So I'm looking over the news at the multiple Harry Potter sites I go to daily and find myself upon a headline 'JK Rowling sues eBay'. You know what I say to that? Good for her, good for her! There are not that many people willing to stand up to something as big and diverted as eBay, not even the people who are scammed daily and have their credit cards stolen from them. I wish she could do the same with the Peer-to-Peer sharing sites, but alas, that won't be happening – unless she actually does take the time and look at the e-books that are being shared between fans on programs such as LimeWire, along with the audio files from the CDs that go from around $50 at retail price.

But what I'm really trying to get to is this, e-books, I'm pro for allowing them to be sold via the internet, but only on one circumstances. What if these files had a Digital Rights Management (DRM) on them? What if we created a special program that would allow them to be able to read these files, meaning that they would not be in the standard PDF format, without having access to functions such as copy and paste? I mean, isn't it considered plagiarism to just copy-and-paste a document into your own work? Isn't it stated that 'text in this book should not be reproduced in any shape or form'? This proves my statement; e-books should not have the ability to be copied onto a document, so why isn't a DRM reasonable?

Sure, there's an ongoing frustration on freedom of the consumer, but the customer isn't always right and people have to understand that or else it'll become something of the nature of "I want this CD for free, so I'm going to have it for free because I said so!" I'm not trying to say that what Steve Jobs is on about is bad, it's just it isn't financially correct to go towards what he wants to get to. The tags included on music files from the iTunes store are what keep me from begging my friends across the pond to send me a track that's not available on the US version of the store.

Yes, sometimes I do occasionally pirate a few files because of the difficulty of importing (which is why I'm trying to set up an import store to stop me, along with others, from continuing to lose these great artists their well deserved money) because of the fact that just one CD equals around $20 shipping-and-handling along with the price conversion. However, I will say that when a CD finally releases over here, I quickly go and split my copies and throw them in the trash, along with the files themselves.

Which is one thing I hope many consider doing: if you enjoy an album that much that you want a real copy, go and buy the actual CD with its original packaging. Trust me, they may be the highest quality online, but NOTHING compares to an official label produced CD. Not even your iPod Video or Nano can play it that good. And if you don't believe me, test it. IPods aren't the replacement for CDs, they weren't ever advertised for that, they were meant for people who don't want to carry around their CDs around the town. It's like the mobile phone, it wasn't made to replace your house phone, but instead make communication more remote.

My dad showed us this and I took pictures.

To me, the world is something that everyone should be exploring by the time they graduate from higher education as it provides a sense of freedom that one can devour from the experience of finding about new things and being able to identify with them in different aspects of like.

To give an example of this, I will go back to the time of 2002, during this point in my life I was afraid of many things such as opening up to people and giving my own opinion to what I thought in life. From there, I was introduced to a number of different media sources such as the BBC, Newsround, and numerous other circulated media.

Being able to communicate with my newly found friends about the things that mattered during that year helped me to understand that I had a right to speak and that I shouldn’t waste my life by trying to keep quiet about what I thought was right and what was wrong. At the same time, it was very complicated to explain how I felt about my current situation at a point that I never want to go back to. From my explorations of different areas, I was able to figure out that maybe this world isn’t as small as I thought it was, maybe there’s something out there that none has discovered.

Before 2004 I had never heard of BBC Radio 1, but yes as stated before I had used the BBC website as a reference beforehand but had never actually took the time to look deeper into it.

My first expression of the media played on the station was that it was a bit awkward listening to a different accent and style than of my own country, but I soon realized that it was more than just your average thirty minutes of music an hour, it was more than just a commercial-free station that ran off a playlist, except it was neither the two.

Radio 1 opened my eyes beyond the typical pop, R&B, and dance music that our typical US stations played constantly, and into the world of friendly people who actually cared about you and allowed you to be yourself and not make you do the annoying I JUST WON ONE MILLION DOLLARS scream—it was perfect and ranged between different variations of music and interviews that I constantly enjoyed.

If it wasn’t for this station, I wouldn’t be able to say that I liked the sound of the underground, the rocking indie bands that expressed themselves freely, and the tunes that made the eighties and nineties what they were. My life would have probably been different, as frankly, today’s popular artists in the US don’t actually have a purpose to them. They’re either short-lived, one-hit wonders who don’t take the music industry seriously and just want a quick dollar to live their life as if they had made a difference to the world.

One example would be JoJo, yes I know she has many songs that have made the top ten but is it really necessary to wear a jacket with your stage name embroidered on the back? You only have one or two hits to start with, does that automatically make you a hotshot? It’s different when it’s Jennifer Lopez or Madonna, but come on, you’re not even a teenager at that point and already have your record company to tell you to go and do that, that’s just fraud.

