Redefinition of Authorship and Ownership in Media and Cultural Essay

Redefinition of Authorship and Ownership in Media and Cultural Industries - Essay Example reader gives the consumers a chance at obtaining the books not from the authors, but from the tablet maker through the publisher (Hesmondhalgh, 2012, p. 21). Not long ago, when the first marketable tablet came out in the form of an iPad, the chief executive officer of Apple, Steve Jobs, convinced several publishers to market their books through this type of computer which he promised would revolutionize the reading industry. He was right to a large extent since tablet computers have since then taken over from books and the education sector in general. Other tablet makers, who majorly consist of the Android market, followed suit with their contracts with publishers. Other companies that specialized in publishing like Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and especially Amazon made a lot of contracts with publishers and specific authors to have their material sold through their platforms. The contracts between the authors, the publishers and the tablet makers are the focus of this paper. The contrac ts consisted of allowing the tablet makers to market the books from several publishers and owners in one place the tablet makers unanimously called a store so that consumers, instead of going to each individual publisher to get a given title, would only have to search for the same title in one place. The eBooks cost differently from their hardcover counterparts from this moment (Straubhaar, LaRose and Davenport, 2011, p. 78). While the hardcover copies were priced differently due to for example the contents of the book, the popularity among its readers or the effort spent in penning the given piece of work, the tablet and eBook reader makers sought to unify the prices of these books due to several reasons they gave among them the fact that the books had an almost similar value in their... This essay stresses that the main corporations in informational technology include media houses that concern themselves with the dissemination of news or other issues around the world. Such houses include Bloomberg, News Corporation and BBC among others. Others in this classification include film companies such as 20th Century Fox. Technological changes have seen a shift to most of the media houses being owned and controlled by either governments or powerful families. This paper makes a conclusion that the corporations that are owned by the governments in their countries of origin include the BBC and most media firms in China. The Chinese government controls most of the media content and has ownership rights to most of the media houses too. The BBC was founded and runs on funds from the taxpayers’ money. There are several reasons as to why a government can control or won a media house. Most reasons point to the issue so of costs which are deemed to be low due to the government’s participation. The seeking of information by private individuals would be an expensive task to undertake. Other reasons point to the freedom of the press as a result of government dissemination of the information about the goings-on in the country since it is in control of most of the happenings. This is in contrast to private companies which would serve the governing classes’ interest. The advent of technology has brought changes in this sector in ref erence to the types of information given out.