It just seems useless to be honest, it’s like people are going to find ways around it anyway, you see direct links to CS4 all the time on blogs. So have these companies wasted their money by paying their programmers the premium rate to code the option in? I should think so!

I hate it when I go to a LiveJournal blog and it says “Friends Only,” it just makes me really mad. You do know that business people are always looking at blogs to see if they can find the next big thing? No? Well, for the most part, I do know that press people will often look up recently published content about their company and if they see something they like, they’ll most likely e-mail the author or leave a comment. They often know a lot about job opportunities, like editorial placements, and can get you that dream career you’ve been looking for. I actually know a friend who’s a video game blogger, and he actually ended up writing pieces on magazines and even being interviewed on Sky News. Now, that’s something to brag about isn’t it? I would love to go from just being an ordinary blogger to actually being on the television!

I think we have great writers around us though, we just have them hidden in private journals that only their friends can read. I admit I have one, but I use it for personal matters and not huge essays like these. A lot of my friends have these great opinionated entries about politics, religion, and science, and it’s like, why not make them public? They’re really good and would catch the right people’s eyes, but they refuse to let the whole world read it. The internet wasn’t made to hide our thoughts in the first place, it was meant to be a place where we could put them out to the world.

You know what’s the real problem though? It’s the fact that people are so self-conscience about what they say, and they try and keep it at a low profile so they don’ get asked about it the next day at school. I personally think this shouldn’t be an issue because we shouldn’t be making judgements against the opinions of others. There are people in this world that will poke fun at you for the stuff you say and do, but someone once told me that bad publicity is better than not having any at all. You should be able to let everyone decided what they think of you and not resort to hiding yourself in a little bubble. People will read your thoughts and realize just what kind of person you are, they don’t need to find out from anyone else, nor should they be making everyone’s decision for them.

I’d really love it if for one week people would just make all their entries unprotected, just to see what happens. I think you will find that there will be more people that enjoy reading your journal and diary and that they will praise you with such skill of presenting yourself. I know that high school and middle school are very difficult times to go through, I’ve been through it myself. Some people I knew would result to writing while in class, yet their entries were locked, it automatically gives away what you’re saying. If you go in and out doing that people aren’t going to respect you, it’s proven fact. They’re just as worried as you because you’re now telling your inner circle of friends the opinions you have of them. It’s like you’re not giving them a chance to defend themselves and you’re requiring for everyone to think the same as you. I think the whole idea of having the ability to lock your posts should be scrapped anyway, it’s doing a lot more harm and making people very antisocial.

Now, I’ve had my fair share of downloading, and I’m glad that file sharing programs are starting to disappear, but I don’t like that everyone’s downloading torrents instead. I remember using KaZaA and LimeWire like crazy in the past years, then straight into torrents. I downloading every single song I liked at the time and burned them onto CD or put them on my iPod. I don’t do that nowadays though because I’m all about the quality and am into music production, I feel that it’s not right of me to be downloading music illegally when I have a passion to be involved in the industry that suffers so much from it.

And you know, if the RIAA really wanted to, they could prosecute Google (Blogger) and LiveJournal, and they have a right to it. There are so many blogs and communities on their servers posting hundreds, if not thousands, of links to tracks and albums on a daily basis. Some of these places have been running for years and get a good amount of traffic, so I don’t see how they are not being overlooked. It amazes me with how these sites have so many strict rules now, how they possibly continue to allow for these places to still exist.

I am actually strongly against the DRM-free tagging that Apple thinks will change everything. It might add to their customers, but it’ll only add to our piracy problem because it’ll allow files to end up on the internet faster. What makes you think people aren’t going to donate hundreds to some person just so they can download everything off iTunes and put it online for them? Have you ever expected that? It’s what makes premium design places suffer, so why wouldn’t it be the same for music? Apple thinks that everything they do is for the better though, and that’s coming from someone who has bought many products from them in the last decade.

I seriously think that the internet should be watched more carefully, there’s too much illegal activity going on. I recently got $300 in total taken from me from buying some gift cards and web design (I can do it myself, but I wanted something different for that project), and it’s like, PayPal will do nothing, even though I clearly pointed out that the person had a US bank account when he wasn’t even from the United States! I know it would be a huge privacy issue with the whole world if people had access to it, but I’d rather have that then being scammed out of another $500. What do people do on the internet anyway? They go on Facebook, MySpace, and chat on AOL Instant Messenger all day long.

You shouldn’t feel bothered if your ISP is looking at your messages, they know your address, but they don’t know if you’re a kid, a teenager, or an adult. What I’m saying is that they should be looking at the exact files people are uploading and downloading and reporting them. There is no reason someone should be downloading a weekly Billboard Hot 100 torrent or private MySpace pictures, it’s blatantly stealing (or being perverted in the case of downloading private pictures of girls on MySpace). I know I’m gong to get a lot of backlash on this topic, but I think it’s necessary when you see how much is actually happening.