Argumentative Essay On Gambling - 730 Words

Gambling has been a major entertainment for people in Las Vegas since many years ago. Gambling is a form of excitement that by definition is putting a value at risk. Gambling usually takes place in casinos’ in Las Vegas, in different forms, for instance, poker, slot machines, blackjack and etc. Some of these games require skills and some is pure chance. However, the profit that customers make by participating in gambling significantly lower than the profit that casinos’ make. Due to the fact that casinos’ have a strictly controlled environment and gather data from each customer on a daily basis for their own profit. In my opinion, gambling can be fun, exciting and a good activity to amuse one. Nevertheless, if one becomes obsessive for†¦show more content†¦To begin with nowadays casinos’ control nearly all the behaviors of their customer so that based on the data they gather they can decide how to serve each customer in order to generate revenue. For instance, the Caesars Rewards Program contains data on nearly 45 million costumers (O’Keefe 2015). Additionally, they can track the behaviors of each machine, dealer, and costumer. Therefore, they can realize that if a customer is cheating or is playing against the rules, which in my opinion, drastically changes the whole aspect of gambling since many customers may be triggered to cheat in order to win more money which is understandable. Another method that casinos’ have to keep their costumers is that they provide many services for costumers as they enter the casino. for example, they ask if they’re staying at a hotel or need a ride to the airport. Which in my opinion it is just a simple method that many places use in order to keep their costumes. Finally, gambling is generally associated with taking risks. Hence, if one is fearless and takes more risks the chances of winning may increase for him/her. However, the idea that if one loses money by instinct one can argue, they may put more money in the game so that they can win back the amount of money they lost. Casinos’ may use this as a weakness therefore in some indirect ways they may push costumers towardsShow MoreRelatedPhl 320 Critical Thinking and Decision Making in Business Complete Class996 Words   |  4 Pageshelped you in your life. †¢ What do you expect to learn from this course? Write a paragraph summarizing the discussion. PHL 320 Week 1 Knowledge Check PHL 320 Week 2 Globalization Argumentative Paper Review the Writing Argumentative Essays section in Ch. 3 of Critical Thinking Write an argumentative paper of no more than 750 words that demonstrates why globalization is good or not good for a business. The paper should define the term good, and should identify the premises and conclusionsRead MoreThe Controversial Issues Of Young People Using Internet And Communication Technologies1680 Words   |  7 Pagesmobile media has been widely used. The consequences of them on young people are powerful, however it has been an argumentative issue throughout years as the impacts contain both positive and negative sides. Based on the data from American life Project, there is an increasing rate of young people using smartphones and online social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter. This essay focuses on the controversial issues of young people using internet and communication technologies, whether this shouldRead MoreWork: Scientific Method and Exploratory Research1888 Words   |  8 Pagessituations where prior analysis could be conducted instead. Argumentative topics †¢ Abortion – is it the best method for unwanted pregnancies. †¢ Plastic surgery – is it really necessary? And is it safe? †¢ Smoking Should be Banned †¢ The internet – the best thing since the invention of the television. †¢ Breast feeding should be a must for the first 6 months of a child. †¢ Should artistes be given special government subsidies? †¢ Gambling should be legal the world over. †¢ Is domestic violence increasingRead MoreA Typical Victorian Villian in The Speckled Band Essay2526 Words   |  11 PagesCoursework-The Speckled Band How does Conan Doyle present Dr. Grimesby Roylott as a typical Victorian Villain. Having now read this book I feel I am now able to complete this essay about Roylott. The main constituents of a typical classic murder mystery invariably consist of a body, a motive, a weapon, a suspect, an alibi and a detective. Conan Doyle’s,The Speckled Band demonstrates all those typical characteristics. I am now going to briefly summarise the story and identify each of the Read More Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Essay6669 Words   |  27 PagesPride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Pride and prejudice is a novel written by Jane Austen and is probably one of the most famous and best loved novels in the English language. In my essay I shall be comparing the proposals of Mr Collins and Mr Darcy to Elizabeth. A proposal is a declaration of love to one person involving powerful feelings where one cannot imagine going on in life without the other, it is also a great compliment. The central theme of the novel is marriage. As well asRead MoreTop 1 Cause for Project Failure65023 Words   |  261 Pagescases I am a stakeholder but in the latter I am an active stakeholder. The end user is ALWAYS a customer regardless their level of involvement. †¢ [pic] Robert Lewis President at IT Catalysts, Inc. Jim ... At the risk of sounding argumentative, I ll state two points with certainty: 1. End-users aren t customers. As a matter of definition (admittedly, our definition), customers are the people who make or influence buying decisions. They might or might not be the people who use theRead MoreDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words   |  1617 Pagessolvers and decision makers who prefer to deal with technical tasks and straightforward, prescribed problems rather than social or interpersonal issues. They excel at problems that have one correct answer. Multiple-choice exams are preferred over essay exams. Research has suggested that these individuals are inclined toward careers in technology, engineering, and law. In college, students with a knowing style tend to major in the physical sciences, engineering, law, and computers. In business, theyRead MoreStephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge (2011) Organizational Behaviour 15th Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall393164 Words   |  1573 Pagesfriendly and close interpersonal relationships. McClelland and subsequent researchers focused most of their attention on nAch. High achievers perform best when they perceive their probability of success as 0.5—that is, a 50–50 chance. They dislike gambling with high odds because they get no achievement satisfaction from success that comes by pure chance. Similarly, they dislike low odds (high probability of success) because then there is no challenge to their skills. They like to set goals that require

Euthanasia And Physician Assisted Suicide Essay - 1465 Words

