Essay - Di
From Mod Mania
In this essay, i will talk about production and consumption, how they work in our society. the relation with advertising and how advertising influence people.
As Raymond Williams (1986:68) points out, one of the earliest uses of the term consume meant 'to destroy, to use up, to waste, to exhaust'
and i will also talk about copyright and piracy. Is that wrong if people buy fake stuff? why people buy them? what's wrong with those real stuff? Too expensive? Money problem? or it's just the owner's vanity...
money mod the world???
..............
In the production and consumption, there is a common phenomenon in the whole world. Piracy.
Everybody knows those fake stuff are illegal. But why people keep buying them? First they are pretty cheap; second they are free to use; third there is no big difference between the real thing and fake stuff. When I say there is no ‘big’ difference, means that it does nothing to the copyright.
Copyright is a big deal to the people who own the right. They feel, they create the product then they should have the right to safe them, keep them as their own stuff. Nothing is wrong with it; they are doing the right thing. Imaging if there is no copyright, what will happen? Everyone will just edit the program, change the code or might do something with it. And it’s also nothing wrong; if the program you are using or the stuff u get that you are not happy with it then change it. I think that’s one of the reasons that people like to buy fake stuff, like DVDs, computer programs, clothes, etc; buying fake brand clothes might just for people who have no money to buy the real thing, it’s their vanity prompt them to buy those expensive brand clothes. For the DVDs and computer programs, people want to have the right to change them as well; burn their own DVDs to friends; change the program code to make it more comfortable for themselves. People want to have certain ‘freedom’ to do what they pay for.
For the real creators, the real owners, they might find that a bit annoy because if they give their consumers that certain ‘freedom’, they won’t be their consumers again, they will become to the producers; and they are ‘cheap’, ‘low’ producers; There will be no more profit for themselves; no more money.
We can put the copyright this way; those owners want to protect their own design which is nothing wrong, but they also use that as an excuse to make money out of consumers. The high price, sometimes it’s too high. If we sit down and think carefully, do they really worth that much? No. The consumers penetrate the lie. They won’t pay for that, they find another way to get what they want and stand against copyright. Even though the law does not let the world have a place for the piracy, but it still exists and the quality gets better and better, some of them are already as good as the real one. People probably won’t believe it, but it’s true. No one likes low quality things for sure unless it’s cheap enough. But now everyone knows that even cheap thing comes with good qualities; the good quality, it’s the key. Let’s just say, there are two DVDs in front of you, one is the real one, another one is the fake one; both of them have good qualities; it’s just the fake one is way cheaper than the real one. Which one are you going to pick? Of course, it’s the cheap one. And if you pay less for it and you can also get a same level thing as the real one then why not?
It’s complicated.
...........
