I wrote an essay for a competition to get a university scholarship. Please look it over and give me advice from wording prolems to overall critisism. This has to be under 500 words. Thousands of bytes of data are flowing between systems and connecting the world together one computer at a time. Being building frame-by-frame, beat-by-beat, is some of the most artistic and creative multimedia the world has ever seen. To make such an unprecedented amount of information literally placed right beneath your fingerprints makes for a method of digital distribution never before seen. The unrivalled power of the internet is a gift to both individual users and large corporations, but one of the two cannot choose not to harness the power they have been given. Multimillion-dollar corporations such as the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America are flexing their monetary muscle in frustration due to their inability to see past their own noses. Peer-to-peer file sharing networks are an amazing source of free advertising for a corporation; allowing users to preview songs from records and view low-quality rips of movies, influencing them to later buy the items which warrant a purchase. This may be the largest fear of a corporation, because it forces them to actually produce high-quality movies and CDs through and through, not just throw together enough quality material to create a flashy movie trailer or catchy music single. Currently industries are cowering in wake of this challenge and some, such as Sony, are even placing illegal and malicious software into their products that infects the computers they enter and/or limit devices that can read them. The other challenge online file-swapping poses to corporations is its ability to offer free distribution for less funded artists, allowing them to be heard and seen over the mass-produced, heavily supported material found on standard media devices. Once again, record labels and movie producers decide to shy away from the thought of adding some substance to their substance and instead hope to silence this threat by using their superior resources to disconnect them from buyers. Out of the figure of “over 16,000” individuals which have been charged with file sharing, only a handful of these cases have ever reached court. In most cases, the individual is forced to pay the requested fee in an out-of-court settlement since they don’t have the financial resources to fight them. Large corporations are hoping to bully the rest of the world into following whatever rules it dishes out. By using scare-tactics and their overwhelming economic backing, they have unleashed a media frenzy to frighten the world into their chequebook. They hope to use the funding they have siphoned from the global population and use it to incriminate their buyers and dismantle their only competition in one fell swoop. However, it is time we ask ourselves “Who is the real criminal?” Is it the student trying to raise money for their upcoming education and previewed a song before they buy the CD? Or is it the corporate president who is attempting to sue said individual to add a few digits to their increasingly fat paycheque?
I like it, but it seemed the essay seemed to flow a little less smoothly at the end. My friends girlfriend got sued for this crap. She used Napster years back. these corporations need to go down.
Thanks for reading that whole thing. I'll try to touch up the ending soemtime. Unfortunately I am at abour 499 or so words so I can't do too much to it.