Copyright Experience

I've never really been afraid of breaking copyright laws online because I have always in favor of free torrent sharing; until recently. Since I got my first computer I've been downloading torrents saving money like the vast majority of americans do as I accumulated over 6,000 songs. It never really concerned me to buy artists albums since I've always had the mentality that "I go to the support artists at shows and buying merchandise". Recently however for my practicum project I have developed a different mentality towards pirating. I think it is wrong. I spent several hours on every song making sure every note was how I wanted it to be and honestly I can't even begin to imagine the work that professionals do before commercially releasing records. The first action I took after I began creating music was signing up for an itunes account. Believe it or not it took me 6 years to sign up for an account, but now I've already started buying albums. Proud to say my first album bought was the shins; I just had too. But copyrighting is serious and it is getting out of hand in america. Just a couple months ago of my friends who lives in the same apartment complex got an email from warner brothers for illegally downloading your highness. The letter threatened to shut down their internet if downloaded again as well as prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law. Copyrighting is an important aspect of the music and film industry that has constantly been abused. Luckily action is being taken over the last couple years when mass media sharing websites such as limewire and megaupload have been shit down. In all buy music, respect the artist.

and respect me by checking out my songs... soundcloud whaddup!

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=ben+roif

Google Yourself

For many years now it has been a hobby of mine to google myself and my family members in order to learn new information on people, or to see the extent of information available about people on the internet. Personally, there is quite a lot of information about myself on google and I am not sure whether I should view this as a positive thing or a negative thing. On google you are able to find what high school I went to, what sports I played and how I did in those sports (swimming times and basketball stats), the names of my family members, where I live, the name of a CD I sang backup on when I was 7, where I went to camp, my facebook/myspace/livejournal, and almost everything else I have put on the internet. For things like family member names, where I live, my high school, or my social media sites, I believe the access google has to private information and the ability they have to promote these websites that contain this information is quite unbelievable and I feel that this definitely, in some way, breaches my rights to privacy. At the same time, there are also good things about google searches, for example when I am 40 I will be able to see how many points I scored in a high school basketball game, I also sometimes use google to conduct research on family members who have deceased and I never had a chance to meet. For example, on google I discovered a list of my great-grandfather's favorite films, and as a film lover and comm arts major, this list had a huge impact on my life and my taste in films.

Googling Myself

My top hit on Google when I search my name is my Facebook profile page. In bold caps it reads Ben Roif is on Facebook, friend him. I clicked the link and Facebook allows me to view my profile, even though I was already logged onto my account at the time, as if I was someone else who didn’t know me. I was taken back about how accessible my account was, my online life was, to the anyone just one Google search away. I’ve never, until this search, thought about changing my privacy settings I just wrongly assumed only my friends had access to all my pictures and comments. As I’m on my profile as someone that’s logged out Facebook has a side bar to the right of my profile and Facebook ask me if I would like to change my privacy settings. I immediately switched to an option that no one from Google could search my name and have Facebook related items come up. As connected as I am on my social media sites I still am at a point where I don’t want to fully be accessible to anyone.

Besides what I saw on Facebook not a lot surprised me. Under my social media sites were all my past high school sports stats rosters and videos, all things I expected.

I guess the one thing that surprised me was how unique my name was. It seemed by looking through the first few pages of my Google search that I was the only one name Ben Roif searchable on Google.

Googling Myself

After googling my name, I should say that I was a bit disappointed to see nothing come up about me. I googled three names: Monica Lee, Ho Jung Lee, and Ho Jung Monica Lee. Ho Jung Monica Lee is the name that I use on the Facebook, but I did not see my Facebook profile appear on Google. However, I did see two of my Facebook profile photos appear on the image search. On the other hand this search gave me a sense of relief that my information is kept safe in the public, although seeing my photos on the image search was a little creepy. Most of the search results contained information about a young Korean figure skater who has the same name as I do. Out of curiosity I googled my father's name ( in Korean), and his Facebook profile appeared. Other than that I did not see anything interesting appear on Google. Overall, this incident reminded me that individual users are still given the power to choose which information to be shared in public.

Googling Myself

Googling yourself is something that most people have done in their lives at one point or another. Google is a tremendously popular search engine, so its not that unusual for a person to wonder what's on available to the public about them. When I entered my name into google, I was not shocked to find other people's accounts to Facecbook, Twitter, and other popular social-media websites who share the same name as me.

Other things I found were a little more interesting. I now know that in New York City, a fellow Andrew Brodsky found an actual animal toe in his Sabra hummus dip and is now suing them. I also learned about Andrew Brodsky, the star forward for the New Jersey Grizzlies of the National Colligate Roller Hockey Association, which I did not know existed either. All in all, I realized that by searching your name on Google you will find things about yourself you never knew were made public, there are also some things you may be expecting to find that are not on there, and you may also find out about people you have never met before with your same name. In the end, I would say this assignment was one of the more entertaining ones.