A person should have the right to choose what medical interventions he or she would or would not have implemented in a life threatening situation, but euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS) does not align with the code of ethics that health care providers are sworn to and, therefore, should not be practiced. Research has shown that only a fraction of individuals who qualify for end-of-life (EOL) care options, such as hospice, have heard about what options are available to them. Patients who seek out interventions such as euthanasia and PAS only do so because they feel that it is the only thing that will end their suffering. If such individuals were well informed about just how comprehensive, individualized, and effective EOL services such as hospice can be, euthanasia and PAS would quickly move down on the list of possibilities. We must, as a society, strive to inform and encourage those suffering with terminal illness, not simply end suffering by ending life itself. Right to Die: Right or Wrong? Death has and will always be a very controversial topic. The United States (U.S.), often referred to as the ‘melting pot’ of the world, may be the most controversial nation of all in regards to this topic. There are so many different cultures represented in the U.S. and each culture has a very unique approach to death. Some cultures believe that death is the end of an individual’s existence while others believe it is the beginning of another life. According toShow MoreRelatedEuthanasia And Physician Assisted Suicide865 Words   |  4 Pagessubject for people; add in the idea of assisted suicides and there’s an uproar in society. Euthanasia or physician assisted suicide is a very controversial topic in our society today. Physician assisted suicide by definition is â€Å"suicide by a patient facilitated by means (as a drug prescription) or information (as an indication of a lethal dosage) provided by a physician aware of the pa tient’s intent (Merriam-Webster). 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With the pending status of the law, the question remains on whether or notRead MoreEuthanasia Or Physician Assisted Suicide961 Words   |  4 PagesEuthanasia or physician assisted suicide, is the painless killing of a patient, suffering from a painful or incurable disease, like cancer, or alzheimer s, the practice is illegal in most countries, incl uding the United States, although in the United States, it is a state decision, the only state in the United States that it is legal in is Oregon. Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act in 1994, making euthanasia legal for chronically ill patients, the only caveat is that the doctor is allowedRead MoreEuthanasia, And Physician Assisted Suicide863 Words   |  4 Pagesare: euthanasia, and physician assisted suicide. Internationally, assisted suicide is a doctor prescribing drugs that end life. The patient is responsible for taking them. Euthanasia is the medication administered by doctors. Today, four countries have laws that allow euthanasia. (Ellis and Bronwyn) A few have laws for physician assisted suicide, and several countries have no laws against suicide. (Humphry) The United States of America have recently added a 5th state to offer assisted suicideRead MorePhysician Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia Essay1039 Words   |  5 PagesPhysician Assisted Suicide Is physician assisted suicide ethical? Physician assisted suicide is an up and coming ethical question that examines a person’s right to their own death. Many people support physician assisted suicide, citing that it can save a lot of pain and suffering. Others claim that the concept of physician assisted suicide is a slippery slope. A slippery slope in the sense that if society accepts euthanasia as a rightful death for the terminally ill, they will potentially acceptRead MoreEuthanasia And Physician Assisted Suicide1629 Words   |  7 Pagesproblems, assisted suicide creates options to reduce the amount of suffering the patient must enduring. Dying with dignity could be beneficial for not only the person who is dying, but also the person’s family and loved ones. This option, however, is often viewed as unethical and immoral throughout society. Physician-assisted suicide offers an option for those with health issues but poses various ethical and social issues. Assisted death is practiced in two different ways: euthanasia and physician-assistedRead MorePhysician Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia Essay1806 Words   |  8 PagesPuett WRIT 1401 12/06/16 Physician Assisted Suicide Beginning in the 1970s, terminally ill patients were given the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment to end their own life, a process commonly referred to as euthanasia. They would be taken off life support, and death would be allowed to take its natural course. This idea was controversial at first, but now a bigger issue has taken its place. Many patients claim that they reserve the right to physician assisted suicide—killing oneself with meansRead MoreEuthanasia And Physician Assisted Suicide997 Words   |  4 PagesEuthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: The Right to Die with Dignity (The Legalization, At Risk Groups, and Rebuttal) The possible legalization of voluntary euthanasia and physician assisted suicide brings concerns in regards to how well it will be accepted. There are contradictions that exists between government and church when it comes to the morals and values placed on human life. Although, society has concerns in regards to at risk community groups and the type of treatment availableRead MoreEuthanasia And Physician Assisted Suicide1504 Words   |  7 Pageslegalizing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, we would provide â€Å"vulnerable† patients with better overall protection and health care, give patients (who are excruciatingly suffering and have no chance of recovery) the option to end their lives before they ever needed to go through such an ordeal and giving them peace of mind, and spare the families of the patients the emotional pain of watching their loved one slowly and painfully passing away. For these reasons, I believe that euthanasia and Physician-AssistedRead More Euthanasia And Physician Assisted Suicide1249 Words   |  5 Pagesview euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide not as murder or suicide, but rather a release from the pain that holds down and a quicker, less painful way to get to the end that will happen anyways. Euthanasia is becoming much more of a hot topic in the news, both here at home in the US, as well as on the global stage with the new Prime Minister of Canada pushing for a law that would allow nationwide physician assisted death. As of now only a few states have legalized physician-assisted suicide

The Tale of Captain Bookbeard an Account of Book Piracy free essay sample

