Computer crime Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Computer crime - Essay Example Computer crime is an offense where computers or electronic gadgets are used as a tool to carry out certain crimes. Computer crime circumscribes all sorts of illegal activities like transgression of copyrights, child pornography, hacking, etc. In this situation private and confidential facts are subject to loss or misplacement. E-crime is doubtlessly a universal issue and there will be an aberrant demand for international apportionment and collaboration. Computer criminals are becoming ever more mechanically advanced and highly developed and its an increasing confrontation to keep up with their procedures. A computer is prone to deleterious software when it is connected through internet if anti-virus software is not installed. The proliferating range of electronic gimmicks from i-pods to cell phones implies that hi-tech crime can perturb more than the personal computers. These devices are particularly exposed to assailment because they are adjustable, can be modified and revised and are frequently associated with other instruments. There are two main approaches by which computers can be associated with crime. One is the crime accompanied by using computers as a device like storage of felonious photographs on a hard disk, bedevilment using cell phones or illegitimate downloads of music and other forms of bootlegging. ‘Phishing’ bamboozle is an instance which comprises of burlesque emails and counterfeit websites to annex acute information. Other contemporary crimes are due to distinguishing technologies. One archetype is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks where criminals can gain authority over collective computers and apply them to attack over particular destinations. Crimes also involve acquiring unofficial entrance to a computer system, or creating a virus to blot out assembled data (Computer Crime, October 2006). (See Box 1.) The uses of malicious software ranges from having excess demand on a computer’s resources to

The Formation Of Gender Identity Essay Example for Free

The Formation Of Gender Identity Essay The debate over the factors affecting the formation of gender identity has more than a 100-year history, whereas the professional evidence-based level of the debate has been represented since the 1950s. In the Western sociology and psychology, gender identification is composed of a number of aspects, including perception of one’s gender roles, social identity and self-perception in general. The present paper is designed to address the role of biological, social and psychological factors in gender identity-shaping. In fact (Ellison, 2000), human behavior greatly depends upon hormonal secretion, as it is widely known that adrenaline is released when the brain receives a message about certain environmental threats and results in anxious and uneasy behavior, whereas   endorphins are released during exercise and result in a positive inspiration and sociability. Female sex hormones derive from ovaries and include progesterone and estrogens (mainly 17-beta-estradioll), whereas the major male hormone, testosterone, is produced by the testes. These chemicals are responsible for the formation of secondary sex characteristics and determine behaviors, attributed to the specific gender role. Masculinity in terms of gender identity is normally associated with assertiveness, self-control and aggression, provided by testosterone (Ellison, 2000), whereas femininity is conceptualized as compliance to dependence, interest in care about others and comfort creation. Byne and Parsons (1993), the followers of the classic model, indicate in their theoretical research of biological and neurobiological conditioning of   gender identification that a person’s gender is determined during conception, but the fetus begins to develop sex organs only at the 6th week of pregnancy.   Therefore, the developing testes or ovaries might begin hormonal secretion â€Å"off schedule†, which affects the development of the neural network of the brain and results in the person’s inability to accept their biological sex and the sense of gender dysphoria. Dittmann (1990) states that girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, the disease that refers to the overproduction of androgens, are more committed to the masculine roles like violent games, inclination to leadership in peer groups, willingness to increase physical strength, and are more likely to fell to certain degree uncomfortable in their female body, as the scholar notes that a number of teenage girls are unwilling to accept their physical development and differentiation. Similarly, boys with the Turner syndrome that refers to the excessive release of female hormones tend to de-valuate their biological sex (Tiefer, 1992). It needs to be noted that the evolution of sexuality in childhood is associated mostly with sex role games and self-observation:   â€Å"Children this age are very curious about bodies – their own and other peoples. They are trying on roles and behaviors† (Haffner and Needleman, 