Blog 4 - Googling Myself

Before I Googled myself for this blog post, I wasn't entirely sure what I would find since I share the same name as my dad.  I first googled my name in quotes.  This turned up basically nothing except some Linked In profiles for Bill Melcher (which I don't have) and an array of Facebook profiles for various Bill Melchers.

I then decided to add Wisconsin into my search bar to filter out the various great Bill Melchers who live throughout the world (one of which, a Bill Melcher who lives in NC, have tied the Facebook Friend knot).  Again, virtually nothing showed up.  The only noteworthy thing that did appear was info on my dad and the family business that my parents own.  I was a bit dismayed that none of the newspaper stories that charted my 'dominance' in varsity golf didn't show up.  But, I was overall pleased that my efforts to maintain a non-existent presence online, especially via a Google search has paid off.

Out of curiosity, I decided to take a deep breath and try the painful search engine better known as Bing.  This was a bit more troubling than the Google search - although nothing I really expected.  The first result was again a hit for my dad, but the second hit linked directly to my Facebook profile.  After that, a lot of stuff for my dad, although there was a hit for My Life (never heard of this) mentioning that I graduated from Spooner High School in 2008.  Nothing terribly groundbreaking on Bing either.

Google Search

It's been a while since I've googled myself, and it looks as if not much has changed within the last year as far as the search results are concerned. However, this was the first time I searched myself while logged into gmail, and the creepiness of Google and its mission to dominate my internet experience and identity were made even more visible by all of the links to my various google profiles that exist online. Next to the search results was a thumbnail preview of my now abandoned google+ profile with a status bar under it indicating they had not collected enough personal information of mine by showing my profile was only "85% complete."

Just above the first search result, there is a link urging me to learn about something called "Your World," which appears to be another means of synthesizing meaningless information about my friends and the interests I decided to list online in an attempt for Google to convince me that my life is more organized thanks to them.

The search results are a combination of links to social networking profiles as well as domestic and foreign media sharing sites that are all advertising a link to a remix of a Nine Inch Nails song I produced years ago that appeared on a free remix album. This is actually very interesting because it's a way to see how one mp3 file which was originally hosted to only one website, was downloaded by people and then re-uploaded to a myriad of bizarre media sharing sites that have all added images, altered the title, and grouped it with other content all in violation of the terms of the original downloading agreement.

Google Search- Nick Patri

Under normal circumstances-- in an effort to chip away at the evil empire of Google-- I would have done a Bing search of my name. But to keep with the instructions of the assignment, I used Google.
When I type in my full name (Nicholas Patri), only two of the results on the first page are specifically of me. One is my favstar page that has the few tweets of mine that have been favorited or retweeted, and the other is for my blogger.com profile page.
The main thing that comes up is essays by a Cardinal in the Catholic Church back in the 1800s named Nicholas Patrick Wiseman. But a lot of the results show up as 'Wiseman, Nicholas Patri,' so I will assume that Google is trying to pay me a compliment.
What doesn't show up is my Facebook page, which is listed under my full name, and I think I have my privacy settings on there set so my profile won't show up in searches. So, for once, Facebook didn't lie to me.
When I search for 'Nick Patri', a lot more of the results pertain to me. There are a lot of stories from a website I used to write for about Wisconsin Badgers football, and also stories about prep sports that I wrote when I worked for the Wisconsin State Journal.
There are also some stories from my own high school athletics career, which will make it more difficult for me to convince people I was once good at sports.
The searches didn't really bring up anything unexpected, and overall, I'm not too ashamed of what Google found about me online.

Google Search- Sammy Luterbach

I haven't Googled myself for a really long time, so when I did it for this blog post, I was pretty surprised to see how many things popped up. My Google+ information showed up on the very right side of the screen, but the first thing on the list was a link to the images that were attached to my name. They were mostly images that I put on my personal blog or photos from my CollegeFashionista internship. I felt pretty weird about seeing all of the images of me even though I had personally put them online. I guess I never made the connection that everything was so freely linked to my name. I block all of my photos on Facebook in an attempt to be more private, but I never really think about how anyone can search my name is see so many personal photos.

After that were links to my Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts, which I wasn't surprised to see. I feel fine about those being available for everyone to see, because I either don't have personal information on them or have privacy settings how I want them to be. Then I came across a lot of articles I have written for various internships which I was expecting. Weird things to see were obscure comments I've made on YouTube videos or articles and also strange websites that were somehow linked to articles I have written.

After everything pertinent to me, I started to come across things that had to do with family members, mostly cousins who are around my age, who share my last name.

Google Search - Chorney

As many others probably have too, this isn't the first time I've Google searched myself. Looking back, I think I first searched myself senior year of high school when I began using Facebook. This was probably the first time I ever worried, or even considered, people being able to search me on the internet, particularly through Google. Now, I feel like it is something we are constantly thinking about. As many people would agree, what popped up on Google was far from surprising. Many links to social media sites, including the ones I am using for my practicum project, as well as academic or social groups we may be involved in. The one thing I found interesting was that all my high school sports statistics, as well as academics, were pretty high up on this list too. I was surprised that these have not been wiped off - then again, nothing every leaves the internet - it's always in some way or form "still there."