The Tale of Captain BookBeard: An account of Book Piracy A bibliophilic stroll in the streets and lanes of Kolkata is bound to get across the cries of Captain BookBeard coming from the Sea of Poppies1, The Sea of Monsters2 and The Ship of Stars3, and as one starts to wonder about the whereabouts of this ever present, as almost in every pavementbookstalls, yet elusive pirate lord, a tale starts to emerge as the tip of a stealthy ice-berg which dwells in the heart of the world of letters. Book piracy, a comparatively unknown and unfelt form of socio-economic cancer, is the common disease of every nation. But its effect is visible mostly in the developing ones, where the lack of proper implementation of law, huge disparityridden economy, rise in literacy rate and the growing cosmopolitan literary taste creates a perfect biome for the broadsides of pirate-ships to devastate the publishing houses and book-sellers selling un-pirated copies. No right to copy! Innovations require incentives this is the basic idea behind the idea of ‘copyright’ that protects a writer’s work from being copied, printed and distributed without his/her prior permission, through legal sanction. Book piracy comes under the broader spectrum of ‘copyright infringement’ which includes such creative fields like songs, films, software, etc. Though, it had existed from the end of the 15th century, when competing printers started to use unfair practices, thus far before anything even close to a copyright law has been adopted anywhere. Britain was the first nation to legally designate the issue of protecting the right over one’s own creativity, and in 1709 through the Statute of Anne (enforced on the next year) in Great Britain, the authors got some protection as far production of reprints of their works was concerned and through the gradual evolution in the successive years like Engravers Act of 1735 and Copyright 1 2 Fiction/novel by Amitabh Ghosh Fiction/novel by Rick Riordan 3 Fiction/novel y Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 2 Act of 1842 to name a few, in 1911 came the Imperial Copyright Act that became somewhat the benchmark of copyright laws all over the world and soon other nations followed suit. It’ll be imperative to note that copyright based industries helps both the economic and creative fronts of any society. The Indian scenario Print industry in India is one of the most well established and oldest media forms in the country. It is more than a century old and is one of the only two growing print industries in the whole world besides the USA4 with near about 19,000 publishers publishing 90,000 titles per year that, according to estimation of Shakti Malli, president of the Federation of Indian Publishers, is currently â€Å"worth Rs. 80 billion and it is growing by over 15 percent every year. †5 What was once a Rs. 330 crore export industry in 1991 has blossomed into Rs. 4. 6 billion global force post globalization of Indian economy and industry. Both the post-colonial status and the globalization of education, perception and media, factors behind 45 per cent of titles being published in India to be in English, placing the country behind only the U. S. and the U. K. as the third largest publisher of English books in the world. And this includes not only magazines, newspapers and textbooks, but fiction too (though its percentage is lower as compared to the other genres) that includes prose and poetry of foreign and Indian writers (both includes translated works too) ranging from classics to contemporary bestsellers. Thus this fruition of Indian publishing industry, taking a rather ironic tone, shows to be a brooding place for copyright infringement, ranging from minor violations to naked piracy. 1847 saw the British Governor-General Sir Henry Hardinge issuing the first copyright law in India that was replaced by the 1911’s Imperial Copyright Act which finally got transformed and developed into independent India’s first copyright act, the Act of 1957 (came into effect on 1958) which in turn, through many amendments, resulted into the present day laws being 4 â€Å"Business Profile of Print Industry†, by MICA, Ahmedabad (Sep 2009), www. echno-preneur. net/information-desk/sciencetech-magazine/2009/september09/print. pdf (accessed on 25/10/11) 5 â€Å"India’s Book Publishing Industry Booming†, Boulevard India blog archive, boulevardindia. com/2006/09/28/indias-book-publishing-industry-booming/ (accessed on 25/10/11) 3 enforced. In India, copyright on a literary wo rk is provided for the lifetime of the author plus sixty years. Though this has been changed upon special government rulings, as in the case of Rabindranath Tagore, the rule is to be strictly maintained by the publishing houses until any work comes into the public domain. The Buccaneers’ business Like the infamous cut-throats of the old, the new age buccaneers ravage the calm seas of publishing industry by incurring a loss of about 25 percent of their total business in India that in the fiction-genre alone is about 400 crores! R. Gopalan, the Director of Indian Institute of Publishing, Chennai says â€Å"Asian and Latin American countries, according to international book publishers, are the countries where book piracy has assumed alarming dimensions. The interAmerican Publishers Group estimates that globally about 50 billion book pages are illegally reprinted every year! †6 Their ships roam many lane and by-lanes of all of the major and minor metros of the nation and even in the domain of internet though the new-age malice of eBookpiracy. The crew of BookBeard are those who are neither the legal copyright holders, nor anyone authorized by them, but still carries on with the printing, binding and distribution of literary works that robs the publisher of legitimate money and the writer of his creative due and the money from royalty. The latter case becomes even more caustic when sometimes pirated books either carry no name of its true author, or carry a fake name along with a fake title, either just to make it harder to detect in the eyes of the vigilant authority or Lord knows why! A peep into the pavement-bookstalls of Gariahat in Kolkata, to the amazement of the beholder, found an edition of White Tiger7 with no mention of its author’s name and even a spurious book named Chatalogues of Detection, again without any author’s name mentioned, which turned out really to be a copy of Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life upon being flipped through the pages! Gopalan, R. â€Å"The bane of book piracy† The Hindu, Jun 01, 2003 http://www. hindu. com/thehindu/lr/2003/06/01/stories/2003060100490700. htm (accessed on 26/10/11) 7 Fiction/novel by Arvind Adiga 4 In India, government is the largest publisher with the NCERT, different state board’s publishers, NBT, etc. taken together8, both in terms of titles published and number of copies being published and also in the value of production. Government publication is related mostly to educational textbooks. But, it simply cannot meet the huge rise in demand owing to population explosion and rise in literacy rate and this ultimately results in the shortage of text books every year; added to this comes the unscrupulous practice of book-traders who deliberately hoard many copies, later to be black-marketed in higher price than that’s printed, thus further widening the gulf between demand and supply. Here comes the pirate man-of-wars to fill that gulf by producing cheap but unauthorized editions that not only hampers the government publishing houses but also, as a curious surprise, sometimes leads to the curbing of the black-marketers. Rather an un-valorous duel between robbers and pirates! In Kolkata, the hoarding of NCERT text-books has received the full brunt of BookBeard’s sixteen-pounders by the rise in sell of pirated NCERT editions in College Street, RajpurSonarpur, etc. But, the quality of these pirated copies, as with other pirated works as well, is generally of very low quality, and the students have to bear with them on account of government’s failure to produce enough number of copies and also in regulating the increase of corruption in book-trade. On 29th April 2008 the Kolkata Police raided a warehouse at Amherst Street in north Kolkata and found over 4,500 pirated English and Environment Science text books of Classes V-X originally issued by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and arrested a man, but failed to arrest any of the kingpins, nor did they unearth the complete racket that ran the whole business. 