2001, p.41). At this stage, children experience a gradual transition from unconsciousness to awareness of their sexuality, so Dittmann holds that parents, aware of the child’s hormonal disease, can diplomatically interfere then and assist children in developing a superstructure of gender roles over their biological sex. One of the most interesting approaches to gender identity is biological psychology. On the one hand, Sharpe (2003) writes that the brain structures, which refer to communication (listening and speech) and emotions or empathy are notably better developed in females , whereas the male brain is hard-wired for system construction and perception/analysis of visual information. However, Haffner and Needleman (2001) write that infancy is characterized by the active synaptogenesis, or the strengthening of neural connections, to great extent dependent upon the environment. As the researchers write, â€Å"the development is on the one hand genetically determined, but the formation and pruning of synapses are controlled by the environment† (Haffner and Needleman, 2001, p.46). As a result, parental taboos upon sex role games and the lack of gender-sensitive childrearing (neutral treatment of infants and pre-school boys and girls as sexless) that stabilize the synaptic connections between neurons in the specific brain structures (e.g. the growth of hippocampus in boys playing spatial memory games) might   bring in the future a misperception of one’s biological sex up to the manifestation of androgyny   in the later adolescence (sporadic display of male and female behavioral patterns). Furthermore, it is important to take into consideration the cognitive and moral development of 3-5-year-old children as discussed by Paiget (Haffner and Needleman, 2001) who alleges that this period is characterized by the first sparkles of self-awareness and the reflex-based belief in the relationship between â€Å"naughtiness† and punishment. Hence it is quite easy to cause an imbalance in the child’s sex and gender awareness through imposing excessively stringent moral restrictions upon the child’s behavior. The dominant social psychological approach to gender role taking is Bem’s comprehensive gender schema theory that stresses the meaning of environmental factors. In 1971, I created the Bem Sex Role Inventory to measure how well the person fits into their traditional gender role by characterizing their personality as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated† (Bem, 1981, p. 355). The scholar believes that under the ever-lasting influence of the environment and broader cultural context the person carefully sorts all behaviors into the categories of masculinity and femininity and then employs them with relation to the cultural and social context. However, a substantial gender identity collapse might occur when professional values and desire for equality in career opportunities begin to interfere with gender beliefs; for instance, female leaders and executives recognize they are â€Å"tomboyish† and excessively committed to the masculine behaviors in non-wo rkplace settings (Bem, 1981, p. 356). To sum up, gender identity is rather a social construct than a set of biological, namely hormonal determinants. As a result, increasingly more specialists in neuroscience consent to the fact that the degree of consistency between biological sex and upbringing determine the formation of gender identity in the future (Dittmann, 1990; Haffner and Needleman, 2001) . For instance, the paper has incorporated the article showing the effect of parental guidance and the degree of progress in the cognitive and moral areas on the stability of synaptic connections in young children. Similarly, hormonal secretion is not pre-planned before the birth, but might occur under the specific social and psychological conditions (e.g. girls with anorexia nervosa are rather androgynous in demeanor than feminine and suffer from the deficiency of estrogens). Thus, the environmental factors might reinforce the inborn somatic substrates referring to the aspects of gender identity or result in their alteration, increasing or decreasing the person’s responsiveness to the neural impulses, which drive sex-related behaviors. Reference list Bem, S. (1981). Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review, 88, 354-364. Byne, W. and Parsons, B. (1993). Human Sexual Orientation: the Biologic Theories Reappraised.   Archives of General Psychiatry, 50 (3), 228-239. Dittmann, B. (1990). Congenital adrenal hyperplasia. I: Gender-related behavior and attitudes in female patients and sisters. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 15, 401-420. Ellison, C. (2000). Human Sexual Response. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger. Haffner, D. and   Needleman, R. (2001).   Childhood sex play and synaptogenesis. The Family Journal, 11: 39-50. Sharpe, R. (2003). Adult Sexuality. The Family Journal, 11: 420-426. Tiefer, L. (1992). Historical, scientific, clinical and feminist criticisms of â€Å"the Human Sexual Response Cycle† mode. Annual Review of Sex Research, 2: 1-23.

