Sampling with this sampling assignment

After being introduced to the sampling assignment in class, I am anticipating a good experience completing it over the next few weeks. I, personally, have virtually no experience with the program we are working with (or any similar programs for that matter) and am interested in becoming more seasoned with it. I think part of the exciting yet daunting aspect of this assignment is that the possibilities of what a person could do with it are endless. Essentially, this assignment is more creative and expressive than writing based, yet is another opportunity to experiment with how composition is something that can focus on more than merely traditional formal writing. As we’ve experimented with such things as ghostwriting and plagiarism and will continue to learn about music composition in completing the mixed tape assignment, this assignment will allow an opportunity to compose something non-traditionally. At the same time, I think the idea of having an assignment centered purely in one’s own creativity is also overwhelming. I am starting to think deeply about what my finished piece will portray. Do I want to express something about myself? Society? Life in general? College? My past experiences? It’s exciting that I have so many options to work with, but I am also not sure which direction I want to go with this. Especially after looking at the sample piece in class, I realize that this is an opportunity to say something in an artistic and creative way, without writing it out. The artist who composed the sample we viewed clearly had some message that we were supposed to find within his work, but each class member had a slightly different analysis of it than the next. I am already starting my own sampling piece to this example one, wondering if it will be sufficient compared to that one example. I think the only way I am really going to answer any of these questions is to play around with some options over the next few days and see what I come up with. Hopefully I will find some good ideas and be able to weed out some less sufficient ones and finally be able to move forward from this brainstorming stage.

Free Culture..with consequences

Overall, I found the first 60 pages of Lessig's "Free Culture" particularly enjoyable. I think part of this has to do with the fact that I am a Communication Arts major and I've been studying a lot of this in my other classes. In fact, I think we've actually read excerpts from Lessig in the past. For this reason, reading about some of the history behind radio and internet formation, for example, simply reiterated some of the things that I have been learning about for classes in my major. And since they are for my major, I guess that this explains why I found the related reading so pleasant. One thing that I found particularly interesting and disturbing was the story about the college student, Jesse Jordan (starting on page 48). Although we've been discussing lawsuits by the RIAA involving Napster, youtube, and the two UW students, I found this one to be unique and reading it struck a nerve with me. When we read about the UW students who are facing the lawsuit for illegal music downloading, I was upset because I know this means they are going to end up losing a lot of money (and sleep) over something that many, many people do simply because the RIAA is chosing to make an example out of these students. In Jesse's case, they made him an offer: pay them every penny he has to his name in a settlement agreement or go to court and risk paying upwards of $250,000. I know that the industry is trying to do what they can to stop people from downloading illegally but I just don't think that this is the way. What if they imposed smaller fines on more people for illegal downloading? Say, if they catch you you owe 50 bucks or something? Then, they could impose the fine on more people, teaching them a lesson and deterring them from downloading illegally while not destroying the lives of a few unfortunate few who get caught. I'm not sure if this is a plausible solution to the way the RIAA is handeling the issue, but I am convinced that there must be some other way from what they are doing now.

Plagiarism at its finest

Upon reflecting on the plagiarism assignment, I realized that I had a great time breaking the rules that typically apply to writing. I think that one of the most difficult aspects of this assignment was picking a topic to write about. I settled upon basing my paper on affirmative action because I have taken a few sociology and history classes that delved into this topic. I already had the background knowledge to write the paper and was also able to use a few sources from readings that I had to do for class. I thought this would be a really good idea because i wasn't sure if these would even be able to be found on the internet. As it turns out, they are searchable in google, but my partners had a difficult time figuring out which sources I actually used. A lot of the material and information about affirmative action is rather repetitive. I guess this was to my own advantage as my partners were able to distinguish certain passages of my paper that were not my own writing, but they also were not able to determine which source I actually plagiarized. My sources that I took from the internet, I knew would be easier to search. For these, I experimented by paraphrasing or changing around the word order so they wouldn't come up as quickly when typed into google. I think that overall I was able to hide my plagiarism fairly well, or at least successfully blended it into my writing. I think that this was a good experience overall. I realized that it is actually very easy to accidentally plagiarize by forgetting to cite a source or by paraphrasing but then never attributing the work to the source it is based upon. In the future, I think I will be forced to think more closely about what I am writing and make sure not to accidentally plagiarize. On one final note, I have also realized that I would not be a good TA or teacher because when I was trying to spot plagiarism in my group members' papers I had an extremely difficult time doing so. In one paper, I was not able to find a single source that was used. Perhaps it is better that I am the one writing my papers rather than reading them.

