Monthly Archives: March 2010

The argument with the photoshopping of photographs often revolves around the fashion and entertainment world with the photoshopping of models putting forth unrealistic images to the public and making young women strive toward impossible figures.

In France and the UK, governments are debating whether legislation should be made in order to ban this photographs or at the very least putting warnings that would let the reader know that the image they are looking at, like a smooth faced, young looking Madonna, or a supermodel smaller than a size zero, is in fact photoshopped and “enhanced”.

They believe that these images are powerful enough to effect the psyche of young children and could influence them to develop eating disorders or bad self images.

Example:

So why would this come up in the conversation about History? Photoshop is a problem in other fields besides for fashion. Recently in the Beijing Olympics, stories came out about the photoshopping of fireworks in the opening ceremony. Why would they do that or what “harm” could come about that? I think that China’s photoshopping could be seen as a way to put forth this image of a nation of the future. They were able to have these fancy fireworks (footprints in the sky leading to the stadium) and that they should be recognized as a technological force.

Pictures can elicit emotion and also serve as a permanent memory of an event. Photoshopping can doctor these memories and change the emotion of what they photo was trying to document.

Personally, I dislike photoshop. All the pictures I take I do not touch up. I believe that when people change the color temperatures or add effects it changes the overall image and what it was trying to convey. Photoshop can be a dangerous tool and can be used to make an image more threatening (Iran missile launch) or just changing an image to obscure the what is actually going on. I agree with France that there should be some kind of label placed on those pictures and also perhaps putting more emphasis on digital studies and having photoshop experts on panels to examine pictures.

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The Legal Obstacles of Google Books

Short introduction to the project, what it hopes to accomplish, the target audience etc

I hope that my assignment will be used as a High School level introductory course into international and copyright law with a practical example.  I hope that teachers will be able to use the information gathered to guide students to this example to apply the theory that they learned. Teachers will most likely include this website in their syllabus or direct students to read about it so they will get a better understanding of the topic they just learned. I also envision my project would be used to help supplement a kind of moot court in class. A teacher can give the assignment of a similar situation, give this website as background information and have them apply it their case.

Table of Contents (Hyperlinks)

-History of Google and Google Books

-History of the digital book movement and efforts and other players in the game and what they have tried to do, and how Google Books might differ

-Short Explanation of the current international copyright laws and perhaps other important precedent setting cases

-Current legal issues of Google Books

-International Copyright (Just the facts)

-Google Side

-Plaintiff

-Monopoly (Just the facts)

-Google Side

-Plaintiff

-Impact on Academia (why is it important, who does it impact)

-Links to other sites of information and interest

-Conclusion

-Resources/Works Cited

Bolded text will be separate pages while the italicized texts will be pages that branch off from the website (but still be separate pages)