Chose an interesting Topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Chose an interesting Topic - Essay Example The purpose of this brief paper is to identify the various stages of relationship that my best friend and I went through growing up, identify conflicts that emerged between us, and to formulate a conclusion about the value of such interpersonal relationships. Our friendship was initiated during grade school. Ahmed and I ended up in the same class one particular year, with him being new to the school. Like most kids, I did not pay much attention to the ‘new kids’. Over time, however, I realized that we both had so much in common. We shared the same interests in sports, classes at school, and outside activities. It seemed that we would have been great brothers. During this stage of our just beginning friendship, I suppose we began to explore each other. Good friends are hard to come by, and we both wanted to make sure that we truly desired to invest the time in each other to make such a friendship work, blossom, and become a lifelong partnership. As the months of that scho ol year went by, our friendship began to intensify. This began with us playing simple games in the schoolyard. Before long, Ahmed was regularly in with my own group of friends, and he quickly became one of the ‘gang’. Over time, Ahmed and I spent more time with each other than others in the group because of our intensifying belief that we would make great friends. We had so much in common, it seemed that we were meant to help each other along life’s journey. Naturally, we were typical school age children growing up in the Middle East. We got into mischief, respected our elders when they were in our presence, and scorned them when they were not. During this intensifying portion of our friendship, Ahmed and I frequently would go to each other home’s after school, and we both got to know each other’s family well. In short, we became best friends within the span of a single school year. During the school year, life is quite hectic, especially for a youn g boy. There are many responsibilities to take care of, both at school and at home. Since Ahmed and I only met at the beginning of a school term, we needed that first year to discover one another and begin the process of growing our friendship. It was not until the end of the school year, and the beginning of the summer break, that our relationship turned quite stable. It was during that first summer that we were truly inseparable. Every day we were together, playing together and just enjoying life together. We shared our experiences together and it was during this stable stage of our relationship that I can honestly say forged our friendship for life, even when conflict eventually would arise. We remained like that for several years. A stable foundation had been laid and we were comfortable around one another. We continued to study together, played on various teams together, and our families even became great friends. On two different occasions, Ahmed took a holiday with my family, and I went with him and his family at least once that I can remember. Most every relationship will have its difficult times, and my friendship with Ahmed was no exception. While we had our minor disagreements during grade school, they were easily resolved as being over something petty. As we entered high school, however, our friendship entered into a period of decline. Looking back upon it, different interests got in our way and we both lost sight of what friendship truly was about. In high school, we were often in different classes, separate from

Public argument Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Public argument - Essay Example It opposes the highly punitive and restrictive approach to copyright in digital media because it has not and will not solve digital piracy and instead, innovative business models with collectivistic values can help curb it. Increasingly punitive copyright laws are not effective in ending digital piracy because technology is faster than lawmaking. Several laws have been passed for the past twenty-five years that support copyrighted media, but up to now, digital media continue to be pirated and shared through P2P and other networking systems. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) provides a structure that implements a system of copyright protections, which include important automatic restrictions with criminal and civil sanctions, wherein they generally define â€Å"knowledge as an asset more than a public resource† (Filby 207). The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) reinforced the CDPA, as it treated various media products as corporate assets, even when t hey were previously perceived and used as public resources. Despite these laws, digital media piracy continues, particularly affecting the industries of movies, TV shows, and music. Corporate media firms allege that they are losing billions of dollars because of piracy and free content sharing online. Supporters of stricter copyright policies promote the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress and its Senate bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills aim to stop websites and organizations, including those outside the United States, from selling or sharing pirated copyrighted digital media material and fake counterfeit goods. These are additional laws that will fail as others have because technology changes rapidly enough to support digital piracy and free sharing of copyrighted products. A good example of failed copyright laws is the Rojadirecta Case, where technology facilitates the ineffectiveness of these laws. On February 1, 2011, the U.S. government seized the rojadirecta.c om and rojadirecta.org domain names. These websites provided a guide to Internet TV (Picker). Compared to the initial business of Napster, Rojadirecta gives links, not direct hosting, to assist P2P TV (Picker). Rojadirecta might have lost its U.S. domain names, but it easily fixed the problem by establishing new domain names offshore and relocating them to Spain at rojadirecta.es (Picker). In other words, it is back to business as usual. Organizations, groups, and individuals that support free sharing know international laws, and they have a large and supportive network, as well as the money and technology to help them continue their services in any part of the world. Globalization through the Internet has expanded the boundaries and opportunities for these stakeholders. The U.S. government and media corporations can paint them as the bad guys, but for their allies and customers, they are the good guys, who are using technology for freedom of speech and digital media content. Thus, the case of Rojadirecta shows that people with technology will always find a way to circumvent these copyright laws because they believe that they are right in using digital media as public resources. The tighter the laws, the more rebelliously creative they become. What should the government do instead? Look away as digital pirates sell content that others own and many customers pay