Week 11: summary on 197-210

Alexander Cheung writes an opposing essay about the legality of file sharing. Napster created a program that allowed people around the world to download any kind of music. The music industry did not approve of such program that would steal away their business. They took legal action against Fanning, the creator of Napster, in a publicized court case. The music industry succeeded and shutdown Napster’s operation, but his peer-to-peer file sharing still functioned. The P2P program enabled people to download music and other files from different users. Matthew Scrivner from his essay, “In Defense of Music…” explains that, “music is not a tangible object, but rather experiences that cannot be owned by anyone save for the individual listener.” In contrast, Spanier argue that illegally downloading music can be seen as plagiarism is not a good argument. Music and plagiarism does not correlate well because of their vast differences. Music does not support the educational goal, but plagiarism and the stealing of music can be seen as a copy righted material because its an intellectual property. Amos Esty in “Investigating a Mega-Mystery,” explains that the early inhabitants of this planet drove large land animals to extinction. He says, “humans moved rapidly through the Notrth America continent, wiping out most megafauna.” Even in this century, people or continuing to hunt down animals to near extinction. Many animals become endangered and therefore, are protected by special agencies. In recent date in Africa, they are only about 15,000 lions reaming compared to 2 decades ago when 150,000 lions were thriving. Many organizations are helping to protect wildlife from extinctions, creating barriers around national forest to protect them from the thriving species; humans. But some argue that rapid climate change can also play a role in the exticntion of animals, but climate is always changing. There are still a large debate on the issue because there is no singularity in the matter. Noah Feldman, in “America’s Church-State Problem,” explains that evangelicals and protestants do not focus on of religious traditions but rather focus on identifying moral values that can be shared by everyone. He added, “If we could be more tolerant of sincere religious people drawing on their beliefs and practices to inform their choices in public realm, and at the same time be more vigilant about preserving our legacy of institutional separation between government and organized religion, the shift would redirect us to the uniqueness of the American experiment with church and state.” In the early times, church governed the government itself until they were separated by the powers invested by the people who rose against the church. In modern time, the system is balanced in a way that we become operational, maintaining the separation of church from state. Although it is acceptable to have a religious perspective in a given position, it is not ideal because it may influence the choices a person may make that can affect many lives who are not of the same faith.