9 Piracy in books has four main different forms: i) wholesale reprinting of trade text books, ii) unauthorized translations, iii) commercial photocopying of books and journals and iv) distribution of free eBooks. And while the first two are very difficult to track owing to their clandestine modus operandi, the third one happens so nakedly all over the country, mainly near big educational institutions, and in ways very scattered, that in spite of being open to the eyes of law, is prevalent due to lack of awareness in public and agents of law enforcement alike. The 8 â€Å"Study on copyright piracy in India†, Ministry of HRD, govt. of India, education. nic. in/cr_piracy_study/cpr. sp (accessed on 25/10/11) 9 â€Å"Raid nets cache of pirated textbooks† The Telegraph, Apr 30, 2008 http://www. telegraphindia. com/1080430/jsp/calcutta/story_9207036. jsp (accessed on 26/10/11) 5 problem with the last one is in the very porous nature of internet itself that makes it the most difficult of the four to track and prevent. Educational institutions turn blind eyes to reprography the method of obtaining copies of a book through photocopying, happening in their vicinities. Students of any developing country, like India, can ill-afford to buy all of the required books, so they either photocopy parts of books that they get from libraries or from a single copy bought, or get the whole codex copied and have them bound spirally to ultimately get an edition that’s generally less than half the price of the original book. The exact loss of publishing business that occurs through this is almost impossible to gauge owing to the vastness of the country and the sheer large number of photocopying parlours everywhere. Under section 63 of the Copyright Act of India it is a punishable offence. India’s economic parity vis-a-vis the demographic chart is very much misbalanced. The rise of inflation, rapid globalization and urbanization has led to the steep rise in the cost of books as compared to many other commodities. This is a major factor behind Captain BookBeard’s rise. The other being the demand of current bestsellers, text-books and classics alike due to the increase in education among people. The high demand of works by Amitabh Ghosh, Coelho, Rowling, Chetan Bhagat, Ryand, Sheldon, Dan Brown etc. ublished mainly by houses of Harper Collins, Penguin, Random House, Bloomsbury, etc. leads to high prices of the copies that vary between Rs. 300-800 depending on the edition. But in Park Street, Gariahat, College Street, Howrah, Rajpur-Sonarpur one can get pirated editions that are initially demanded for about Rs. 200 but, can be bought for Rs. 80-100 after lengthy and heated bargaining that involves cutlass salvoes and blunderbuss parries of verbal blow between the customer and stall-owner. Indeed some resurrected sea-battle of the far-west! As far as fictional bestsellers are concerned, right after a title, that is pegged to be a run-away bestseller (or even lesser known or scholarly works), is released in the market, agents of the pirates get their hand on few copies, and from this original piece many copies are printed in multiple small rotary and offset presses, after being scanned, in a rash and hastily bound to hit the market merely a week or so after the first release. Slowly the time lag in between is decreasing, and that is increasing the amplitude of alarm that the publishers are facing. These batches of pirated copies that appear when the book is still in hot demand are inferior in quality of pages, printing, proper alignment of impression, binding, cover, etc. due to the haste in 6 capturing the market as soon as possible. But the pirate batches that gradually come out from presses after the heat of demand has mellowed down are of much superior quality, but still Rs. 0-50 lesser than the first batch copies, and sometimes it becomes very hard to tell the difference between such a copy of pirated edition and a legal edition as not only the text is well printed, the cover, layout, barcodes everything echoes in ditto to the genuine edition. This is done because many publishers like Penguin, Rupa, Macmillan, etc. bring out low-priced editions of previously high-priced works gradually. But, even these low-priced editions are hit hard by piracy and c ontinue to lose business worth crores of rupees annually. And ironically, pirated books also have the warning, reproduction of this work is forbidden! Labyrinth of the Pirate Cave When contacted, most of the shop-owners selling pirated editions refused blatantly to shed any light upon the mysterious whereabouts of captain BookBeard. Of course, the fear of police loomed large as from time to time the police have successfully arrested many pirated dealers, seized and destroyed many pirated copies and even raided such presses that produce illegal works. On Nov 18, 2005, the Economic Offenses Wing of the Delhi Police busted a book piracy racket, seized and destroyed over 23,000 books and arrested a person10. They found that the most pirated titles are international booksellers and educational books of such publishers like Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, The Publishers Association, Penguin, etc. Another very important incident happened on Sept 25, 2009 that shed much light on the organization and working of book-piracy rackets in India when the Bangalore City Crime Branch sleuths unearthed a huge inter-state racket of piracy and arrested three persons11; they also raided two places in Mahalakshmi Layout and Laggere where illegal printing of books was being done. The police found that more than 150 titles were illegally printed there and later distributed to sellers and footpath vendors. Police recovered copies of The Lost Symbol12, Jinnah: India, Partition, 10 â€Å"Book piracy racket busted, RS. 1-cr haul† The Times of India, Nov 19, 2005 articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. com/2005-11-19/delhi/27864288_1_book-piracy-racket-akash-chittranshi-penguinbooks-india (accessed on 27/10/11) 11 â€Å"Major book piracy racket busted† The Times of India, Sep 25, 2009 articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. om/2009-09-25/bangalore/28059890_1_book-piracy-harry-potter-series-versions (accessed on 27/10/11) 12 Fiction/novel by Dan Brown 7 Independence13, the Harry Potter14 series, and many other books. The police recovered over 7,300 books and wrappers, text sheets and papers and offset plates, mobile phones and vehicles used to transport the books. But from a shop-owner in Sonarpur and another in Gariahat partial information has been successful ly collected upon their conditions that they will be disclosing no names and mention no specific locations. Still this much is clear that