Reflection of this course

We are coming towards the end of the semester. Now that I reflect back to the assignments and classes we had, I think it was not bad as I thought. Classes were fun, especially because we had a lot of discussions and we worked in groups. The assignments were hard and time consuming but Prof. Mckinley always took time explaining and he also gave us time to prepare and discuss with my classmates so I always felt ready to write my essays. I think not only because this class was a mandatory class, but classes were also interesting so I had the best attendance among all the courses that I have taken in Sophia. (although I often asked if we can finish early.. haha)

This blog was also fun to write. We were allowed to write anything if it was something about our topic so it kept me motivated. I enjoyed sharing my favorite movies. I also liked reading what others were writing because we usually don't have a chance to read what others are thinking and what they like.

I hope public speaking will be an interesting course like Comp 2! :)

My Survey Result

I conducted a survey about internet piracy from July 2 - July 7 through Survey monkey and by hand. I used SNS such as twitter, facebook, and line to ask my friends to answer survey. All the people who answered my survey are students. The result came out almost as I expected.

Number of people : 100people

1. What is your gender?
Male 34%
Female 66%

2. Have you lived abroad? if yes when and where
No 49.5%
Yes 50.5%
Places: Taiwan, India, Australia, Korea, China, England, Singapore, US, Vietnam, Canada, Belgium, Turkey, Philippines, Russia, Dubai

3. How often do you watch movies?
Everyday 1%
Every week 22.5%
Every month 46%
twice a month 28%
Never 2%
Other
Most people who answered other watches movie whenever a interesting movie is out.

4. Do you download or watch movies online?
Yes 72.7%
No 27.3%

5. Order these Crimes
Most answered that internet piracy is the least serious and murder as most serious. However, theft and sexual harassment changed places from time to time.

6. Do you think internet piracy is bad?
Yes 52%
No 48%

Furthermore, by looking at the data closely, I figured out that more people who have lived abroad downloaded movies from internet and they also did not think internet piracy is serious. Also Male tend to download movies more than female.

My Survey Questions

*This is a blog post that was due on June 30th.

For my final research paper I am planning to write how laws and movements that opposes internet piracy is meaningless because it is almost impossible to regulate people from pirating.

My big question for my final essay is,
What, if any, benefits do governmental laws bring to internet piracy?

Demographic Questions
1. What is your gender?
2. Have you lived abroad? (other than Japan) If yes, where and how long?

For my demographic questions, I am trying to find the difference in people's thoughts about internet piracy depending on gender and also between people who only lived in Japan and those who came from abroad. I assume that male downloads movie more often than female students. Also, I assume that those who have lived abroad does more downloading on internet than those who stayed in Japan. Furthermore, it would be great if I can see the difference between the countries people are from. (eg. People from US downloads movie more than those from Thailand)

Research Questions
1. How often do you watch movies?
2. Do you download or watch movies online?
3. Order these crimes in order of weight.
    internet piracy   theft   murder   sexual harassment
4. Do you think Internet piracy is bad?

My research questions tries to find how common downloading movies are among students. I also aim to find how concerned people are about internet piracy by asking the question 3 and 4.

Most pirated movies of all time!

*This is a blog post that was due June 23

I recently read an article about the top 10 most pirated movies of all time on TorrentFreak. TorrentFreak is a weblog that uploads news about a peer-to-peer file sharing software, BitTorrent. BitTorrent is one of the most common software used to share files on internet and it has 150 million active users. TorrentFreak often talks about latest copyright issues and it releases the top 10 most pirated movies for each week, every year and for all times. The article I read was posted on October 12, 2011.

The article presents a list of top 10 movies that was downloaded through BitTorrent since 2006. Here is the list.

1. Avatar - 21 million downloads
2. The Dark Night - 19 million downloads
3. Transformers - 19 million downloads
4. Inception - 18 million downloads
5. The Hangover - 17 million downloads
6. Star Trek - 16 million downloads
7. Kick-Ass - 15 million downloads
8. The Departed - 14 million downloads
9. The Incredible Hulk - 14 million downloads
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: A World's End - 14 million downloads

By looking at the list, all movies that are in the top 10 list are high grossing movies that are very famous. Moreover, Avatar is actually the best grossing movie of all time and The Dark Night and Star Trek is in the top 5 list too. By looking at these statistics, it shows how internet piracy does not necessary affect movie gross revenue. Furthermore, we can see how great amount of movie is downloaded illegally without paying through the number of downloads. This shows how internet piracy common among users of peer-to-peer software. It also shows how a lot of people do not see piracy so seriously.