And then there’s actresses like that one girl from High School Musical that get signed by a label and already have some rapper singing about how amazing she is, that’s also considered forgery as you aren’t really putting yourself out there as a real person and are trying to look good so that you actually get into the charts. I just think today’s record labels are a huge sham and should listen to people when they’re told what they want to accomplish with their career and what they need to do to ensure that they get what they want out of it.

There’s also that one thing about the US record labels, they won’t sign many of the actual good people that have a lot of potential to actually succeed. For instance, The Killers, they were rejected by a US label after making a decent audience in Las Vegas, Nevada, so what did they do? They went to London, automatically got signed and gained everyone’s interest and released a chunk of their CD, Hot Fuss, as singles. So what do the US labels get from that? Oh yes, since you’re popular in the United Kingdom, we’ll be glad to sign you with our company after we told you that you wouldn’t sell a single record with a voice like that.

Well, that’s not exactly how it happened, but I think by now, the reader would have an understanding of what I wanted to express in this statement of how it is to be rejected by a record company and then them crawling on their knees to get you back overseas and make them some money with your amazing ability to generate a crowd of people who know all the words to your songs and have pictures of you all over their bedroom walls.

Of course, people over here hate songwriters and are so afraid of letting them assign the rules that need to be met by their label in order for them to sign them. They are not willing to let them have a chance at proving that they can run their own career and do not need a middle-aged man feeding them lyrics that they need to sing their hearts out to to make him a happy and wealthy man at the end. In most cases, this will probably hinder your chances of making a dime as that old guy probably gets paid more for writing the cliche piece than you’d get for putting your soul into it to make it the best record of the year and played all over the world.

I believe there is some discrimination in the music industry as instead of promoting the singers that can actually sing and make a beautiful impression on anyone’s faces, the media instead focuses on the plastic models who have to have their vocals taken into a computer and tweaked to sound better so that no one can notice that they actually lack all the talent that is needed to make a quality record.

What has happened to this world, why is everything so fake nowadays, why can’t we respect James Blunt for who he is and not exploit his voice as being girlish-sounding. Which by the way, I’m not sure why everyone thinks that as I myself think he has a beautiful voice. Music is unique and every piece has a different meaning to it, whether you understand this meaning is another story and shouldn’t be the reason why you critic is as a one star on the iTunes music store. In reality, someone’s bound to enjoy the music and I don’t think they want to hear you complain about how the song is dull and needs to be rewritten to sound better when to them it marks an important significance to them.

I’m not saying that a lot of the music today is bad, but instead, just trying to point out that many of these so called “best song ever” should be reconsidered. I mean, I used to think that every song that came out on the radio was brilliant and marked it as “best song ever” at every forum I went to, but I’ve changed since then and have allowed myself explore different areas of music and have a better opinion on the music I like and want to hear now that I’m much older and can think for myself.

So school was cancelled today and what have I done all day? I've been laying on my arse all day listeing to the radio.

So I'm kinda worried about next week. I have to go see the eye doctor that I haven't been to in like three years because he said he was going to meet up with other doctors and research my problem. If you haven't noticed on my pictures, I have this bump on my eye. It can be removed in most cases, but not in mine as it keeps on growing. Like, it's a type of worm that the doctors are afraid to remove because it might kill me since it's been there since birth.

Yeah, so who would have thought she'd be stupid enough to let her friend post pictures of her on the internet.

( Be warned, it's very whorish and shouldn't be seen by childrenCollapse )

What the hell are they thinking posting this online?! I'm no longer a fan because of this, I thought they were decent people!

Well, life has been good lately, but my hands are starting to act up. It all started when I got sick with the flu of some sort and then I tried to open a candy package (you know, Halloween sizes) and I couldn’t do it, my hands were just too sore. So, I ended up going to the doctor and he said it was because I’ve been typing too much (as in doing 1,000 words per minute). I’ll probably have to change my career because of this.

Yeah, so this week has been like shite, some stupid arguments just broke out and screwed everything up. Just total crap really.

Happy candy day!

Something is seriously wrong with my hand, it hurts like feck!

My computer has been fixed for a few weeks now, by the way!

PSAT turned out to be horrible for me, hardly got through it. I only was given the standard twenty-five minutes for each section, which wasn't enough for me.

Before that I got ill for three days, and then this past week it's come back, which is really stupid and odd. Don't really know how it happened. I felt okay on the Friday before.

Oh yeah, and just check out my little MSN girl I photoshopped to look like me (besides my hair, it's a wig on her):

Besides that, nothing has really been happening. School has been very hectic, I usually don't get freetime anymore. Plus, of course, I've been in bed all week.

Going to make a mix CD now since I got some blank ones. Robbie William's new album is HAWT! I love it!