Reviewing The Problems Of Music Piracy Media Essay

Reviewing The Problems Of Music Piracy Media Essay Music internet piracy is causing serious problems within the global society, especially the music industry. Music internet piracy itself has resulted in big music companies such as Sony, in losing millions of dollars every year and is progressively growing. There have been many institutions and strategies that have been adopted by the music industry to combat music piracy which have addressed music piracy but have not had the ability to stop it. In this essay, I will be investigating The effect of Peer-to-Peer internet piracy on the music industry. I will be doing so by breaking up my essay into different sections. These include an introductory section on music publishing and copyright infringements: this will give some background information as to the whole concept of music rights. Then I would be investigating The Global Music Industry and to follow this, a section on why music piracy has been so successful. Straight after this I will look at the industrys response to combat music piracy and finally a section on the future of the music industry This topic is worthy of study because it outlines the impact of music piracy on the music industry. This should make you think twice before downloading a song or album because you will witness the effect it is having on the artists, producers, singers, and companies if you consistently download music. If music piracy continues, it will have an effect on people entering the music industry because they are being denied of the money they deserve. Music Publishment and Copyright Infringement Music piracy is defined as the illegal duplication and distribution of sound recordings.  [1]  Each time an album or single is purchased a faction of that sale goes to the artist or band that made the song. This money is called a royalty payment. This is where musicians earn most of their income. If people continually download music or tracks from the Internet without paying for them, the musicians receive no royalties.  [2]  This is a serious problem because if singers are not payed, this will threaten the future of music copyright as they might leave the industry due to the decreased return. Music copyright is the legal right to publish and sell copies of an artists, singers, or writers work.  [3]  In the music industry, the copyright to a song is usually shared by the singer and their recording company under the condition that the recording company pays the singer for a share in their copyright, which gives the company the right to prevent any other organisation from selling the songs. The consequence of another company being found selling copies of the song is that the singer or their recording company has the right to sue and press charges against that company for breaking copyright laws.  [4]  The artists have this right to make sure that only their companies can sell their songs, which would result in only that company receiving the money. But when the music is downloaded from the Internet, the companies do not get money out of it as it is a free transition to the downloader. The Global Music Industry The global music industry was quite successful during the 1990s. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic industry (IFPI), album sales grew from US$24.1 billion to US$38.6 billion during the decade.  [5]  Those days are well over now and the industry is struggling and sales have been falling quite rapidly. The Institute for Policy Innovation said music piracy is costing the U.S. economy $12.5 billion every year. 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.  [6]  So not only is music piracy threatening the future of music copyright, it is also threatening the global society in terms of jobs, taxes and salaries. This problem has arisen from the online music file sharing programs that are now available to use through the internet. The most commonly used file sharing is Peer to Peer (P2P) networking, which was used by Napster. Napster was created in June 1999 and made the work of many artists available for free. Napsters popularity was immediate and according to Mediametrix, a company that provides internet rankings and measurement, Napster was the fastest software adoption in history  [7]  and 2.8 billion music files were downloaded each month.  [8]  Napster is a different way to distribute MP3 files. Instead of storing the songs on a central computer, the songs live on users machines. When you want to download a song using Napster, you are downloading it from another persons machine, and that person could be your next-door neighbour or someone halfway around the world.  [9]  Napster also used a centralized directory that facilitated efficient searches for songs, albums and artist s,  [10]  which made it very user-friendly that helped it become more popular and widely used around the world. Given the impact on the music industry, the Recording Music of America (RIAA) soon filed a case against Napster in the U.S. District Court of San Francisco for à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"engaging in or enabling, facilitating or assisting others in the copying, downloading, uploading, transmission, or distribution of copyrighted musical work or sound recordings protected by copyright or state law without the express permission of the rights owners.à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ Ã‚  [11]  Napster was then shut down February 2001. This did not see the end of file sharing on the internet though; many other peer-to-peer alternatives to exchange music over the internet remained available such as Freenet, Gnutella, Gnarly, Wired Planet  [12]  and KaZaA. For instance, KaZaA, is currently holding the new record of most downloaded software with more than 230 million users worldwide.  [13]  In all the countries listed by the Yahoo Buzz Index, which is an index that measures internet searc h sing the Yahoo search engine, KaZaA was the number one and most popular search term on the internet in many weeks during 2003.  [14]     [15]   The graph above demonstrates the increasing sales of music from 1991 to 1998, but due to the introduction of Napster in 1999, music sales have decreased rapidly from 2000 onwards and are still decreasing. The graph also indicates that it is projected that in 2012, there would be an increase in the amount of digital format spending on music and less CD sales compared to the sales in 2006. File sharing has been growing ever since it started. In June 2001, IFPI estimated there were 3 million simultaneous global users and 500 million files available for copying at any stage in time. In 2002, the IFPI estimate went up to 5 million simultaneous users and 900 million files.  [16]  Clearly we can see now that file sharing is increasing rapidly every year and is getting more popular with more users and files being put up to download. In 2002, NetPD, a company that provides protection services to copyright owners whose material is being pirated through the internet, reported that 3.6 billion files were downloaded monthly, of which around 60% and 70% were music files.  [17]  The most popular albums are suffering the most. The most popular albums are available for downloading almost immediately after release and in some cases before release. Popular artist Eminems album was available for download even before it was released.  [18]  So it is fair to say that copyright protection technology has been ineffective in preventing music from being downloaded and threatens the future of music copyright. Not only are the producers and artists losing money, the top five recording distributors are also feeling the effect of music piracy. The five recording distributors or record labels combine to distribute over 80% of all sales in the United States in both 2002 and 2003.  [19]  These Big Five companies are , Universal Music Group (IMG), Warner/Elektra/Atlantic (WEA), Sony, Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), and Electric and Musical Industries (EMI). These companies have tremendous market power in the signing of artists, the release of new albums and the distribution of the albums. If music piracy continues, it will threaten the rights of these big companies sales and music copyright  [20]  and impact on their commitment to sign and develop new artists.   [21]   Table above presents aggregate market share data for total album sales in 2002 and 2003, the two years in the data sample.  [22]   Reasons That Contribute to Music Piracys Succession File sharing and music piracy over the internet has been successful due to many aspects that are changing within the society. Back in the 90s there was no technology around to assist in file sharing. That is why the music sales were so successful in those days. But now society has super fast broadband speeds and new computer technology that assist to make file sharing and music piracy possible and simple to do. In this section of the essay I will be underlining all the aspects that have been introduced in the society that have made it easier for music pirates (pirates being a person who downloads music or uploads music on the Internet), to make file sharing and music piracy so successful. The first reason for music piracys success is the development of broadband and cable internet which has facilitated music swapping. A soundtrack that takes more than 12 minutes to download with a dial-up connection can be downloaded to your computer in as fast as 20 seconds with a high speed connection.  [23]  Napster enjoyed the super fast speed of the internet in Universities and used it effectively until they were banned because file swapping was consuming much of the bandwidth available. In the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, file sharing had amounted to 75% of the total bandwidth.  [24]  Now that the internet speeds are faster and more efficient, downloading music is much easier and makes life much easier for the pirate. If this continues and technology keeps on improving, then this will surely threaten the future of music copyright because as mentioned before it is quicker to download and easier. Another change in technology that has the ability to threaten the future of music copyright is that it is getting easier to use such digital formats. The development of digital compression formats has had a major influence on the illegal distribution of music. Online delivery is possible in Motion Picture Expert Group-1 Audio layer 3 format (MP3).  [25]  MP3 is a digital compression method that reduces a piece of recorded music to one-tenth of its original size.  [26]  This is the format used in the online sharing of pirate copies. MP3 is the most popular and productive format of data compression. MP3 compresses the data without significantly compromising sound quality which is what the pirates want. Also, the ease of trading songs using MP3 format will discourage consumers from buying legal copies of albums or songs,  [27]  which potentially does have the ability to threaten music copyright as it has become very easy to download and store music with minimal hassle, due t o the MP3 format. MP3 files are more productive to use than CDs. A 5 minute soundtrack that would take more than 50 megabytes in CD compression format would only take a file of 5 megabytes to store without noticeably affecting the sound quality. This 5 megabyte compressed file takes 12 minutes to download with a dial-up internet connection (56Kbps modem downstream), 1 minute and 20 seconds with a regular DSL or cable connection (512Kbps downstream) and 20 seconds with a fast DSL connection (2000Kbps downstream).  [28]  So now that faster internet assists with faster downloads, many people buy fast speed broadband to download compressed MP3 files efficiently and effectively. The development a myriad of portable MP3 players ranging from top of the range IPods to inexpensive pocket sized MP3 players has also had an impact and will further threaten the future of music copyright. People can upload (rip) CDs to their PCs hard drives and listen to music on their computer. The computer then has the ability to compress the files to a suitable MP3 format to reduce the storage memory on the hard drive and to facilitate the sharing of the files over the internet, and convert the files back to a CD format and burn CDs that can be played by any MP3 player. So the portability of the music is now more convenient, as now the music can be carried in a MP3 player device. MP3 players and IPods are the most popular sources of listening to music, so now if everybodys downloading music files off the internet, they will find it more convenient to listen to music from a little device such as an MP3 player. So if there is a growing number of MP3 users, there would also be a grow ing number of music downloaders, which has the impact to threaten the future of licensed and copyrighted music. The Industrys Response in Combating Music Piracy The music industry has adopted many strategies, punishments and policies to combat and prevent music piracy from continuing. In this section of the essay I will analyse the responses that the industry have implemented to combat music piracy. The first response that the music industry implemented was that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) individually sued participants in file sharing network. On June, 25, 2003, the RIAA announced publicly that it would be monitoring file sharing networks and taking legal action against users of these networks. This announcement had the effect of reducing file sharing activity across the board because many consumers became concerned about the risk of being sued for thousands of dollars. The RIAA focused their attention on the major offenders who were averaging more than 1, 000 copyrighted music files each.  [29]  Doing this reveals that as a result of the lawsuit strategy, album sales increased by 2.9% over the 23 weeks in the data sample after the strategy was announced. During this period, actual record sales in the U.S. were an average of 11,470,652 albums per week, based on national level data reported by Billboard magazine (2003) each week, and thus would have been 11,147,378 per week in the absence of the reduction in file sharing caused by the lawsuit strategy.  [30]  As you can see this lawsuit strategy was effective in combating music piracy. It increased the music sales and helped overcome the issue of music piracy. RIAA continued with this for 23 weeks and stopped it. Because RIAA had focused only on the major offenders, this gave the chance for many casual users who initially abandoned file sharing for fear of being sued to return to the music piracy networks. Another successful strategy that was implemented by the music industry that has eased music piracy was that it put up legal digital music online. Many companies and organisation are now allowing music to be downloaded with a cost attached to it. The most popular and prominent organisation is ITunes. ITunes charges their customers $0.99 per track downloaded. As of April 7, 2009, and onwards, ITunes is charging $1.29 per track to the most popular songs and $0.69 per track to the least popular songs.  [31]   The ITunes store has sold 8 billion tracks since its launch in mid-2003. It has been confirmed that recent months have seen music sales climb very high to four billion projected track sales each year.  [32]  Between January 6, 2009 and July 21, 2009 the service sold 2 billion songs.  [33]  This compared to the sales between April 28 2003 and January 10, 2007 to sell the first two billion songs. ITunes has also been running extensive programmes of live events in London, hosting great and packed crowds and some of the worlds popular and successful artists.  [34]  So we can tell by this information that ITunes is a successful implementation by the industry and is continuing to grow rapidly. It is getting so popular that ITunes is now extending its stores to new European markets during this year.   [35]   This graph shows a rapid increase of music sales of ITunes from 2002 to 2009. Another strategy that the industry has been implemented is that the major labels such as, Pressplay, owned by Sony and Universal; AOL MusicNet, owned by the other 3 big labels (EMI, AOL Time Warner and BMG) and by RealNetworks, are set to begin offering consumers digital-music subscription packages.  [36]  Most services offer unlimited downloads, for a fixed charge from US$10 to US$20 per month and the possibility to do permanent burnable downloads for around US$1.  [37]  These digital- music subscription packs contain their own library of music and customers are admitted to download the licensed music that is on display and available for downloading. This proved to be a successful strategy as well. It gave consumers maximum downloads for a fixed price, the consumers were happy to use it because they were secured when downloading songs as they were legal to download. The music industry decided to seize CDs from CD companies in Italy, Greece and Spain due to the fact that these companies are producing more CDs to store downloaded music and distribute them illegally. Total seizures of CD-R discs in 2001 were three times higher than in 2000, at 9.6 million.  [38]  Seizures of blank discs destined for illegal CD-R labs totalled 19 million, compared to less than one million a year earlier indicating massive levels of anticipated production. There were also major actions against the mass-producing CD plants. Around 42 CD manufacturing lines, up from 20 the previous year, were put out of action by IFPI assisted police initiatives, mainly in Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines. These manufacturers have a potential annual production capacity of some 200 million CDs, roughly equivalent to the legitimate market in the UK. A further 22 manufacturers were taken out of action in the first four months of 2002.  [39]   In some places, like the United Kingdom, the Three strikes policy has been introduced to try and combat music piracy and illegal file swapping across the internet. The three strikes policy disconnect the Internet for users who have offended the copyright violation which have been promoted by the RIAA.  [40]   Hull, in the UK, has put the three strikes policy into practice to deal with the internet users caught downloading copyrighted material. Karoo, the citys only internet service provider (ISP), serving approximately 90,000 internet users has been cutting connections immediately if a user is caught downloading copyright material without warning the offender. This harsh practice of cutting the internet connection without notifying the customer, has brought controversy from customers and several digital rights group. Under the new law, Karoo will send three written warnings notices to the customer before cancelling their (ISP) connection, after the (ISP) accepted it was exceeding the expectations of copyright owners. The (ISP)s policy remains contentious as well as substantially harsher than that of other UK (ISP)s, which have apparently been unenthusiastic to deal with illegal file sharing across their networks, and only lately agreed to send warnings notices to persistent offenders.   [41]   The Future of the Music Industry The future of the music industry looks grim for the years ahead. In this section of the essay I will be investigating the future of the music industry and music copyright. File sharing has made a dramatic change in the distribution process since it started causing changes in the music industry. In 1999, 51% of albums were sold in retail stores and 34% in other stores.  [42]  In 2002 and 2003 the share of sales in music stores had a dramatic drop to approximately 35%, whereas the other stores had increased to 50% of music sales. Also, by 2003, 5% of all music acquisition occurred through the internet and music piracy, and it is continually growing. The reason is that the industry is shifting from retail stores to sales through large electronics chains such as Best Buy and Circuit City, as well as mass merchants such as Wal-Mart.  [43]  Therefore, music piracy is effecting not only music sales music copyright, it is also effecting the business industry. Now that most of the music is electronic and can be downloaded at home using the internet, music retailers such as Sanity have suffered due to internet file sharing and music piracy, which does ha ve an effect on the future of the music retail industry as more music is being downloaded than sold traditionally in retail stores. Also, buying a record may be replaced with downloading a record,  [44]  which can affect the future of music industry as downloading a record eliminates the need for labels to manufacture, warehouse, and ship tangible products.  [45]  If consumers continually downloading music and ignore buying them, the industry will affect what music the public listens to and how they listen to it.  [46]  Because of this, many digital labels would be introduced. In the new web-based music industry, artists could make their own labels and record companies individually on the internet, using their own computer. This can affect the current major record labels as many indie  [47]  labels could easily produce their own record labels at home, which will increase the popularity of them, resulting in some of them being as successful as past indies such as Yahoo and Microsoft, which will give way to a more dynamic free market.  [48]   CONCLUSION In this essay I investigated The effect of Peer-to-Peer internet piracy on the music industry. I believe I have demonstrated that music piracy does have the ability to threaten the future of music copyright. I have also analysed the implementations the music industry have implied to combat this problem within the society and evaluate how successful they were to prevent music piracy from continuing. In conclusion, music piracy is infringing copyright laws and costing the music industry millions of dollars each year. With the introduction of Napster in 1999, music sales decreased extraordinarily. In 2001, Napster was put out of business but this did not see the end of music piracy. KaZaA, a Napster successor than came in business and is now holding the record for most downloaded files. As you can see, music piracy is very hard to stop because if you shut down one distributor, many other distributors and organisations come into the illegal world of music piracy. Music piracy is getting easier due to the technologies available for the pirate to work with. Now there is super fast broadband internet speed, data compression, MP3 and portable players for the pirate to use to successfully download music efficiently and effectively. Digital music is now one of the most popular formats of music. The music industry has been working hard to combat music piracy and file swapping online. Although they did not completely stop music piracy altogether, they had certainly eased it and decreased the number of music downloads online. The most successful strategy that was introduced by the industry was to put legal music online. The music was digital, but it had a price fixed to each track. Many companies, namely ITunes, put their songs online legally and this decreased the level of music piracy over the Internet. ITunes is continually growing and is selling more and more tracks each year. A new focus that could be emerged from my study in this essay is What should the global society and music industry do in order to stop music piracy at once and for all?

