Ethical Challenges in the Media Essay

What are some of the ethical challenges surrounding the movie and music industries as they relate to the Internet? The current conflict between the recording industry and a portion of its customers who are involved in illicit copying of music files arose from innovations involving the compression and electronic distribution of files over the internet. Some of the ethical challenges associated with responses that threaten further innovation, ultimately reduce the chances of finding solutions that hold appeal for all parties. Today’s world of the online web has provided new opportunities for both the creators and the consumers of media such as music. The digital aspect of the web allows for wonderful innovations such as MP3 players but ethical personal use must be employed to avoid legal punishment. How has education affected your views about the practice of downloading or copying multimedia content in these fields? When you download music without paying for it or share it with others without their paying for it, the musicians don’t get paid for their hard work. Recording companies and their professional associations consider this stealing. The RIAA, the professional organization which represents the recording companies, (Recording Industry Association of America), has reacted with copyright infringement legal actions against schools and college students. These notices are very serious and deal with potential copyright infringement. School use or personal use copying should be limited to a respectful, ethical Fair Use of media content. Charles I agree with your post, â€Å"You never know what someone has included or sent along with a song, file, or picture. However, the music industry is now going through vast changes due to the new digital world. Now there are more legal ways for music customers to purchase their music online with services such as iTunes, Rhapsody, amazon. com, etc. There are even some legitimate free music download examples. For example, some unknown bands may provide free previews online. While other more popular bands or singers may post a sample tune for fans to hear for free. Most media exist first as businesses to make money to pay their employees’ salaries to make a living. Many of these media workers only earn a modest living wage. They are not all famous and rich! WK1 DQ2 What collaboration tools have you used in your work environment or personal life? One collaboration tool that I have used in my work is the use of a network folder on a shared drive. All documents can be stored in a central location. By using collaboration software, according to taskmanagementsoft. com, multiple team members can work on the same document at the same time. Changes made to the document can be tracked using collaboration software. This keeps everyone on the team accountable for the changes made. By having all the documents in the same place, team members in different time zones or countries can work on files and leave notes for others who work on the document next. How have these information systems benefited you? Our company benefits from information because our company have to pay for video conferencing equipment or travel expenses, when everyone on the team can be on the phone and review the documents at the same time. Using the collaboration software to save documents allows the company to save money on shipping and faxing expenses. Copies requiring approval by multiple individuals no longer have to be faxed or emailed; instead, each authorizing individual can review the document in the collaboration software and sign off on it using the software. WK1 DQ3 How does University of Phoenix work to combat plagiarism? The University of Phoenix work to combat plagiarism by requiring that both campus and online students to submit all of their written assignments electronically, instructing faculty to run the papers through an automatic plagiarism checker available online at the university’s Center for Writing Excellence. Student papers are archived to facilitate crosschecking. The plagiarism checker is not simply a punitive tool, but is also instructive, as students can run their papers through it before submission and learn whether they have borrowed too heavily from the literature or used proper citation. What other steps do you think could be implemented to deal with this problem? Another step that can be implemented to deal with this problem would be for students to seek proper plagiarism tutorial class to assist student with documenting citations correctly.