it is, the big corporation is the only one who can market Chocolate Frogs, so they have no motivation to make them good. They have no competition. This same sort of thing has been happening with a lot of government policies when the national government gets involved with something instead of leaving it to the states to work out.
     There are a lot of policies that I think should be left to individual states to decide for similar reasons that I think corporations shouldn't corner the market on things as much as they do. It stifles competition and diversity. If states have different policies that work for the majority of their residents, then the people who don't agree with a certain policy could move to a different state if it meant enough to them. Just like people can shop at different stores if they find one to be superior to another. Obviously moving to a different state is more significant than shopping at Target instead of WalMart, but it's the same principle of having the opportunity to choose something that suits you better. So, if a state has really high taxes and the residents don't think it's worth it to stay there, they'll go to a state that has a "better deal," so to speak. Then the first state will have to change its policies to make it more attractive for people to live there or they'll be in serious trouble.
     Leaving legislation largely up to state rule encourages the same sort of competition and motivation for improvement that you can see in the corporate world. And the same problems are posed when the federal government has its hands in something because they'll have no competition and won't be forced to make it worth the while of the country's residents. Most people find it much more difficult to move to a different country than to move to a different state, for obvious reasons. The federal government has no real competition as far as their business models go, like the states do. And the federal government has been steadily growing, much like the big corporations have. It seems natural because it's in the best interest of companies to grow like they've been growing, but that doesn't mean it's appropriate for national government. I think we should view the economical ramifications of giant corporations as a warning against what could happen if we let the government become the same way.

Additional Sources:

Bettina Fabos, Christopher R. Martin, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 8th Edition. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Print.

Public Relations

     It's very difficult to draw a line between public relations and advertisement, especially where politics is concerned. It seems that every piece of news you find is slanted favorably in the direction of one of the two main candidates and against the other. It's all basically advertisement, telling the masses to vote for this person and not that one, and often for similar reasons that you should buy a certain product in favor of another. It'll cost you less money, they say, and it'l make your life better if you vote for this guy and not that one. But in a way, this can be considered public relations as well. Even though it's not coming straight from the organization that's being promoted, it still promotes the organization fairly effectively. Perhaps it's even more effective on the grounds that it doesn't come straight from the benefiting organization (assuming that whoever wrote the article wasn't actually directly paid by said benefiting organization.) People see it and think, "oh, someone else besides Obama wants Obama in office," and are curious as to why. So they read the articles about racist Pro-Romney shirts and Sensata scandals and are greeted by a bunch of emotional appeals and very little actual fact and analysis into the potential ramifications. That sure sounds like public relations to me.
     This first article caught my eye because of the picture at the top. I was interested to see what this writer would say about the guy wearing the slogan "Put the White Back In the White House." I wanted to see what it would say about the potential social ramifications of the Presidential race coming down to actual Presidential race. I wanted to read about how our modern society would be subtly affected if racial discrimination reared its ugly head yet again. But instead, I ended up reading a very heartfelt article about how depressing it was for the writer to see this shirt. Because race was being dragged back into things while everything nowadays is trying to stop race from being a contributing factor to all things social? Actually, no, that wasn't his point. He was depressed because Romney seemed to be trying the "good old days" comfort plea, portraying himself as a reasonable, middle-aged white man with a political history, exactly the type of person an American President should look like. The writer didn't want people to be taken in by this facade. It's a very interesting point, but he also didn't back it up with very much fact. He presented his own version of what he thinks Obama should say and use as a defensive stance, and it was very nicely said, but there was little substance to it. It was still an appeal to the emotions of the reader. It said "look at how much we owe Obama, don't you think we should continue to trust him?" It said "don't be taken in by Romney and his acting, because he'll let us down." The internet is chock full of articles like these, full of fancy fluff words and very little fact. A man wore a shirt. Feel obligated to vote Obama back into the Presidency and don't believe Romney's lies because my 72-year-old mother is wonderful.    
     Here's a link to that article: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/12/1143940/--Put-the-White-back-in-the-White-House
     This second article caught my interest because I saw a tabloid in Price Chopper last night about some outsourcing scandal that Romney was involved in and decided to do a bit more research. Apparently the asset management firm he co-founded, Bain Capital, has decided to outsource a company they recently bought out, Sensata Tech, to China. I was expecting an article discrediting this choice and raising lots of issues about how we, the American people, don't want all our business and manufacturing to be outsourced. I wanted to hear about the economical ramifications of not making anything on home turf, and how we could expect the government to conduct itself on these matters if Romney was voted in as President. Instead, the article raised a bunch of points that I feel are completely unnecessary. They brought in Chinese workers to be trained before the outsourcing. So what? That makes sense from a business standpoint if you're planning to outsource a company. They put up a Chinese flag at the plant in Illinois. That has nothing to do with our economy whatsoever, it's just a cause for affront to those who feel personally offended by the situation. The company is set to close one day before the election. Again, this has nothing to do with the political or economical ramifications of this event. It's just a chance for the writer to be scathing and sarcastic. I thought the whole article was scathing and sarcastic and too short to impart much information at all. Though, I'm not confident it would have been very much more informative had it been longer, anyway. It just seemed like a chance for someone to rail on Romney's personal business decisions because of the effect they'll have on the nation as a whole, without explaining the connection they saw. I do think there's a connection, which is why I was disappointed this article didn't expand upon it, and only provided a few shallow talking points for anyone who's already against Romney to utilize in their next argument. It was all fluff words with very little fact.
     Here's a link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/13/1143996/-The-Sansata-Story-Could-Destroy-Romney
The writer was kind enough to include some source articles where it's possible to find actual information and news, though. Those are worth looking through.
     Needless to say, I won't be getting my political news from the Daily Kos any time soon. It's one of those sites that acts very much like a forum, though, and makes it very easy to share your opinions with others and read up on what people think. For that reason, it's pretty popular among bloggers and redditers who love the discussions that are available. Unfortunately, because of the form these articles take, they end up arguing over emotionally-based points and not factually-based opinions, so the discussions aren't worth very much. People frequently talk about how bad something is without digging very deep to figure out why. It's all a battle of public relations.

