My Life With IT

It’s a funny thing that gets really interesting over the years just about copyrights. I remember the huge uproar over being fined just for keeping or was is sharing MP3 songs over the Internet. Quite a number of people were fined with the court supporting certain cases.

I think the person who first came out with MP3 for songs is purely for personal use and the ease of the digital song format got spread fast and furious. Even better than the singers trying their darnest to hold autograph sessions and concerts with their marketing strategies like freebies, etc.

It’s so strange since spreading the songs and movies via the Internet is a lot faster than spreading via the television, billboards, newspapers, special shows interviewing the actors and actresses, and other money spending marketing techniques.

The Internet consists of Twitter, Facebook, Plurk and I don’t know what social media they will come up with in just a year’s time. Things that do need publicity tend to spread faster online than offline. By the time the video or something gets into print, more than a million views may have just hit the video in Youtube.

Recently,there’s this huge case about weddings playing copyrighted songs. Seriously, I am amazed at the ways money can be squeezed out from using the word “Copyright”. I wonder if it’s meant for everything since I don’t remember that word can cover everything. It’s a sad thing that just to play one song, the couple may just get into deeper debt by playing a few songs at their wedding.

From this point forth, will anyone dare to do anything or will there be ways about it? Humans are creative creatures who can come up with wonderful ways just to avoid being prosecuted. That’s where bribery came about since the I don’t know when. We have come a long way from reducing bribery, I hope we don’t have to resort to this stage just to play a few songs at a wedding dinner that’s supposed to be a happy occasion.

The never ending wars online. It goes to show how interesting and lively our lives are when we decide to use wars to start a war; online. Just wasting the electricity on picking on the sentences to words and finally to twist the meaning on everything.

What’s worst is that a neutral platform meant for the sole purpose of being neutral was being dragged into the foray. With different accounts each posting only once for the sole purpose of defaming(?) the said party, the fury of such negative remarks gets on the nerves and a long post about how the initial accusations were wrong and totally abusing the platform that wasn’t meant for explanations.

I find that when words are exchanged in the moment of anger, everything else is skewed. When the involved parties decided to take to arm, in this case, using the keyboard as a form of fighting, I am reminded of the children. They will go screaming, “Teacher! He/She copy me!” when telling them to build the tallest tower.

How do we know what came first? Chicken or egg?

While I haven’t been invited to a lot of events by various PR agencies trying to reach out to bloggers, I have come across bloggers who have been turned off by the acts of the agents in their attempts to reach out to bloggers.

I will try not to repeat what others have written but if the agents still don’t understand on how to use the social media to reach out, then it’s their problem. There are 10 easy ways to piss off any blogger. The most common thing is that the contents are stolen from a blog post without any credits. This content thief is often hunted down and all the intimate details being exposed on the web. Nobody wants to be like that Edison Chen or Tammy from NYP. Totally exposed with no hiding places.

There are things to make a blogger happy and they aren’t that difficult since the expectations are often displayed at the site for all to see. When invitations are often sent out late such as just 1 day or worse, 3 hours before the actual event, no one will want to go since they can’t find anyone at the last minute to attend the event together.

My personal take even if I am not some A-lister being invited to events all over the world:

• Last minute invites to attend events; the events can be anything. I did get myself invited at the last minute but the event coordinator was kind enough to let me in. That is a different case.
• Getting invited to view some gadget with the idea that the invitees will be playing with the gadget but ultimately, no such thing happened.
• By not replying to questions asked in emails or Facebook walls.
• Expecting only positive posts about the event or product. This is a case of being too ideal.

As bloggers, we have control over what we want to be displayed in our blogs since the PR don’t pay for our hosting and domain fees. I don’t even take paid posts that insist on positive reviews since it isn’t realistic. I take on writing gigs that just want to spread awareness if possible.