...COPYRIGHT...

Ok we lost the case ... but the final speech was not so ugly ... : )
I want to thank all my team a lot because we work well together, we try to win the case "Walt Disney" against Eric S. Faden with all our hearts and maximum effort. We were brilliant and we had all the chance to win but unfortunately we know that the defenders had bribed the jury ... (I refer of course to Maties and Thais!!!).

But speaking of serious things, the discourse on copyright is very important for people, like me, would like to work in the field of journalism or writers.

Copyright gives the author of an original work exclusive right for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation, after which time the work is said to enter the public domain.
Copyright has been internationally standardized, lasting between fifty to a hundred years from the author's death, or a shorter period for anonymous or corporate authorship.

But however the culture of the Read-Write of the web is based on remixes and Mash Up and it is redesigning the network as we know it, using imagination and creativity of young people that often ignoring the copyrights laws.

This culture is threatened by those who would like to maintain some economic control on creativity and, while there are many who support this new collaborative and democratic currents, the old entertainment industry continues to increasingly consolidate its grip on intellectual property through restrictive laws on copyright.

Each country still has its own copyright laws and I think that everyone should know them, because it is very easy to break them.
So so be careful when you create videos for the project DIKULT 204 or if you put on your blog music videos. Be careful also because we are in Norway and the laws are very rigid and strict!

Michela Menghini

the downfall

...reflections on the text of Henry Jenkins!

To be honest, I have seen many times fan video. They are amateur videos made, that isolate images from their original context. Fan video is an art of quotation that anchors its images to a referent, either drawn from the fan's meta-textual understanding of the series characters and their universe or assigned them within the construction of a new narrative.
But really I never stopped to think about why these might be important.
About my project, they are important because they often are videos of a complaint or political satire, such as the video that we saw in class about the political party in Norway.
But there are some fan videos, even in Italy. In particular, I saw one of this fan video on the movie "The Downfall".
Virtually all of Hitler's speech is on our beloved Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. I’ll post the video even if it is in Italian.

Michela Menghini

My opinions: bloggers vs journalists

In this Internet era, blogs are the new journalism. Someone loves them and some people hate them.

But the most important thing that we can say is that internet changed one of the greatest obstacles to true freedom of the press by eliminating or greatly reducing the cost of production and distribution.

However the function of traditional media remains undeniable and irreplaceable for now, and the blogs tend not to replace but to complement the traditional media.

A blog can be a diary. If you invite just a few people to post, and those same people are all who can read it, a blog is groupware; a blog can be a community. Let a lot of people offer posts, organize the comments, add polls and ratings. A blog can be your picture collection. It can be a record of what you saw today. So, as you can see, is difficult to give a precise definition of blogs because blogs are many different things. What appear to be clear, however, is that blogs need mainstream media, and that, today, the mainstream media also need blogs.

From the perspective of journalism, blogs can be seen as a new category of news and current affairs communication. But is blogging journalism? I don’t think that the answer is always no. To say a blog is journalism is like saying web pages are journalism. Journalism can happen on Web pages, and on blogs, in lots of places. Not everything that's printed is journalism. Not everything that's on a blog is journalism. I think that the definition of a journalist depends on the activity, not on the medium. Infact, in my opinion, if you seek factual, contemporary truths for an audience (of any size) and write well, you are a journalist!

Today popular blogs are hosted on the websites of major newspapers, journalists learn to monitor blogs as information sources and bloggers, in turn, learn to monitor the media constantly to follow news and events that are beyond the radar of so-called "mainstream" media.

We must also consider the possibility that in the future be born a new trade, close to the journalist: the profession of professional bloggers. Infact, the readers of the future, those who today are young, even now read more blogs than read newspapers or watch the news on television.

Today, blogs seem to be everywhere, in and around journalism: the

media publish blogs as one item in their online content repertoire; individual journalists have taken up blogging, and an array of amateurs (with regard to journalism) are maintaining blogs that at least to a certain extent resemble news journalism.

The interesting thing is that today there is an interpolation between journalists and bloggers, in fact many journalists keep their own blogs. But another important thing is that blogs have allowed people to share ideas and build resistance in non-democratic countries such as China and Iran, where censorship is heavy but blogs are able to slip through.

An example is the Iran’s spontaneous street demonstrations over Friday’s “stolen election” has ignited a storm of information on social networking sites such as Twitter and the photographic facilities of Flickr.