Some lingering ethical issues in relation to ghostwriting...

Perhaps I am in the minority in our class, but I think that we need to look at ghostwriting as a profession. When people engage in it they are usually bound by contract, are paid a certain specified amount of money, and make the personal choice that they would rather not receive credit for their writing if it means getting paid. And as for the people paying others to ghostwrite for them... I think that if they are willing to pay someone to author something with them it is their own choice to do so. I understand the ethical concerns that many people have with ghostwriting, but I think looking at it as a profession changes these issues in my mind. In all actuality, there are many professions out there that people consider unethical but exist nonetheless. Just becuase something is not ethical does not mean that it should not be allowed. I think it is important to consider ethics and legality as two separate issues when it comes to ghostwritting.

Ghostwriting Reflection

While some people may have found difficulty in writing about a topic outside of their realm of expertise, my difficulties with this assignment were more closely linked to writing style and voice. As the individual I ghostwrote for has a very different writing style from my own, I had to rewrite parts of this paper several times in order to make it fitting with my subject's own voice. I guess I never really thought much about my own writing style before now, but this assignment forced me to do just that. I now realize that in my own writing, I tend to utilize the passive voice more than the average writer and my sentences are on the longer side, frequently broken up with parenthesis and semicolons. In addition, my incorporation of sentence splices is another attribute that may distinguish my writing from other people’s. Perhaps some of these differences can be attributed to our different academic focuses. Since I am a Comm Arts major here, I am very familiar with writing papers for Comm Arts classes, while my subject is more used to writing a different style of papers in her education classes. For this reason, our personal styles are noticeably different. In total, these factors came into play during my ghostwriting. After completing my first draft, my subject read over it and voiced concern that the style did not really match her own. We then had to sit down together and revise some of these troubled areas in order to make the paper more applicable to her own personal style. I’m not quite sure how this turned out, but I think that we at least made some progress. Overall, this assignment was helpful to me as it not only allowed me the opportunity to try ghostwriting but also gave me insight to my own writing style and how it differs from that of my peers.

And as a quick comment on the ethics of ghostwriting in relation to my experience here: I didn't have too much of an ethical problem with ghostwriting before completing this assignment, and still do not. I think that this was much more of a challange to complete than I initially thought and do not think I will being a great deal of ghostwriting in the future...unless I am paid enough money to offset the hardship, that is.

Unknowing plagerism

After the discussion in class Wednesday, I have been thinking about all of the different ways you can plagerize. It is certainly not as black and white as I used to think. When the guest speakers were telling stories about students they had who plagerized without really understanding why the tings they did were wrong, I started thinking of the times that perhaps I have been in the same position. It isn't always easy to determine what constitues plagerism. I thought that reading UW's plagerism policy may clear this up for me, but I think it just complicates the issues further. Plagerism exists on a very large spectrum and the university deals with each case slightly differently it appears. I think that the past few days have made me aware of the importance of submitting drafts of my papers to TA's and the writting center before they are due in class in hopes of catching any accidental plagerism that I may unknowingly incorporate in my writting. It will be interesting to see what other people think about this during our discussion in class today.

Ghostwritting or Plagerizing?

After Friday's discussion about ghostwritting, I spent a few minutes over the weekend looking and thinking further about the issue. The distinction between ghostwritting versus plagerizing is a difficult one to define and may differ somewhat depending on the media form involved. For example, we talked briefly about music and plagerism in class. Artists are invarriably influenced by musicians before them. There are a large number of lawsuits dealing with an artist who claims that another took a portion of their own song. In some cases the lyrics of a part of the song are the same or very similar. Other times the controvercy involves the instramental rather than lyrical attributions of a song being too similar. How can we determine if an artist deliberately took a part of another person's song when there are so many songs that have been created already? I think that it is inevitable that there will be some repetition in music eventually. Sometimes this could easily occur on an unintentional level as musicians are probably not aware of all of the people and things that influence their music. I guess certain cases could be more visibly be defined as plagerism, but more ambiguious examples complicate our views of plagerism.