around 8-10 years ago the production of pirated books took place mainly in south-east Asia, places in Maharasthra-Gujarat area and also some near Karachi in Pakistan; it was from those places that the unbound pages were smuggled either through the Western sea-board or Bangladesh-Paschim Banga borders and then bound in local warehouses. But now with the widespread use of computer-scanner technology, fast development of technological and ergonomic infrastructure in India and the rise in use of small rotary presses and small offset presses has almost reversed the entire modus operandi. Thus, now almost all of pirated books sold in India are printed, bound and distributed here, and they are even smuggled out to reach the nations of Bangladesh and Nepal. The books are printed in warehouse-complexes in and around major and minor metros, reflecting maybe conditions that harks back the early ages of printing, but albeit now with cutting-edge tech, cut and bound inside the same godowns, covers are made by superior laser printing and then they come out of the pirate cave’s labyrinth of secrecy and reach the stalls in many odd corners of our cities and suburbs. Tale of Two Cities Before old man Dickens gets a heart attack in his grave, this isn’t about London and Paris, but about Kolkata and Dhaka, the twin daughters of Bengali tongue! It may be of very little surprise that it’s this language of Bengali that has become the corridor of huge trans-border piracy, because the commonality of language and rise in urban-educated population in both the cities makes them an easily profitable hunting ground for BookBeard’s Jolly Rogers. According to a 13 14 Fiction/novel by Jaswant Singh Fiction/novel series by J. K. Rowling 8 PTI article in Times of India (Feb 08,2002)15, the director of Bangladesh’s National Book Centre said â€Å"piracy of Bangladeshi books in India is not uncommon. We take action as per law whenever we received any specific complaints. † But he failed to even roughly quantify the losses incurred by Bangladeshi publishers, based mostly in and around Dhaka and other major cities, due to the lack of substantial evidence and successive statistical data. But one thing was clear, the language being same in Bangladesh and Paschim Banga, the Bangladeshi pirates were selling their wares not only in their home-market, but also ‘exporting’ them across the extremely porous border to be sold in places like Kolkata, its suburbs, Asansol, etc. Quite an example of international business in a parallel economy! Upon being asked regarding this, that stall-owner in Sonarpur, mentioned previously, provided the facts that the return of profit from selling such books is generally higher than those pirated books that are printed in India, owing perhaps to the fact that both manufacturing and labour cost in Bangladesh, related to piracy, are significantly lower than what is here in India. A very interesting information to say the least when the bribes paid during smuggling the batches across the border are taken into account! He also gave the important information that of the authors whose books are pirated in from Bangladesh are Taslima Nasrin, Alfred Khokon, Humayun Ahmed, etc. and that transborder pirated books are only fictional novels and poetry collections. A strange book available in his shop was an unauthorized English-translation of Taslima Nasrin’s novel Forashi Premik under the title French Lover, without Nasrin’s name or the translators name being mentioned, for just Rs. 120 (surely would have been cheaper upon bargaining! whereas the legally translated version of the work as published by Penguin Books India would have cost Rs. 299! But this is not the only dimension of the problem as rampant book piracy in Bangladesh had led to monumental losses to Indian (mainly Kolkata-based) publishers to the tune of crores of rupees, as many spurious publication syndicates centering in Dhaka publishes illegal copies of books originally published in Paschim Banga and also stories, novellas, p oetries published in magazines. Bestselling Bengali popular riters like Sunil Gangopadhyay, Buddhadeb Guha, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Mahashweta Devi, Shankar, Sanjeev Chattopadhyay have suffered huge losses in royalty. â€Å"Piracy has become a major problem for us. Five years ago, we used to 15 â€Å"Bangladeshi books being pirated in Bengal† The Times of India, articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. com/2002-02-08/india/27108730_1_bangladeshi-books-piracy (accessed on 27/10/11) 9 export books worth Rs 1. 5 crore annually to Bangladesh. This has now come down to just Rs 25 lakh,† says Badal Basu, chief of Ananda Publishers (Kolkata) in a 2001 report in Outlook India titled The Printer Devils16. Even Probir Majumder, owner of Deb Sahitya Kutir said that his firm’s exports to Bangladesh have dropped by 75 per cent during the years 1995-2000 because of piracy. Some of the reasons being that Indian publishers generally hike the price of bestselling items around 30 percent in successive editions, the looseness of legal structure in Bangladesh, porosity of the border. And last, but far from being the least, are the Indian pirate lords who too print large quantities of Bengali books and ‘export’ them ‘abroad’ into the rising bibliophilic markets of Bangladesh. All in all, Bengali book exports to Bangladesh have dropped a worrisome 80 per cent due to piracy during 2000-2001 alone. Even novellas published in festival-editions are put between covers and unauthorizedly printed and sold in Kolkata and Dhaka. An incident mentioned in the aforesaid article will illustrate this quite well: â€Å"popular Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote a novella for the festival issue of a leading Bengali magazine. A few weeks later, he chanced upon a bound copy of the same novella in a Calcutta bookshop. Gangopadhyay was vexed: he had not given the novella’s copyright to any publisher. Then friends told him that the pirated copies had been published from Bangladesh and had already sold a few thousand copies in that country. † The story is similar in Bangladesh too where such copies arrive from India. Many other contemporary Bengali writers both from Paschim Banga and across the border share the same plight, for e. g. the legalized sale of Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay books have dropped by 10 per cent because of the exploits of captain BookBeard and his bengalicized crew. The ‘leafy’ Web More than 500 years have passed since the days of Gutenberg, but were he alive today he would have been shocked to see the newest avatar of the book that isn’t an inanimate object anymore but is supposed to sing, show video clippings, slide in and out and even be a chameleon in changing colours! It’s of course the eBook. Meant to be read in computers or hand-held varieties 16 Dubey, Sujoy â€Å"The Printer Devils†, www. outlookindia. com/article. aspx? 211183 (accessed on 28/10/11) 10 of eBook readers, its popularity is growing by the turns of the clock and in the last quarter of 2010 alone, Amazon. om sold more eBooks than their physical version. The sale of eBooks in USA alone was USD 119,700,000 for the third quarter of 2010. That’s up from USD 4,900,000 for the same quarter in 2006, a jump of almost 25%17 and despite facing the challenges of rupee appreciation, talent crunch and emergence of newer media, Indian e-publishing industry is estimated to gro w annually by 35 percent and offer a USD 1. 