Cue Family Guy Song (warning, not FCC approved)

The Family Communications Commission, protecting the innocent little children that sit glued to the TV all day because there’s nothing else to entertain them.

Although the FCC still exists, prime time television has been getting more risque as time goes on. Does the FCC just not care anymore? Or maybe this is a sign that times are changing. Media is everywhere these days, it’s unavoidable. TVs, computers, laptops, smart phones, tablets, etc. contain the world behind the glass of their screens. Kids are getting access to technology like this at earlier and earlier ages now too. I didn’t have my first flip phone until I was at least 12, but I see 6 year olds with their own iPhones now and they can do just about whatever they want on them.

Society always spouts things like “we must protect the children from explicit content!” and I always chuckle at that and ask, how? What can we even do to stop kids from seeing things we don’t want them to see? Not much, in my opinion. Kids will see explicit things. They’ll ask their parents about it and probably get looks of horror. But you can’t take back what’s been seen, the child knows about it now. And what were we really doing in the first place hiding it from them?

The idea that children are pure, fragile little creatures that will crumble at the slightest touch of impurity is absurd. If your kid asks you about what sex is, and you act horrified at the question, what kind of imprint will that put on the child? Also, how do you choose when they’re old enough to know about this “forbidden biological concept”? It all seems kind of idiotic to me.

Let’s try giving free reign to media producers, give them a chance to do whatever they want with their content no matter the time slot. Kids are so much more likely to see explicit content from their devices than from a TV, so why spend so much money keeping things from the screen that everyone has already seen? It’s a bit redundant.

To put this all together, I don’t think we need the FCC anymore because we have media around us at all times uncensored for all ages. So instead of funding something like the FCC to give us protection we don’t need, let’s put that money into education so we can actually teach kids about the new things they see on TV and not shove it behind the curtain of adulthood. Gradual education is key, keeping them innocent until one undecided point in their lives and then pulling the curtain away to reveal the true cruelty in the world is far more messed up than seeing sex on TV.

Note: This is just all my opinion, I’m not a big fan of kids in the first place so I don’t really understand the whole “we must protect our children” notion

Well, I’m not going to sugar coat it. The MP3 format is more promiscuous than hooker in the Red Light districts of Luxembourg. I’d bet money on the fact that if you spin a bottle in a busy square, every single person you land on will have downloaded an MP3 at least once in their life.

I’ll admit that I’ve done it. A lot. I’m a broke college student I can’t afford to pay a dollar for every song that I want are you kidding me?! I digress.

The MP3 format has become so common in our day and age. It used to be all about the cassettes. Waiting by the radio and just waiting for that ONE song to come on and having to press record at just the right moment and pray it comes out okay. Then the CD was able to handle a lot more than the tape in a cassette and frankly, CDs are a lot easier to store. The age of computers introduced digital files of music, and the birth of the MP3 Player turned the format into one of the most common ones on earth. Not to mention it brought pirating music to a peak.

And by the way, I am not going to talk about the poor cats in the experiments. Not with my fluffy kitty, Angel, sitting next to me. I shall always attempt to get the words you said about the poor kitties out of my head.

To be honest, I could barely understand a word of this book. But I do get some general concepts from it. The MP3 was created by industry to distribute their music and to make profit, but now industries have taken a back seat. The format is now the #1 type for pirates to use. Yes I will say that I have quite a few MP3s on my computer and phone, and I may or may not have downloaded them during class while we were talking about copyright… but that’s besides the point. I’m getting really off topic in this blog post.

To summarize what I want to say, Sterne is right when he says that the MP3 is a promiscuous format in our modern times. They’re on every computer all over the world and by the second millions and millions more of these files are being shared and created. Whether this will be a problem in the future or not, we’ll just have to see.

Okay so I wrote my last blog post on the importance of digital property, and it might seem like I’m going back on my word here but… I think that sampling is okay. To a degree.

Now taking small bits and pieces isn’t an issue, or using something as a reference to create your own thing. It’s the same thing I do as an artist. You can never really create anything from scratch, it’s almost always inspired. So, when applying this to music it means that taking small samples from songs isn’t too big of a deal. As long as you admit to using it and give credit to the original creator of the sample I don’t see anything wrong with it.

Also, depending on where you’re getting the sample it might be a good idea to ask the creator if it’s okay to sample. An up-and-coming artist might like to be credited when their bits are used, and it’ll help them put their names out to gain popularity. More successful artists like Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, etc. don’t really need to concern themselves with people sampling their stuff. They’re already millionaires and have nothing to lose by letting someone use a bit of their song in a mix.

To pull it back to my example of art, it’s like someone copying from Disney vs. copying me. Disney has all the resources in the world to create content and somebody heavily referencing their material for art isn’t a big deal. But when someone copies my art, it impacts me a lot more severely. It’s copying my hard work that I am providing for free with no compensation.

To summarize, sampling from big labels isn’t that bad because they have endless resources and money to compensate for it. But sampling from new, unknown artists is where the line must be drawn to protect them and keep their passion for music alight instead of discouraging them by disrespecting their work.

You might pirate a song, but you’d never steal a CD. Are you being a hypocrite? In the end you get the same result, the song you want for free. But which is worse, or even which is better? Stealing online or stealing a physical object? I’m going to talk about that here with my own perspective.

I am a digital artist, most of my art has been created and uploaded via computer. Here’s an example:

A piece I drew for a new Netflix show, Voltron Legendary Defenders. I create a lot of art like this to cater to fans.

To me, my digital pieces are just as important (if not even more so) than my traditional pieces on paper. In the digital format I can truly show the full extent of my talents.

But what would happen if someone steals it? Deletes my artist comment, saves it, reuploads it under their name, and either claims they drew it or simple write “credit to the artist” without any real credit at all. I upload my art for the enjoyment of others, and I have quite the fan base because of it and they make it all worth it. But when that one person decides to be an a$$, it makes me doubt my choices in sharing my creations.

The point I’m trying to make is that digital property and physical property are both equally important and depending on the content, digital can be even more so. It’s so much easier to steal digital property, it’s just a few clicks and no internet police are going to chase you for it. And when content creators such as myself do report our property being stolen, people brush it off and say “This is the internet, what did you expect?”

Just imagine if you were holding an art show, and somebody just walks out with one of the pieces. When you try to make a scene and call the cops to catch them, everyone just shakes their heads and says you’re overreacting. “This is reality, what did you expect?”

And digital content can contain so much more than anything physical. A single file folder in a desk drawer might contain a single report. A single folder on a computer’s desktop can contain hundreds, if not thousands of pages of reports. One folder is stolen, but the digital one has a much bigger impact on the person owning it.

Digital property is just as important as physical property, and in some cases is even more important. It’s time we realize the damage digital theft causes.