Additional Sources:

Bettina Fabos, Christopher R. Martin, and Richard Campbell. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 8th Edition. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. Print.

   

*Absence Make-up*

     This blog entry is to make up for the recitation I missed on September 26th, so I'm going to talk about a recent Supreme Court case I find interesting.
     There's one case this year that hasn't gotten much attention when compared to many other Supreme Court cases, about how to treat used goods. There was an appellate court ruling that the Supreme Court may uphold, and if they do, it might become illegal to sell something that was manufactured overseas. The ruling would make it mandatory to get permission from the copyright holder of the goods you wanted to sell in order to be able to sell them. If you own a Mazda and want to sell it to your nephew when he graduates college so you can make a down payment on a new car for yourself, you'd need permission from Mazda to do so. You may even be required to pay a cut of the sale back to Mazda in royalties, even though you paid royalties the first time you bought the car. I don't like the idea that selling something you own is copyright infringement.
     Upholding the appellate court ruling and passing legislation to make permission mandatory to sell a used item would completely destroy the used goods market. Websites like Craig's List and Ebay would die out. Every thrift store across the country would shut down and close. People wouldn't be able to hold neighborhood yard sales or flea markets. It would be virtually impossible to find anything vintage without paying through the nose and antique dealers would probably riot in the streets. Not that rioting across the nation's antique-dealing community is the biggest concern I have with this topic, but I agree with them that it's fundamentally wrong. I don't want to be forced to buy something new every time I want to make a purchase. If someone wants to part with something they no longer need, and I'm in the market for whatever that thing may be, whether it's a second-hand couch for my college apartment, or a tv series on DVD that they don't actually manufacture anymore, I want to be able to buy it from them as much as they want to be able to sell it to me. It's killing two birds with one stone. But I'm sure the manufacturers of the chair would much rather me find it far too inconvenient to buy one used and go directly to them to buy a new one. I live in a country with a "free market," right? I should be able to sell something I directly own and have paid for the first time around to anyone I want to at whatever price we've agreed upon.
     I also don't think the copyright holders should have the right to make money on a single product more than once. You shouldn't have to pay a cut of the second-hand sale back to the company that made the item if you've already paid it to them once. You bought the item, now it's yours, you can do what you want with it. The company you bought it from owns the rights to the concept behind the item, but they don't still own the item itself. If that were the case, then you paid full price for a cellphone or a book just to rent it. As far as I know, that's not what a purchase is. If you bought a DVD and started making copies to sell to people, that's a different matter. Then the rights owners would be totally within their rights to demand a cut of those sales (or throw you in prison) because you're making new iterations of the product they copyrighted. But I don't think they should have a right to a portion of the sale you make when selling that first copy of the DVD.
     This whole concept also feels kind of backwards when you consider the way the entertainment industry has been going. If you buy a DVD, often times it comes with a BluRay copy, too. And a digital copy that you can use on your computer and upload to your tablet and phone. The fact that you own a copy can be noted in an online account, and you can log into XBox Live and watch your movie through your gaming console. Once you buy a copy of the movie, it's yours to watch, in any way you want, on basically any digital device you own. If you buy a subscription to Netflix or Hulu, you can log into your account on your laptop and watch movies and shows. You can also log in on your tablet, phone, gaming console, and, again, any internet-capable device you have. It's the same way when you buy digital copies of books or music. Once you own it, it belongs to you in quite a few different ways. Not only would it be extremely difficult to monitor the selling of pre-owned goods like these, the digital kind that prove virtually impossible to track, but even making the attempt goes completely against the ideal behind this sort of progression. If you buy something and can then access it from anything else you also already own, then it belongs to you pretty completely. Why should you be required to check in with anyone, or pay them a direct cut, if you want to sell it to someone else? I don't think you should.
     There have been internet rumors that President Obama has declared himself in favor of the Supreme Court upholding the appellate ruling that would make all our upstanding antique dealers riot in the streets, but I haven't been able to find any articles about that, unfortunately. It could just be a rumor.
     This is the best article I've found on the actual court case, though: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-10-04/finance/34240922_1_copyright-iphone-john-wiley-sons/2