Simple and Useful Guideline in Designing Your Own Website
While it is really tempting to hire a professional web designer, if your budget doesn’t allow you to do so, then you will be better off building your website on your own. Truth is, setting up a functional website that will get the attention of your target audience is not as difficult as you initially thought it to be. If you have finally decided to take on the task of designing your website without the help of a professional, then below are some useful steps that will help you accomplish the task with ease.
- Acquire a domain and register it.
- Look for a reliable provider that will be able to effectively host your website. Settle for a webhost provider that can promise you 99.9% uptime.
- Decide whether you want to design your web-site from scratch or you prefer to use pre-made web templates. Web templates are now widely available online; some are offered for free, while others may need to be purchased for a reasonable price.
- Consider using WordPress – a popular CMS tool – that will help you manage and maintain your site with ease.
- Refrain from putting too much graphics or using flash intro on your site. It is important that your website loads in an instant so as not to turn off your visitors because of a slow-loading page.
- When everything has been setup, all that is left to do is to fill your website with relevant contents. Be sure to post new contents regularly to boost traffic in your site.
Will Big Music Companies Ever Embrace Digital Distribution?
The music industry losses billions of dollars due to the illegal and unauthorized distribution and sharing of music in the internet. Now that we are in the digital age, it seems that big music companies are facing yet another fierce competition – digital media distribution. The internet has offered us utmost convenience when it comes to accessing information online and also downloading various kinds of media, such as mp3. Because of this, sales of cds and dvds continue to drop which means record companies are losing a huge amount of money. However, some saw this as an opportunity to turn the table and also to put a stop to digital piracy.
Over the past years, the music industry has been fighting against piracy but although copyright laws are made to protect the rightful owners, it turns out that this has not stopped pirates from copying music and even entire albums only to be distributed for free online. But since people like easily downloadable media, rather than wasting their energy in stopping piracy why not just simply copy them. This may sound like a ridiculous plan but this is actually something that might work.
It is expected that sites offering unlimited access to mp3 downloads will start to proliferate the internet in the years to come. Record companies will sell copyrights of their songs to these sites in return they will have to share a percentage of their profits to them. Sounds like a good plan right? Doing so will also help ease the problem on illegal music download.
Truth of the matter is, this is not a new plan. In fact, iTunes successfully introduced legal music downloads a long time ago. Though there are still record labels and music companies that are not ecstatic about the idea, they are not completely shunning it either. Besides, as mentioned earlier, we are now in the digital age. Everything we use today, from tv, computers even airconditioners are now digitalized. So why not do the same when releasing music albums. In fact, record companies will save a lot when they opt for a digital release. They won’t have to shell out money for the cds or dvds where the music will be recorded. Instead, they can use that money to advertise their digital music releases which is now very convenient thanks to the emergence of social media. In addition to that, they can even put up legal mp3 streaming sites where users can listen to their favorite music without having to download them. With this said, it is very likely that huge music companies will eventually embrace digital distribution completely. After all, it is better to offer their music at a lowered price than not earning profit at all.
The best thing that huge record labels and music production companies can do is to adapt with the changing trends in the industry, and use the advancing technology to its fullest advantage. However, I strongly believe that copyright laws should be revised to ensure that no one will take advantage of the ease of distributing digital music online. By doing so, the law can protect the rights of not only the record companies but also the music artists as well.
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What’s Preventing Online Movie Streaming
These days, you can practically watch or download anything online. Radio stations are now being streamed live in the internet and so are movies. While it is clear that streaming unauthorized content-may it be movies or music- online is illegal, sites offering free and paid online movie streaming services have been popping up in the cyber world like mushrooms. Because of this, I’m sure I am not the only confused as to whether streaming movies online is legal or not. Common sense would tell you that a newly-released movie being streamed in the internet (days after or even before its release on theatres) online screams illegal all over it. But if there are already a number of paid online streaming sites claiming to offer legal movie streaming, what’s keeping legislators from acknowledging its legality?
For one, the law governing copyright issues is very complicated and too broad to say the least. In the US, copyright infringement occurs when someone illegally reproduce or make profit from distributing any copyrighted media, be it movies, books or music. If this is the case, then it is safe to assume that movie streaming online are illegal since they are being viewed by thousands of users worldwide, with no clear idea indicating whether the copyright of the movie has been bought legally or not. But if it is illegal, why are these sites still in full operation and with the looks of it, more online movie streaming sites-paid and free- continue to emerge on the internet.
While piracy has been an on-going problem even before the conception of the internet, the advancing technology has provided an even better platform for illegal copies of movies and music to be easily distributed to the public. Try browsing the internet, and you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of free movie streaming sites offering the latest movie releases. Although not all of them offer the best copy of the movie, still the movie industry is losing millions or even billions of dollars because of the unauthorized and illegal internet streaming of movies. Since the internet has a worldwide reach, anyone can gain access to the media being streamed online.
What I don’t understand is that, if law makers are not yet ready to get to terms with the legality of internet movie streaming, then how is it possible that Netflix is able to stream and share movies legally for a fee? Knowing this, the copyright law in terms of streaming movies online has just got murkier, at best. Truth of the matter is, there are still a lot of loopholes in the copyright laws. A good example is a copyright lawsuit filed against Zediva, an online movie service that has just been recently launched.
Upon the site’s launch early last year, it became an instant hit. What Zediva does is it that it buys the copyright of recently released movies and then plays the movie on DVD players on their servers and then rent the player for 2 dollars, with the user’s computer acting like the remote. The movies are played on the company’s players one at a time, which Zediva claims give them legal coverage. However, it looks like the law and movie studios are not agreeing with them, since they have been shut down by the US District Court due to an impending case of copyright infringement filed against them.
While the future of Zediva is a bit bleak, at the moment, the company is still positive that they will win the case. The company has come up with two compelling defenses – one gives emphasis to copyright law first sale doctrine stating that anyone who bought copyrighted work assumes the right to do things like modifying its cover or reselling it so long as the copy has been acquired through legal means. Their second argument, meanwhile, states that they the company must not be punished for innovating.
Reading this case got me into thinking that lawmakers must come up with a definitive set of rules as to what really constitutes copyright infringement in the virtual world. With almost everything being distributed, shared and streamed online, if there are online streaming sites that were able to operate legally, then it is safe to say that it won’t be long until legislators finally verify its legality, noting though that movies being streamed were obtained and purchased legally.
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