Blogs I have visited

Here are some blogs of my classmates that I have visited and found interesting.

http://stereotypinginmedia.blogspot.com/   This blog was created by Michaela Baginova and it is about various stereotypes in the media. It for example shows the effect that these stereotypes have on children.

http://effectofvideogamesonchildren.blogspot.com/   This blog was created by my classmate Michal Zikmund and it concerns the effects of video games on children. I believe that this blog is highly beneficial for all that have not played video games before, but by prejudice think that video games are harming our children, which is not true and at this blog you will read why.

http://med-mil.blogspot.com/   This blig was made by Jan Kotouc and gives valuable information about the portrayal of military people in media and how the military uses media. It also concerns the military in video games. Military is a part of our society and i believe that important one, so everyone should read this blog.

http://kamilka-blog.blogspot.com/   This blog was developed by Kamila Kinstova and it shows the portrayal of minorities in media. It also considers the political correctness in media, mostly the Czech one.

http://sportandmoney.blogspot.com/  This blog was created by my classmate and shows the development of sport in media and considers the importance of money in sports.

I recommend to all to visit these blogs and read them, so your knowledge would be updated :)

Avatar Instead of Private Information!?

The game industry knows how to operate over mass media without undermining people's privacy. It is through the creation of Avatar, "your personal yourself", the one that is going to be seen when people over game industry want to communicate with you, they do not know who you are, but they can see your Avatar, because basically people need to know who they are communicating with, unless your fetish is not knowing. If we take an example of XboX 360 which is mostly a game console, but nowadays you can go on Facebook, download and watch movies or listen to music and not only play games with friends, whether online or together at your place, you have to create an Avatar in order to do that. Basically, Avatar should be who you are. Most of the times when you compete through the Internet against other players you do not want your identity to be known, especially when you are loosing, and this is why Avatar comes in handy. Also during competition, and video games are highly competitive, you might get into an argument with someone and that might lead into hatred, and the only thing you do not want is to have the person you just argued at your door step, within Avatar you do not have to fear that. These Avatars that are created artificially with usage of fantasy instead of real life information should be implemented into the Internet system, where instead of IP address you will have your own Avatar. These Avatars would be distributed to every person on the planet and would have to be untraceable and include no private information. But this would need much complicated design, but I believe it is worth trying, because right now we are not doing anything in order to strengthen our privacy.

How it is in the Real World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lSkY4X3yNA

Check out this video of how it really is in the world of privacy on the Internet!!

Is There Any Privacy in Media?

The answer to this question is simple, there is not. The mass media does not know what privacy is. For example consider the situation, that someone in front of you just fell in to the dog's poo, and the person beside you had it all filmed on his iPhone (I am an Apple addict, so most of the examples would be considering Apple). Immediately after filming it, he can stream it on YouTube and millions of people can watch this unfortunate person fell into dog's poo and then discuss him. This person is most likely going to become the joke target of his friends, which might lead him to committing suicide, which happened already and not once. With a single small device you are able to kill a person mentally in only a seconds, by distributing this video to various media. Internet, Television and press are the most privacy decreasing medias of all. As far as the Internet goes, you are able to get information about anything, also there are information that are included in TV and Press, so basically Internet has it all. But this topic is not that much about private information, because people willingly put their information on their Internet capable devices, basically they have choice whether they are going to put them or not and of course in todays society people know that there are certain crimes done through Internet, so they are willingly exposing themselves to these crimes, just waiting for someone to find them and get their name, address, bank accounts, private pictures, sex tapes, and many other stuff that one finds valuable and all this is done through Internet by hacking to your phone. This is also the case of social networks, where people want to share their information with their friends, but actually because the system is not bullet-proof, your personal information can be seen by people that are not your friends. My point is that it is more about the public humiliation, the essence of being exposed to public via media, without knowing that you have been photographed or recorded previously. Of course one can argue that when there are victims of certain crimes and there faces are exposed it more about the information than the public humiliation, because these people already are victims of a crime so people tend to feel sorry about them, therefore the person would not be humiliated because everyone laughs at him, but, on the other hand this person might get overwhelmed by the sudden sympathy around him and caused by other people, this person also might become a victim again when the followers of the attacker would seek revenge. So we can conclude that both imaging someone in a humiliating way and as a victim, without them wanting to will lead to decrease in their privacy and might have various consequences, as one old saying says: "There are always two ends of a story, one bad and one happy." It is true that media exposure can bring you your five minutes of fame, but then be aware of papparazzi (see my other postings). Today we live in the world of never-ending technology development so, however the technology, especially the one that is done for communication is not bullet-proof and there are bugs that should be destroyed so one's privacy would not be compromised.