46 billion outsourcing opportunity by 201018. IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) statistics showed that the US e-book sales revenues have shot to $60 million in the first quarter of 2010. 9 The country has long been a destination for publishing outsourcing as Indians were sought for their superior grasp of the language, and availability of low-cost talent. Sadly, the same applies to the rampant rise in eBook piracy too. Piracy, along with the temporal world has gone digital. Unlike the world of poor mortals, the virtual world is limitless, too labyrinthian in codes to be properly mapped and with the galactic rise in the number of servers around the world, showing a future of infinite bytes of capacity. Due to the inherent nature of the internet, the amount of digital piracy has been difficult to chart properly, thus publishers aren’t aware of the exact losses that they are incurring for the wrath of e-BookBeard. Consumers, wanting to find free copies of eBooks, have switched from P2P networking technologies to file sharing sites, also known as Cyberlockers which allow anyone with a browser to upload and share content and are very difficult to track and virtually impossible to block, owing to the migrant nature of server-shifting. One can search for the pirated and free eBooks via search engines leading to the cyberlockers and download the files to the reading device of one’s choice and through such piracy platforms one can download a few thousand books in less than an hour. Added to that there had been the digital nemesis of copyright, the ‘Kraken’ of copyright infringement – called ‘Torrents’. A form of client sharing system, where one can download, seed, distribute data, including movies, songs, eBooks, etc. without any fear 17 Pratap, â€Å"Ebook piracy- do publishers need to be worried? Bookgenie Blog, Published Apr 15, 2011 www. bookgenie. in/blog/ebook-piracy. htm (accessed on 28/10/11) 18 â€Å"Indian E publishing industry poised for huge growth†, Offshoring Times 2008, www. offshoringtimes. com/Pages/2008/BPO_news2012. html (accessed on 28/10/11) 19 Varanasi, Madhabi â€Å"Online Treat† The Times of India, Bangalore May 17, 2010 Section: ‘Te ch A Tete’ Pg. 20 epaper. timesofindia. com/Repository/ml. asp? Ref=VE9JQkcvMjAxMC8wNS8xNyNBcjAyMDAw (accessed on 28/10/11) 11 of digitally being sniped by the authorities. Thus, amassing thousands of eBooks. A comparable print library would have taken years to build; and to buy legally would be perhaps impossible for any third world citizen with average income – thus making pirated eBooks definitely a huge temptation for any bibliophile! Firms, under the e-publishing houses or independently, are developing DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies, sort of digitized signatures in products, to protect their content, limit the usage online and prevent unauthorized duplication. But, DRM can easily be decrypted and roken into by a pirate hacker, and in fact, most of the pirated versions of eBooks available right now on the internet once had DRM encryption tags. Since the arrival of the iPad, demand for both legal and pirated eBooks has increased by about 20%20. And the only weapon, though inherently blunt, available for e-publishers is ‘Attributor’ which is an online service that helps news websites and book publishers track illegal or pirated copies of their content on other sites by digitally ‘inking’ the occurrence of all the links for a particular eBook on piracy platforms like Rapidshare, Piratebay, etc. And that’s where the flaw lies; just because there’s a link on Piratebay that does not mean that the users are downloading it, and also it can’t count the exact number of downloads from a link posted in all cyberlockers, nor can it effectively break the seed-peering system of torrent data-sharing. Hence, it results in flawed and inconclusive data. Charting the Digital Seas To map the whereabouts of the digitized fleet of BookBeard has been the most difficult and the best available work done in this field had been done by the Attributor web-group in their study: The State of Online Book Piracy Q2 2011. 1 It involved a compilation of a list of top 25 file hosting website from where anyone can download eBooks without having to pay any share to the book publisher and the list also included popular sites like Scribd. com, DocStoc and WattPad. 20 Lardinois, Frederic â€Å"Study: E-Book Piracy is on the Rise† www. readwriteweb. com/archives/study_pirated_e-books_ on_the_rise. php (accesed 30/10/11) 21 â€Å"The State of Online Book Piracy Q2 2011†, Attributor. com www. attributor. om/research/books/235-the-state-of-online-book-piracy-q2-2011 (accessed on 30/10/11) 12 Heres a that list of websites that offer pirated eBooks and their respective share in the piracy pie calculated based upon more than 53,000 book takedown notices sent. Pirated eBook Websites rapidshare. com 4shared. com esnips. com uploading. com mediafire. com hotfile. com megaupload. com scribd. com depositfiles. com filefactory. com ifile. it wattpad. com easy-share. com ziddu. com ioffer. com sharingmatrix. com letitbit. et docstoc. com kewlshare. com badongo. com midupload. com truly-free. org bitroad. net rapidshare. de box. net Share of book piracy 35. 6% 32. 7% 7. 4% 3. 7% 2. 4% 2. 1% 2. 1% 2. 0% 1. 5% 1. 2% 1. 1% 1. 1% 1. 0% 0. 8% 0. 6% 0. 6% 0. 6% 0. 6% 0. 5% 0. 4% 0. 4% 0. 4% 0. 4% 0. 4% 0. 4% But, this study doesn’t attempt to address the issue of deter mining to what degree pirated books represent financial loss to the industry as it does not estimate how many free downloads might 13 have otherwise resulted in a sale. 2 Still it did managed to find some key information that: i) The bestsellers are not always the most pirated, ii) eBook piracy occurs at all price points, so the most expensive books are not the only ones that are pirated, iii) The top cyberlockers, like Rapidshare, host less than 50% of the pirated content, iv) There are thousands of feeder pages that link to pirated content and it is increasing daily, v) While the USA has the highest number of infringements, it is clear that digital book piracy is a global issue and also prevalent in India, China, etc. nd, vi) The number of pages that link to pirated content increased 25% in just six months to reach a million pages – just for eBooks. And if torrent sites are included, like thepiratebay. org, btjunkie. org, seedpeer. com, newtorrents. info, monova. org, etc. then even the comprehension of the amount of e-piracy goes out of hand. Yo-ho-ho and a Bundle o’ Books! So, all in all eBook piracy is virtually unquantifiable. But, what about their real-world counterparts? Upon being asked, both the pavement pirates in Gariahat and Sonarpur told that their weekly business on pirated books anges from 100-200 pieces on an average. Of the types of books sold, the most belong to the genres of text-books, guide books, fiction, computer applications manuals, poetry, etc. And what about the sort of people who buy such books? Mostly students, young people, people for whom the material quality and ethicality comes after the textuality. Earlier, and in many cases even now, in general the bulk of pirated books are marred with low quality print and pages, inferior scan-and-print of the covers, blots of ink and misalignment roaming around pages here and there. But on one hand it must be admitted that even legalized publications come out with printing and binding defects, and on the other it is to be seen that book pirates have gradually but steadily been increasing the quality of their malicious products, helped by huge increase in trade and fast dissemination of technology in the developing nations. 