The thing that I found most interesting, and something I hadn't really thought about, was the fact that I typically go by "Coley" and therefore many of the websites, social networking sites, or online areas I am a part of did not come up. Many other people also probably had this happen. We use other types of names or identifications in order to limit the access people have to searching and finding us on Google. While I feel this is a defense mechanism, I also think that it is easy for employers and others to get around this. Once someone has access to any site about someone, they can look deeper, see what people are referring to someone as, and then ultimately find them through nicknames, etc.

All in all, I think Google searching myself was a notable experience mostly because of the social networking sites popping up first. It's crazy to think that 5 years ago many of these would not have popped up - but now, they're running our lives, taking over Google, and making people have easier access to our personal information!

Abby Lex- Google Search

Googling myself was an interesting, although not too surprising experience. The first thing that pops up are personal results for Google+ profiles and what I found interesting there is that not only did it pull up a link to my profile but it also pulled one up for my boyfriend presumably because I had been tagged on his page at some point. It of course found my Facebook page and even my Myspace page, which made me laugh because I hadn't looked at or thought about that profile in a long time.

After these the results went downhill; it was just a bunch of random links that had my name connected to them somehow. This wasn't really surprising at all, but it is still interesting that there are so many random things that can be connected to my name (15,400,000 results apparently).

Blog Post 4-Google Search of Myself

So when I Googled myself I found mostly what I thought I would find but some surprising things as well.

The first thing I saw on the web results page was a picture of myself saying "1 personal result". It stated it was a limited profile so I'm assuming it was not publicly accessed.

The first link that came up was the homepage of Michelle Ruse who is a middle-aged woman at works at Iowa State University.

The next 2 links were about my profile on Facebook. These links only stated information that I securely provided for the public to see. Another link was on my LinkedIn Profile and stated information about my work experience and education.

Really, there was no information that I found that was inaccurate or inappropriate. The only surprising link that I found was a blog post that I did for a class last semester that was posted on the UW-Go Big Read blog. I thought this was kind of cool since I'm not really interactive in the online world outside of school and work.

All in all my Google search was successful and not too surprising.

Google Search of Myself

Well to be honest I googled my name once before for the heck of it, and I got pretty much the same results today as I did back then. Nothing related to me even shows up; there are a bunch of links to facebooks, linkedins, and other sites with my name, and even people with my middle initial, but none of them are me. I have all my online things set to be pretty private so I guess this doesn't surprise me. I knew my facebook wouldn't show up, and assumed my twitter wouldn't either since I use my youtube name, not my real name, on that site. Overall this is what I expected considering I don't have extensive networking and don't actively participate in things online that would put my name out there. In middle school and high school I think there may have been times where, through the newspaper or school, my name would be on the web, but those days are over. I'll be interested to see how much stuff about other people shows up.

After failing to appear in the website search, I checked under images as well to see if anything might come up even remotely related to myself, but nothing there either. According to google, I don't really exist, or am extremely hard to find! Which personally I think I like because I don't want too much info out there (not that anyone would be looking me up anyway...).

Googling Tory World

Ha! I Googled my name and had a major flash back. Before I released an album called, I'm Being Sarcastic that I did whilst living in Seattle, I released an EP in 2006 called I Voted For Bush (Because I Want to Die). The song was released right before the election. It appears as though CD Baby is still selling that EP.

Because I used my name to do my earlier music most of what I find about my name is related to music in some way. But, my name, Tory, is the name of a British political party and it comes up that way too. My last name yields an infinite number of results.

The thing that surprises me is that the number of databases that are crossed. For example, I did put the EP up on CD Baby. But it shows up on places that I had nothing to do with, such as All Music and Amazon. Because I was in the pursuit of being a "known" musician, I don't really care if the information is out there. I did not see anything too personal, so I am all good. My Facebook profile used to be the first thing to show up, but that account was cancelled and the new profile says World-McKnight.

Google Yourself

Today I googled myself.  What I found was not surprising. The first thing to show up in the results was a link to my Facebook page.  The second was a link to another Molly Diedrich on Facebook. I found that to be interesting as she is a college student as well.  The third link I found in the search results was my LinkedIn profile.

Now surprising.  Apparently I am a gymnast.  No idea if I am good or not but I most be doing okay as I have shown up in the results.  So if anyone knows anything about Gymnastics you should tell me how I am doing.

So I am not surprised that I didn't get narrowed results to all of my social networking sites.  I believe this is because I usually use Molly Marie Diedrich.  I googled myself again. Google then asked if I meant dietrich. No I meant Diedrich.  Gosh.

What I found by typing in my full name was a lot more.  But only in terms of Facebook. The first was again a link to my Facebook page.  The next result was odd because it was a link to an Event I had posted to back into 2011. I would guess that this showed up because it was a public Facebook Event that I commented on.  I'm glad to see that Facebook privacy terms are working.

I am surprised to say that my Twitter page did not come up. It did appear in a much later result.  I was surprised by that because I am very active on it.  I wonder if it may be because I have choose who may follow me.  But besides this, I didn't find anything that was too surprising.