Barriers to Effective Communication :: Functions of Communication

There are a wide number of sources of noise or interference that can enter into the communication process. This can occur when people now each other very well and should understand the sources of error. In a work setting, it is even more common since interactions involve people who not only don't have years of experience with each other, but communication is complicated by the complex and often conflictual relationships that exist at work. In a work setting, the following suggests a number of sources of noise: Language: The choice of words or language in which a sender encodes a message will influence the quality of communication. Because language is a symbolic representation of a phenomenon, room for interpreation and distortion of the meaning exists. In the above example, the Boss uses language (this is the third day you've missed) that is likely to convey far more than objective information. To Terry it conveys indifference to her medical problems. Note that the same words will be interpreted different by each different person. Meaning has to be given to words and many factors affect how an individual will attribute meaning to particular words. It is important to note that no two people will attribute the exact same meaning to the same words. defensiveness, distorted perceptions, guilt, project, transference, distortions from the past misreading of body language, tone and other non-verbal forms of communication (see section below) noisy transmission (unreliable messages, inconsistency) receiver distortion: selective hearing, ignoring non-verbal cues power struggles self-fulfilling assupmtions language-different levels of meaning managers hesitation to be candid assumptions-eg. assuming others see situation same as you, has same feelings as you distrusted source, erroneous translation, value judgment, state of mind of two people Perceptual Biases: People attend to stimuli in the environment in very different ways. We each have shortcuts that we use to organize data. Invariably, these shortcuts introduce some biases into communication. Some of these shortcuts include stereotyping, projection, and self-fulfilling prophecies. Stereotyping is one of the most common. This is when we assume that the other person has certain characteristics based on the group to which they belong without validating that they in fact have these characteristics.

Project Management Process Groups and the Six Questions in Pmlc

Mapping the six (6) questions to basic Process Groups of the PMBOK methodology. According to Wysocki (2012, p. 25) ‘Project management is a set of tools, templates, and processes designed to answer the following six questions: What business situation is being addressed by this project? What do you need to do? What will you do? How will you do it? How will you know you did it? How well did you do it? ’ Wysocki (2012, p. 4) also added that; ‘In addition to answering the six questions that a valid project management methodology must answer, whatever project management life cycle model you use must contain all of the following Process Groups; Scoping (PMI calls the Initiation), Planning, Launching (PMI calls the Execution), Monitoring & Controlling and Closing. The process groups will each be completed and in sequence, some or all of them may be repeated a number of times’.PMI recognized the five process groups and nine knowledge areas to make up the Project man agement Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). PMI also identified the five process groups as building blocks of every project management life cycle. Scoping is identified by PMBOK as Initiation. Projects brainstorming, client need analysis, resource requirements, documentations and management approval are handled at this stage. This stage clearly answers questions like; â€Å"what business situation is being addressed? † and â€Å"what needs to be done? †.Key inputs at this stage can include contracts from the clients, deliverables from a company’s annual business plan, policy, procedure and other social factors where the project will be cited. The outputs of scoping process group are Project Charter and Preliminary Project Scope Statement. Scoping is aimed at addressing the business situation at hand by indicating what needs to be done. For example, IT projects scoping in NLNG activities are handled by a multi-disciplinary team of subject-matter experts (SMEs) – in cluding IT eams from Strategy and Planning. The whole team reports to IT projects review team of senior management positions to secure management approval on the project. Planning follows Project Charter and Preliminary Project Scope Statement produced by the scoping activity to establish project objectives and how to go about achieving such objectives within the project scope. Planning will answer the questions; â€Å"what to do? † and â€Å"how to do it? by setting clear objectives for the project, allocating resources, identifying the best-fit model, setting milestone/targets throughout the project lifespan, etc. A Project Management Plan is drawn up at the end of the planning process. For example; in NLNG a three-year IT projects plan document is updated with latest approvals, milestones and closeouts to produce what is called â€Å"IT Master plan for the year† which various project managers use throughout the year in implementing IT projects.Launching/execution w orks with the Project Management Plan to deploy human and material resources to ensure all deliverables are achieved as planned. The question of; ‘how will you do it? † gets answered here. Project management plan is the only input here and it must be strict to objectives, targets and specifications. The output at this stage a performance according to plan. In NLNG, IT project teams work across company locations in line with IT Master plan all through the year.Monitoring and Controlling process group ensures projects are run in line with targets by identifying KPIs for periodic monitoring – based on client’s requirements in the