22 Agarwal, Amit â€Å"List of Websites That Host Pirated eBooks†, Digital Inspiration labnol. org www. labnol. org/internet/pirated-ebook-websites/12620/ (accessed on 30/10/11) 4 Even to begin imagining a complete picture of book n eBook piracy will result in dizziness and nausea, and perhaps innovation, awareness and strict laws are the only medicines available to it. Awareness against reprography and book piracy (both in soft and hard copies) is needed in a widespread way, and these attempts to develop customer ethics must come in harmony with strict trade regulations and law enforcement on the part of government. Pirates thrive on publishers’ error. If publishers can make their books and eBooks available to a larger sphere of readers instantly, it can and will encourage readers to go for the authentic version. For example, releasing a bestseller first in the USA or UK and then releasing it worldwide after few weeks gives the pirates a healthy head-start in the meantime. Also releasing only the English version of eBooks and then waiting for a couple of years to release them in other languages isn’t smart and can only result in spurious ranslated versions on the net that are not only bad for the revenue and the authors’ royalty but also to the intellectual and educational appeal of that particular work. On the same line, the governmental publications must meet the demand of public and not create a huge demand-supply gap; and this may help to curb copyright infringement more than busting few piracy rackets here and there and burning a few thousands illegal books. Second is the issue of price. It’s common knowledge that most home users use pirated Microsoft Windows and other software products because of their hefty price tags. That leads to a big chunk of revenue lost for software industries. Instead, if they could bring the price of its products down, users would be encouraged to buy authentic products more and in the long run would be immensely profitable. The same goes for books and eBooks for which the publishers terrorize the readers with the notoriously exuberant, and increasing ever on with subsequent editions, price tag. Thus, there are and will be no Lieutenant Robert Maynard for this captain BookBeard, and unless awareness and reduction in corporate greed comes into play, the book buccaneers’ Jolly Roger will continue to flutter in every shadowy book-stall one meets in the mazes of city-lanes and their battle-cries will dissolve into all the urban eyes watching the sun go down, printed in haze and enigma. 15 Bibliography â€Å"Business Profile of Print Industry†, by MICA, Ahmedabad (Sep 2009), http://www. techno-preneur. et/information-desk/sciencetechmagazine/2009/september09/print. pdf (accessed on 25/10/11) â€Å"India’s Book Publishing Industry Booming†, Boulevard India blog archive, boulevardindia. com/2006/09/28/indias-book-publishing-industry-booming/ (accessed on 25/10/11) Gopalan, R. â€Å"The bane of book piracy† The Hindu, Jun 01, 2003 http://www. hindu. com/thehindu/lr/2003/06/01/stories/2003060100490700. htm (accessed on 26/10/11) â€Å"Study on copy right piracy in India†, sponsored by Ministry of HRD, govt. f India 1999, http://education. nic. in/cr_piracy_study/cpr. asp (accessed on 25/10/11) â€Å"Raid nets cache of pirated textbooks† The Telegraph, Apr 30, 2008 http://www. telegraphindia. com/1080430/jsp/calcutta/story_9207036. jsp (accessed on 26/10/11) â€Å"Book piracy racket busted, RS. 1-cr haul† The Times of India, Nov 19, 2005 http://articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. com/2005-11-19/delhi/27864288_1_book-piracyracket-akash-chittranshi-penguin-books-india (accessed on 27/10/11) Major book piracy racket busted† The Times of India, Sep 25, 2009 http://articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. com/2009-09-25/bangalore/28059890_1_book- 16 piracy-harry-potter-series-versions (accessed on 27/10/11) â€Å"Bangladeshi books being pirated in Bengal† The Times of India, http://articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. com/2002-02-08/india/27108730_1_bangladeshibooks-piracy (accessed on 27/10/11) Dubey, Suj oy â€Å"The Printer Devils†, Outlook India Web Magazine, http://www. outlookindia. om/article. aspx? 211183 (accessed on 28/10/11) Pratap, â€Å"Ebook piracy- do publishers need to be worried? † Bookgenie Blog, Published Apr 15, 2011 http://www. bookgenie. in/blog/ebook-piracy. htm (accessed on 28/10/11) â€Å"Indian E publishing industry poised for huge growth†, Offshoring Times 2008, http://www. offshoringtimes. com/Pages/2008/BPO_news2012. html (accessed on 28/10/11) Varanasi, Madhabi â€Å"Online Treat† The Times of India, Bangalore May 17, 2010 Section: ‘Tech A Tete’ Pg. 20

The Pressures of Being a Teenager in Todays Society free essay sample

The Pressures of being a teenager in today’s society Jennifer: head cheerleader, and captain of the football team’s girlfriend. She has perfect hair, perfect skin, and there is no possible way to deny her beauty. I try to tell myself that on the inside she is ugly. I know I’m simply jealous, but I cannot help but detest her. She has everything. As for myself, I have nothing compared to her. I don’t understand why I feel sorry for myself. I spend all my time wishing I was someone else. I’ve always been extremely insecure throughout my life, and it has lead to depression. It runs in my family. My mother had terrible problems ith it. I remember her doctor constantly changing her medication in the hopes of finding the cure that would work for her. â€Å"Melissa? Melissa? Are you even paying attention? † My teacher demanded. â€Å"Yes miss. † I replied, although, I was drifting off into space. Today our lecture was about the many pressures of being a teenager in society today. All this talk about being in or out made me think of the social changes now occurring in the educational system. I then remembered a conversation I had with my guidance counsellor. I was feeling lonely and rejected, and this teacher told me that other kids, even the popular nes, also felt as miserable as I was at times. Of course, I didn’t believe him. How could all those girls, all those girls who had everything be unhappy? I would most definitely be happy with all those cute clothes and better yet, cute boys. I would never be miserable if I could change places with one of them. After school that day, I went home, did my homework, watched some television, had supper, and went to flip through magazines, the usual. I wondered how all those girls were so thin. How did they manage to stay on such str ict diets? I envied them. That night before bed, I looked myself in the mirror, and broke into choked sobs. I try to keep it together, but I cannot. I barely slept. The same question