Commercial vs. Independent Content: Human and Financial Resources

Concerning their human and financial resources commercial media and independent content provider are an extremely unequal pair. While the 1998 revenues of the world's leading media conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom and the News Corporation) amounted to US$ 91,144,000,000 provider of independent content usually act on a non-profit basis and to a considerable extent depend on donations and contributions.

Also the human resources they have at their disposal quite differ. Viacom for example employs 112,000 people. Alternative media conversely are mostly run by a small group of activists, most of them volunteers. Moreover the majority of the commercial media giants has a multitude of subsidiaries (Bertelsmann for instance has operations in 53 countries), while independent content provider in some cases do not even have proper office spaces. Asked about their offices number of square meters Frank Guerrero from RTMark comments "We have no square meters at all, because we are only on the web. I guess if you add up all of our servers and computers we would take up about one or two square meters."

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The 19th Century: Machine-Assisted Manufacturing

Eli Whitney's proposal for a simplification and standardization of component parts marked a further milestone in the advance of the automation of work processes. In 1797 he suggested the manufacture of muskets with completely interchangeable parts. As opposed to the older method under which each gun was the individual product of a highly skilled gunsmith and each part hand-fitted, his method permitted large production runs of parts that were readily fitted to other parts without adjustment and could relatively easy be performed by machines.

By the middle of the 19th century the general concepts of division of labor, assembly of standardized parts and machine-assisted manufacture were well established. On both sides of the Atlantic large factories were in operation, which used specialized machines to improve costs, quality and quantity of their products.

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Basics: Rights Recognized

Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of a work are lawful only if they are done with the authorization of the owner of the copyright. The most typical are the following:

- copying or reproducing a work
- performing a work in public
- making a sound recording of a work
- making a motion picture of a work
- broadcasting a work
- translating a work
- adapting a work

Under certain national laws, some of these rights, which are referred to, as "economic rights'" are not exclusive rights of authorization but in specific cases, merely rights to remuneration. Some strictly determined uses (for example quotations or the use of works by way of illustration for teaching) are completely free, that is, they require neither authorization of, nor remuneration for, the owner of the copyright. This practice is described as fair use.

In addition to economic rights, authors enjoy "moral rights" on the basis of which they have the right to claim their authorship and require that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with other uses thereof. They also have the right to oppose the mutilation or deformation of their creations.

The owner of a copyright may usually transfer his right or may license certain uses of his work. Moral rights are generally inalienable and remain with the creator even after he has transferred his economic rights, although the author may waive their exercise.

Furthermore there exist rights related to copyright that are referred to as "neighboring rights". In general there are three kinds of neighboring rights: 1) the rights of performing artists in their performances, 2) the rights of producers of phonograms in their phonograms, and 3) the rights of broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs. Neighboring rights attempt to protect those who assist intellectual creators to communicate their message and to disseminate their works to the public at large.

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Doubls Bind Messages

Double bind messages are extremely effective.
For example in Nicaragua the Sandinistas were seen as the personification of the evil. Demonization was the tool to make the U.S.-population to believe that. And the propaganda, called "Operation Truth", succeeded - and is successful until today. The Sandinistas are still considered an enemy in the head of the people. The media played the role of spreading propaganda - nearly without any criticism.
By the end of the 1980s the USA even paid Nicaraguans for voting other parties than the Sandinistas.

El Salvador was a similar case. Again the guerrilla got demonized. The difference was the involvement of the Catholic Church, which was highly fought against by the ruling parties of El Salvador - and those again were financially and organizationally supported by the USA. The elections in the 1980s were more or less paid by the USA.
U.S.-politicians were afraid El Salvador could end up being a second Cuba or Nicaragua. Every means was correct to fight this tendency, no matter what it cost.
On the 21st of September 1996, the Washington Post published several documents proofing an old rumor: not only that Central American soldiers had been educated in a U.S.-army school (the SOA), they also were taught to use torture as a method against revolutionaries. Some of the Salvadorian "students" of that school became very famous for being extremely cruel, one of them being General Roberto d'Aubuisson (35), the person who ordered the killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.

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News Corporation

The News Corporation Ltd., a global media holding company, which governed News Limited (Australia), News International (U.K.), and News America Holdings Inc. (U.S.) was founded by the Australian-born newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's corporate interests center on newspaper, magazine, book, and electronic publishing; television broadcasting; and film and video production, principally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

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Waihopai Station

Waihopai Station on the South Island of New Zealand was established specifically to target the international satellite traffic carried by Intelsat satellites in the Pacific region and its target in the mid-1990s is the Intelsat 701 that came into service in January 1994, and is the primary satellite for the Pacific region.

Source: Nicky Hager, Secret Power, New Zealand's role in the international spy network, (Craig Potton, 1996), Chapter 2

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Sun Microsystems

Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Palo Alto, USA, Sun Microsystems manufactures computer workstations, servers, and software.

http://www.sun.com

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,108249+1+105909,00.html .

http://www.sun.com/
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0...
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McCann Erickson

Alfred W. Erickson founded the advertising agency McCann Erickson in 1902. In1913 McCann opened a San Francisco office and a Detroit office that moved to Cleveland in 1915. With operations in 127 countries, McCann reaches across the globe and continues to expand its capabilities through start-up units and acquisitions. McCann has recently added creative resources in the local, pan-regional and global arenas and also extended its expertise in specialized marketing categories, such as business-to-business and high-tech communications.

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