This is an example of a blog of an Iranian boy who, thanks to his articles keeping us informed about what really goes on in his country: http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/

But also in Moldova students are using Twitter as a tool to mobilize opposition against a communist victory in Moldovian elections. According to reports, close to 10,000 protesters gathered at Moldova’s parliament in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital and were able to eventually break through police lines to storm into the building. But twitter is just one example of many blogs or social network in the world used to communicate events that would otherwise be prohibited. So I believe that the use of blogs is fundamental, because thanks to the internet and blogs now everyone can freely express their point of view. In this way they can reach all the masses and all citizens can be informed about what really happen in the world.

The blog phenomenon is exiting the amateur stage, which still is not mature, but which is characterized by a tendency towards the integration of blogs in mainstream media.

Mediasphere and blogosphere are learning to live togheter, adapting to each other, in a world where you need both.

Michela Menghini

My opinions on the text of Benjamin Walter

In Benjamin Walter opinion the advent of art's mechanical reproducibility, and the development of forms of art, such as film or photograph, in which there is no actual original, the experience of art could be freed from place and ritual and instead brought under the gaze and control of a mass audience, leading to a shattering of the aura.

I do not always agree with what he says because I think that through the photography you can create something new, something that is your point of view about the reality. Through the photography you are not escaping natural vision but you are creating a form of art that reflect what you think about the situation that you are photographing.

In my opinion now people decided to reproduce reality because they want to remember, and so they decided to impress somewhere their sensation. They are not trying to reproduce reality but they try to remember the experience and the feelings that arise in certain situations. And this is not a contemporary decay of the aura, but rather an attempt to bring it to life in time.

Make as many copies of a work of art is not a thing without meaning, but it helps the culture to get closer to the masses, not diminish but rather gives her life over time and across all social classes.

Regarding the films I would say that Benjamin, in my humble opinion, is a bit too critical. Is obvious that we see the performance of the actor through the point of view of the director who tells the cameraman what to do; and I don’t think that is a problem if the actor’s performance is presented by means of a camera.

I think that this is the beauty of films, the fact that we can have a critical position, or that we can impersonate ourselves with the author or with the actor.

Could happen that the actor, after many years of study, come to have two auras, one of himself and the other one of the character he plays. The first one does not interfere with the second one but rather complement each other creating a complex character.

Finally i can say that look at things in a new light, with different eyes, is not reality but the reality of who is representing reality at the time… so why we can’t call this art???

Michela Menghini

description of my project

What Is Politics?

A little boy goes to his dad and asks, "What is politics?"
Dad says, "Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I'm the breadwinner of the family, so let's call me capitalism. Your Mom, she's the administrator of the money, so we'll call her the Government. We're here to take care of your needs, so we'll call you the people. The nanny, we'll consider her the Working Class. And your baby brother, we'll call him the Future. Now, think about that and see if that makes sense,"
So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what dad had said.
Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. So the little boy goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father, "Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now."
The father says, "Good son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about."
The little boy replies, "Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in deep poo."

This is a little story that I think that explain what is really politic.
I think that answer at the question: “What is politics?” is simple if you think about the definition of the word POLITICS: Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy. This is the real definition of politics but i think that our politicians don`t think about this definition when they do their work.
I think that politic is something that is in your life always, that lives with you, that help you during your life. It is something that should make a better and simple life… but is it always in this way??
Today politics is fundamental in our life. It help us to respect the laws and to live in a civil country and done civilize…but so, which is the problem? The problem is that people live politics as a distant thing; as a thing that doesn't touch they from near; a thing that don’t belongs to our daily life. There is nothing more wrong. Politics is our life, it is not something outside our life. If we take politics in this superficial way the world will collapses. Thanks to the democracy we can choose ours political and therefore we can’t afford not to think when we take our decisions in this field.
I decided to assemble me on politics in my project of remix culture because I think that it is one of the most important and fundamental things of our life.
In this project I will be a little bit critic because i don't agree at all with the decisions that my country has taken in this field.
But also this is an aspect of the democracy, isn’t it? I think that Italy is becoming a country a little bit superficial and maybe it’s right that we have this kind of Prime Minister but this doesn't brake me to make some satire on him, and I will do this! Sometimes when I see the things that it does or that it also tells during the international meeting, I surprise me that there are still people prepared to vote him. But I repeat, this is the democracy and I accept it, but I try to make to open the eyes to the people of my country making video or writing articles on him and on what he does or what he says. In my work there aren’t almost personal comments because everything that he does doesn't need comments, his actions are explained alone.

So I decided to make a remix between cartoons and politics expecially Italian politics. this to make to see that we often vote characters that seem gone out of the cartoons, that behave in international circle as if they are in a village vacations on the sea. People that don't think seriously about the things that happen in the world but rather people that try to render less dramatic with some bad jokes. So, why we call this thing politics? I think that this is not politics, but therefore… what is politics???



Michela Menghini

ok.. this is my first trailer... !!!

my first trailer