project plan. Changes to project scope, budget performance, maintenance/repairs to project equipment, etc, are all represented here in an attempt to answer the question; ‘how will you know you did it†? Project deliverables are only recognized at this stage. Key inputs to this process group are KPIs of the launching/executi on group while their output is the project delivery/milestone status.In NLNG, various teams are involved in monitoring and controlling projects. Ranging from the Cost Controller who monitors budget and reports cost (work-in-progress), through quality assurances and process auditors who ensure compliance with procedure, risk management and corporate governance. Closing process group collates all deliverables and closes all sub-process when a project is adjudged completed. Contracts and procurements, manpower engaged, work-in-progress close out and so many other project administrative supports are rounded up here.At this stage, the final product derived from the project is presented to the client according to specifications. The question of â€Å"how well did you do? † will be answered when client approves of the output, asset/output gets installed, audit tests post-implementation status and a final report submitted. In NLNG for example, IT projects are closed with a report and a â€Å"go-live† activity. In conclusion, the questions of what business situation to address and what needs to be done are critical success factors to any project.The Project Charter and Preliminary statements derive from such questions and are therefore essential to how a project plan is developed with achievable objectives, what resources are required to launch/execute the project, how to monitor and control parameters and when to identify project ending and close out. Wysocki (2012, p. 9) aptly captures this in his definition of project as; ‘a sequence of finite dependent activities whose successful completion results in the delivery of the expected business value that validated doing the business’.Therefore, until a business need is identified, there cannot be a project. Reference: 1. Project Management Institute (undated). Available online at; http://www. pmi. org/pmief/learningzone/KCMA_Curricula_Documents/Lesson_1-Five_Processes_Definitions. pdf (Accesse d 23rd March, 2013) 2. White, D. (undated) ‘The 5 project management process groups’. Articles Dashboard, Available online at; http://www. articledashboard. com/Article/The-5-Project-Management-Process-Groups/484871 (Accessed 23rd March, 2013)

Dream Act Essay

On November 6, 2012, Marylanders supported Question 4 by a margin of 58%-42%. Governor Martin O’Malley supported the Dream Act and was an advocate for it to pass. The Act was originally passed in Marcy 2011, but was put back on the ballot for the election as a referendum. The DREAM Act includes two major developments. The first part is granting legal status for illegal immigrants who entered the United States before the age of sixteen. The second development allows the immigrants to attend public universities and gives in-state tuition. Under the first major provision, the DREAM Act would allow unauthorized immigrant youth to obtain the status of Conditional Permanent Resident for an initial period of six years, and then apply for permanent residence and eventual citizenship, if they have met certain criteria. The law gives undocumented immigrants a break on in-state tuition rates if they attend a Maryland high school for three years and if they or their parents can show they filed state income taxes during that time. The effects on college acceptances for American citizens will be effected by the act applies to access to community college first, which is open enrollment, so no slots of Maryland students are at risk. Students who complete 60 credits at a community college and qualify for acceptance to a four-year public college/university also do not influence other in-state applicants. The legislation specifically addresses this issue by indicating the in-state: out-of-state ratio maintained at each college/university should count students admitted under the Dream Act towards the out-of-state allotment. Students admitted under the Dream Act cannot be counted in the ratio of in-state students and therefore are not taking seats at our four-year institutions from other Marylanders. In the United States, the Dream Act calls for an increase in state aid for community colleges of $778,400 for the next fiscal year. The fiscal note does not reflect estimates of how this act will assist in the collection of tax dollars or a net increase in students paying tuition who would not have otherwise been able to afford and attend. When I voted on November 6, I voted in favor of the Dream Act. In my opinion, I feel that if immigrants have been in the United States and have  been paying taxes should be allowed to go to a university. The process of becoming a United States citizen is a long and extremely difficult one. I think that every person deserves a chance if they are working for the right to become a part of society. In 2003, Barbara Grutter alleged that her Equal Protection rights were violated when the University of Michigan Law School’s attempt to gain a diverse student body resulted in the denial of her admission’s application. Getting into law school is not an easy task to be admitted to, and Grutter felt that she was not being treated equally. The Supreme Court disagreed and held that institutions of higher education have a legitimate interest in promoting diversity. Grutter applied with a 3.8 undergraduate GPA and an LSAT score of 161. She was denied admission. Additionally, officials must look beyond grades and scores to so-called â€Å"soft variables,† such as recommenders’ enthusiasm, the quality of the undergraduate institution and the applicant’s essay, and the areas and difficulty of undergraduate course selection. I feel like the Supreme Court was correct. The ability to have a diverse class is crucial. Colleges and universities have a legitimate interest in promoting diversity.