Through such a simple list of statistics, it shows us a lot of things. I was surprised on the amount of downloads that were done. Since this list was made in 2011, I believe after year and a half, there are more and more downloads made through BitTorrent.

Retrieved from http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-all-time-111012/

Critical Analysis

Question : What, if any, benefits do governmental laws bring to internet piracy?

Text 1
McClearn, M. (2013, February 18). A New Weapon Against Online Piracy. Canadian Business, 86(1/2), 13­14. Retrieved from http://www.canadianbusiness.com/canadian_business_magazine/index.jsp

This article, written buy M. McClearn provides information about international anti­piracy campaigns and how people have been reacting towards it. The article insists that such effort to stop piracy is not working. It supports this idea through various law suits that happened in Canada and in U.S.. Furthermore, it shows how there are many reasons for avoiding trial since internet is a shared thing, therefore trials usually do not work to protect files from being pirated.This article is biased towards opposition to stopping piracy, and it is aimed towards people who were concerned about piracy. Rather than analyzing the problem, this article shows examples on what is actually happening and what real reactions are towards anti­piracy campaigns.

Text 2
Growth of Internet Piracy. (2011, November1). Congressional Digest, 90(9), 261­288. Retrieved from http://www.congressionaldigest.com

This article shows the threat piracy brings to the United States. It shows three aspects internet piracy have caused, amount of money U.S. have been losing, lost job opportunities through online services, and the fact that they are going against the First Amendment. The article saids that these thefts are increasing because of the reason that they can steal things anonymously in the internet. It discusses how we should stop piracy by providing emotional and logical reasons by shocking us by providing statistics and examples. Since it is an article from a U.S. senate report, it is creditable. Furthermore, I believe it is written to aim academic audience.

My Final Essay

I have been writing about movies from different countries or movies that show different cultures in my blog, and therefore I have chosen the theme of my final essay to be about piracy. As internet became common, people started to upload and share a lot of things online. Though as soon as this started, internet piracy have come up as one of the major problems in internet community. Sharing copyrighted files are illegal and governements are having a hard time restricting such actions. On the other hand, internet have spread throughout the globe and now since people can access files from different parts of the world, piracy problem have become worldwide.

Since internet piracy is a problem all around the world, I want to look into piracy from differnt cultural perspective. I am hoping to find out how people's reactions and government's actions are different depending on the culture. furthermore, I also want to see how internet piracy is affecting the economy and the society.

As I research about the topic there were some questions that came into my mind.
Some questions that I wondered are..
Should governments restrict internet piracy? What, if any, benefits do governmental laws bring to internet piracy? and since the internet has spread around the world, shouldn't the world have a universal law about internet piracy that all countries should follow?

So far my thesis looks like..
The spread in internet piracy brought great challenges to governments: if they should restrict piracy by making a law, or keeping as it is to protect human rights.

Les Miserables

Les Miserables is a film released in 2012 based on a musical that was based on a novel written by Victor Hugo. This film shows a story of Jean Valjean, a man who was a convict but turned to become a mayor after his release. He starts to take care of Cosette (a girl on the poster of this movie) as he continues to get away from the police inspector Javert, who was his inspector when he was a convict. Cossett is a daughter of Fantine who became a prostitute because she was kicked out of Jean Valjean's factory. However, Fantine dies soon after she becomes a prostitute so Jean Valjean takes care of Cosette instead.

This movie teaches us a lot of things. One thing they depict is the history of france. It shows the turmoil in frace during the early 1800s. It depicts the economic problems, class difference, and the French revolution. French revolution especially is a big part of this film, since rebellion was an event that brought the tie of Cosette, Jean Valjean, and Cosette's fiance Marius. It also teaches the importance of love and compassion. Jean Valjean is almost like the symbol of love. After he learns how to love and feel compassion in a church that saved him after he got out of prison, he loves and cares about the society and the people around him a lot. He especially loves Cosette and he protects her no matter what happends to himself. As we see his love and compassion towards everyone, it makes our heart fraught with emotions.


I had never cried so much by watching movie as I did for this one. Like the title, people were miserable and the amount of work Jean Valjean gave to protect these people and Cosette brought tears to my eyes. Although I hear stories that some parts were different from the novel, I really think that it was a great movie. It really taught me what love and compassion was. I recommend this to anyone who likes musicals and also to those who want to learn the background or the real atmosphere that French revolution had! It was definitely the best movie I watched in 2012!

Trailer