In our last COMM 101 class, we talked about how product placement is everywhere and movies are starting to utilize it more and more.  In the recent years, there have been many obvious product placements in movies, so obvious that we notice it when it should have been just subliminal.  For example in this video when the actor Daniel Dae Kim says “You don’t believe me? Bing it!” in the TV series “Hawaii Five.”

Now let’s visit the movie “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” a documentary about branding, advertising, and product placement funded by branding, advertising, and product placement.  The documentary directed by Morgan Spurlock, the same person who created the movie SuperSizeMe, is about him going around the city finding sponsors to buy product placement in his documentary, with the footage of the film capturing his adventure in finding sponsors.  In the picture above, we can clearly see the Pom Wonderful logo being the most noticeable with “Pom Wonderful Presents” being at the very top and that is because this company was the most prominent in sponsoring the film.  I learned many new things from this film, one of which is when Spurlock visits a school district in Florida that, because of constant budget cuts, is forced to sell advertising on its busses, fences, classroom televisions and any other surfaces that logos can be put down on.  Product placement is everywhere around us, and this movie is a great example of it.

In an update to Kevin Yu’s blog on the unethical business practice in Foxconn, China Labor Watch reporting four days ago on October 5^th 2012 that around 4000 Foxconn workers are on strike at the Zhengfou factory in China.  Kevin has mentioned “Foxconn has neglected the working conditions of its employees” to pursue maximum profit.  The atmosphere in Foxconn has suddenly escalated recently because of the demanding quality standards for the iPhone 5.  China Labor Watch has noted that “with such demands, employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard.”  Without receiving any necessary training, the workers are now under enormous pressure to deliver the iPhone 5’s.  I am not sure how effective the strike will be, because for every worker that are on strike, there are many other desperate Chinese that are looking for a job.  I also do not believe this news will receive much attention because people are already used to hearing poor working conditions in factories in China.  Apple also would not be impacted negatively by much in my opinion from this news because Apple is not the only big name that uses Foxconn, to name a few others: Sony, Microsoft, Amazon and Toshiba.  I think that even though 4000 Foxconn employees are now on strike, there won’t be much impact overall and the poor working conditions would not change and if they did, it would not be by much.

In response to Lou Lee’s blog on Japan’s new piracy law, I strongly disagree with both the new anti-piracy law and Lou Lee’s viewpoint of its effects in the future.  The law does not quite address the problem of the falling in music sales but will only worsen the problem.  The article states that “only one in 10 downloads are legally purchased” in Japan and an estimated “99% of all downloaded music is illegal” in China; however, it must be noted that not all these illegal downloads make up for the lost sales.  There are people I know with hundreds of illegally downloaded songs in their music players who said they would not purchase any of them if they were no longer free.  Also, even though labels may be against piracy, there are artists who love it because they yearn for exposure –  “The Pirate Bay has also proven to be a buffer of success for young, aspiring artists who are able to advertise for free on the website.”  These illegal downloads introduce people to music from new bands which will increase the band’s fan base and any sales regarding to concerts and merchandises.  I do not believe this law is good economically and socially because prison might be too much of a punishment for downloading music illegally.