Topic 71

Effects of DTP on the right to publish, for example, freedom of the press, free exchange of ideas by HeeJun

When you publish something, it means that you produce a book, magazine, etc. and sell it to the public. This is a relatively old but primary meaning of "publish". If you wanted to publish your own book in the past, for instance, 30 years ago, you would have visited a book publishing company that had skilled specialists to publish the book.

Since then computers and technology evolved very rapidly like the speed of light compared to past hundreds of thousands of years when human being had been living on the earth. In 2007, the current year we are living, we do not have to go to a publisher to publish our essay or documents. We use Internet and special publishing programs as media of publishment. As more people has become to use Internet, which is famous for its vast amount of information and its simplicity to post (publish) a document whether professional or amateur, the role of publishers has been weakened: anyone can publish in these days regardless of availability of special knowledge and skills how to publish. Publishing an essay on Internet is a piece of cake; you just have to write some words and click few buttons.

Desktop publishing(DTP), at the beginning when the term was first used, meant the act of publishing using a computer and a page layout software to create published documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale. However, you might ask what is the differrence between a word processor and a page layout software. The improvement on the word processor programs like Microsoft Word, which serves its function as both compatible word processor and page layout program, made the meaning of DTP vague. Thus we now have difficulty classifying them, but they usually are used in the same meaning.

Although many people can think from the meaning of DTP that using a page layout software is the only way of desktop publishing, the acts of posting comments, documents, scholar research, etc. are also included in the desktop publishing. Putting in simple words, everything you post on any website is desktop publishing. Therefore, every document on Intertet is published. Since it is very easy to publish on the net, you can say almost anything you would like to say. If you think someone's essay is really poor, you might leave a bad comment under his work. If the president is trying to carry stupid plans on, you could post your opinion on your blog. As we see, desktop publishing guarantees the freedom of speech.

eBook is an example of desktop publishing. eBook is an electronic equivalent of a conventional printed book and rarely used to refer to an individual work. The digitally published book is accesible on the Internet. Desktop publishing include publishing images and video clips on Internet. Think of YouTube as an example. YouTube is now the biggest web video sites. Everyday thousands of people publish individual video or some other kinds of video. As they publish individual video, they are trying to exchange thier ideas, and emotions.
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