repeated itself over and over in my head†¦ How could any one person be so ugly, and so fat. It was plain disgusting so to speak. The next day I noticed an advertisement on the front of one of my magazines. It was an add about a modeling agency coming to my hometown holding auditions. The entire week I debated attending the audition. I was aware that I would be out of my league completely compared to all the pretty girls in my town. I was also aware of the possibility of getting laughed at. A lost puppy, they’d say. No I couldn’t go. I would make a complete fool out of myself. Of course that was the norm for me, and I began to ask myself what was there to lose? My dignity, perhaps. It was Friday and my day went on as usual. I woke up, washed my face, got dressed, went to school, and finally the last bell rang. The hallways were scattered with girls chattering excitedly about the modeling auditions. I simply ignored them and headed towards my bus. But then something hit me. Why not? Why not go to the audition? So I went, not taking in anymore thought. When I arrived I was completely right about the environment surrounding me. The prettiest girls in town were there, already laughing at me. Exclusion hurts. Discrimination and rejection are painful at any age. The line up seemed never ending. It took almost two hours to get in and audition. The auditors asked me various questions such as: Are you healthy? What does modeling mean to you? And so forth. They asked me about my weight, and if I had participated in any fitness programs. At the end of the audition they suggested toning up, loosing some weight, and would call in a few days if I made it onto the next stage. I knew exactly what that meant. â€Å"Sorry but your too fat to be a model, thanks for trying out and iving us a good laugh. † I went home that night, and decided to take in what they said as constructive criticism. I decided that I was going to do something about my weight. I was sick and tired of being fat and frumpy. I made a schedule for myself in order to balance school, work, and exercise. If they called, that would be great and if th ey didn’t, well I was doing this for me. I scaled in at 184 pounds today. My goal is to weigh 130 at the end of this little experiment. In just one month alone, I managed to loose twenty pounds. I was feeling great. This was an incredible accomplishment for me. I wasn’t satisfied ust yet, and I had some more pounds to lose until I reached my goal. It almost seemed too easy. I wanted to lose more. Skinny obsession here I come. I believed that my hopes of becoming a model were officially over. It was a little over a month later when the phone rang, and my mom called me from upstairs. â€Å"Melissa dear, a modeling agency is on the phone for you? Do you know what this is about? † â€Å"Yes mom, I’ll take it, I’ll explain later. † I replied. Apparently I was what the model agency was looking for. Who would have guessed? They asked if I took their advice, and when they saw me they thought I was the erfect candidate. Although they had strict rules about dieting, they didn’t want any of the girls to have eating disorders and whatnot. They were aiming for healthy looking girls who could be role models for young adolescents. My first day for casting was the next night. I was so excited and I stayed up all night debating what to wear. I needed something hip and in, but also sophisticated. This way they would know I was taking this industry seriously. When I got there it was everything I expected: lighting, wardrobes, and the photographers. It was incredible, and I was finally going to be apart of it. The following week at school, my fellow students were beginning to take notice of me. â€Å"Hello, how are you today Melissa† They politely greeted me. Or asked me. â€Å"Did you loose weight? You look great! † Emily Baldwin the most popular girl in the entire school, asked me to sit with her at lunch. Obviously, I took her up on that offer. After seventeen years of my life, people were finally noticing me, and I loved it. I finally had a group to sit with at lunch, people acknowledged me in the hallways, and I was popular. Hallelujah. However, being in the â€Å"in† group was beginning to get to me. My teachers were oncerned about my grades, and I was falling asleep in class. I had no energy. I know I sometimes took it too far with my dieting and exercise, but it was an addiction. I could not get enough of this â€Å"in† fix. For most overweight girls, it is hard to stick with a diet, but it was almost natural for me. I wanted to fit in so bad that I woul d risk anything to get it. I barely noticed the pains in my stomach from hunger. The model agency called today, they told me I was taking the dieting too seriously, and if I didn’t gain some more weight I would be removed from the industry. I didn’t even care. It didn’t dawn on me at all. I was thin, and popular. I no longer cared about being a model. I wanted to be noticed, and I was. Maybe even more so than I imagined. Eventually everything went back downhill. My one teacher called home. I failed to hand in my assignment. My parents were not only furious but concerned. This wasn’t like their little Melissa. Then my parents were beginning to really worry. I was eating less and less each day. To top it all off, I passed out in the bathroom the one day. My friend Jennifer even told my mom and dad I was skipping lunch and taking excessive pills to stay skinny. Once my parents were informed of this it was off to the doctors for me. Seeing the doctor didn’t really help me. I was cooperative and agreed with everything the doctor told me to satisfy him. When I arrived back home I followed the same eating habits as before. That night my mom came into my room, with a late night snack, so we could talk about everything that just happened. I told her I wasn’t hungry and that didn’t fly so well with her. It is now three months later and I am sitting in a hospital bed. I’m being fed from tubes. I couldn’t be fed me solid foods because my stomach has shrank so much over the ast year, and I can’t keep it down. I guess I took this dieting thing way too far. Apparently I have a disease called anorexia. Waking up in this hospital bed everyday for the past two weeks has made me realize that my extreme dieting was dangerous, stupid, and also hurt the people around me. I am now paying the consequence of such actions . My guidance counsellor explained to me that everyone feels like an outsider. Everyone has moments of loneliness. Everyone worries whether she or he fits in, or whether he or she is odd. â€Å"In† and â€Å"out† are simply illusions. Instead of looking for â€Å"in† nd â€Å"out†, we should try to see ourselves as we are. We are all different. Yet we are all the same. I wish this would have been clear to me a year ago before anorexia took over my life. At the same time however, I would say it was all worth it. Call me crazy, but everything happens for a reason. I know what it is like to be an outcast, popular, over weight and underweight. You are still the same person on the inside, whatever that might be. This experience has been the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. All my questions have relevant and simple answers. Be yourself. Life is way too short to be living someone else’s life.