Corporations rule, looking at the BCE/Rogers deal for MLSE

Class is on Tuesday and Friday, not Thursday. I learned that the hard way walking into a French class at SITE, thinking media industries was happening. With that embarassing moment out of the way, let’s get recap what happened in Tuesday’s and today’s lecture.

In Tuesday’s class the focus was on corporations. We looked at two interesting quotes on them in “the corporate is evil” and “corporations are private tyrannies”, from the most quotable man in the world, Noam Chomsky (Strangelove reiterates this in his lectures). Things got more interesting when we talked about the left and right, especially the elite left and right, and their influence on policy. This occurs primarily in terms of the money, they give to governments to run for office, while in return they get favourable policy from the government.

Moving on we touched on the movie “GATTACA”, one of my all-time favourites. Strangelove paused on Uma Thurman, who is one of his personal favourites. Myself, I’d go with Kate Beckinsale. We examined the issue of piracy, a very current topic with the proposed SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act)/PIPA (Protect Internet Property Act) legislation. Strangelove told us how the piracy issue involves 3 main components (examples of each in brackets) starting with policy (SOPA for example) the market (people who use iTunes), and technology (Digital rights management/law). Logically, it all makes sense and along with the issue of regulation, I think is another important element to the piracy discussion.

As for what happened today, groups in class presented their ideas for the video documentary research project. Our group is looking at the Rogers/BCE deal to buy MLSE (my video on it is in the about page on this blog) and all the issues that come with that including, but not limited to regulation, content, foreign investment, etc.

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