The Growing Impact of the Internet

http://www.dailysource.org/about/impact
The information that you will find on this site are self explanatory within the title of the article, which is "The Growing Impact of the Internet". Basically it points out many surveys, researches that were done through out the years 2000-2010. These findings consider only American part of the world. From the article you will know that in 2006 in a given week the average of Internet usage per week per person was 8 and 3/4 of a hour. The article also suggests that the American reliance on the Internet is enormously increasing day by day. For instance, the article states the difference of people's response towards the Internet being the primary source of information for terrorists during 9/11 and war in Iraq. According to this site in 2003 there was a trend about the people that use Internet news sites was that they use it with great consistency. On this site you will find information about Internet that you did not know and are kind of amazing.

California Papparazzi Lawyer

http://paparazzilawyer.com/
This link will guide you to the site where you can find information about the California Papparazzi Lawyer. It is an advertisement for a lawyer. On this site you can find basic information about the anti-papparazzi law, such as history, basic criminal facts, dates. According to Rodriguez (creator of this site), papparazzo is a "celebrity hunter", they "invade the privacy of the rich and famous and their families for purposes of financial gain from the sale of their illegally-obtained paparazzi photos and paparazzi video images." Next on this site, you will come across the main history of California anti-papparazzi law, as it went to effectivity on January 1, 1999 and was strengthened on September 30, 2005 by Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you scroll down the site you will find additional information about offenses that can be done by papparazzi such as assault, battery, conspiracy, false imprisonment, stalking and trespassing. Then the author recommends that if you are a papparazzi you should get an attorney!

YouTube - the Greatest Violator of One's Privacy

World Wide Web was created in 1989 in CERN (the nuclear research facility under Switzerland), firstly in order to share data on multiple computers. Through out the time World Wide Web developed, so did the Internet (those two aren't synonyms) and today in a second people can upload multiple private data on it. And because the basic concept is that those data are shared, either willingly and unwillingly. Todays technology makes it easier for hackers to enter your computer through out the internet without your knowledge. And because Internet is a always growing trend and of course there is a never-ending development of technology, it can be found almost everywhere. On the Internet, there are special sites that were created for the reason of sharing information. For example take YouTube, the site that has the most click per week, because people can share videos of themselves, but what actually is outrageous they can share videos of other people (check out some videos in the video section) And there we go, privacy is violated. Videos that we lough at, because something embarrassing happened to a person, actually make that person either fames for five minutes or absolutely uncomfortable in public. Is it right to publish these videos without the peoples acknowledgment? It isn't, but it is always going to happen, because people rather laugh than care about other, it is easier and more fun. But we can see that people are not that simple, because actually people behind YouTube created new privacy settings, where people can mark whether they want their video to be shared with everyone on YouTube or just YouTube friends. Ehm, what difference does it make? None. At least that there is a restriction for sexual content on YouTube, otherwise this world would anticipate a global social change.

Papparazzi

In the world behind the big lake, in America, papparazi are found everywhere, especially in Hollywood. They find a celebrity they are interested in and then they dedicate their lives to capture every single moment of that celebrity. Papparazi have plenty of video footage, images and information and almost all of the time they expose those that will make them lot of money and on the contrary are dissatisfying for the particular celebrity. I guess that is a violation of privacy, isn't it? Papparazi are going to remain in the world for a long time, because celebrities are going to be there forever. California is aware of this and in 1999 it was the first state to accept a bill that protected people that had celebrity status from papparazzi that physically invade the privacy of a celebrity. In 2005, governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the second part of anti-papparazzi law, which denied the right for profit from images taken illegally and strengthen the damage that celebrities take from papparazzi. Since then an upcoming trend was born, where special law companies were created in order to help papparazzi from wrong accusation. This is also why some celebrities moved from California. Sienna Miller recently won a case against a papparazo that was following her and taking illegal images that were published later. All this happened in London, where people do not like papparazzi, and the photo agency was forced to pay her $79,000 in damages. However nothing changed and Sienna Miller is currently making a living from winning court battles against papparazzi. One might say that eventough the papparazzi are generally bad for society, celebrities find a way to make a profit out of them. So this means that papparazzi are not going to disappear, but people will fight for their rights to violate the privacy of celebrities, but what if you become a celebrity and there was a papparazzo always behind you, would you protect them then? You would fight them!