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In case you're fuzzy on U.S. copyright law, all created works automatically receive copyright, regardless of whether the work is officially registered with the U.S. copyright office. Many artists choose to give away their work.

Taking at face value the statements the MPAA is "educating" public schoool students with, downloading anything from ifilm.com would be illegal. ifilm.com, which is ranked by alexa.com in the top 2000 websites (out of more than 5 million ranked), distributes videos (such as movie shorts) that their creators have given permission to be distributed for free.

Surely the MPAA is not promulgating the outrageous statements portrayed in the Globe article? Well, an Oct. 17, 2003 press release by Junior Achievement, the organization entrusted by the MPAA to carry out its propaganda in the public schools, links to the MPAA's respectcopyrights.org site, which contains a page which states:

At the end of the day, when you get right down to it, downloading copyrighted movies off the Internet is illegal. It's against the law.

A more correct statement would have been "downloading copyrighted movies off the Internet against the wishes of the copyright holder is illegal."

A minor difference? Hardly. The MPAA is inculcating the concept in students that movies and videos should exist only in a commercial context. Instead, with the advent of cheap video technology, students should be encouraged to make their own amateur videos and share them over the Internet. Script writing, staging, lighting -- that would be real education.

Public schools are a place where students learn to consume rather than create.

I realize that JA, is all about promoting capitalism to our youth, which most of the time seems to be a non-bad thing. But this perversion is beyond sad.

I suggest that folks give them a call and let them know how much they appreciate this one-sided blatant shill for the RIAA & MPAA's version of copyright law.

JA Head Office (719) 540-8000

To quote JA:

"Tell what you liked, didn't like, would like to see more or less of, whatever is on your mind."

Guestbook here.

Amazon.com is definetly the business model to follow. In the past 5 years they have been experiencing true booms in business.

I'll agree that Amazon.com is a business model to follow, if you don't mind a model like this:

1. Get open-ended financing
2. Sell everything at a loss
3. ???
4. Profit!

Now, I'm obviously not an expert, but my Googling only finds a couple of quarters where Amazon turned a profit, and the latest news is that the company's losses were almost $40 million over the last 9 months -- and that was considered a Good Thing because it was a 75% drop in losses.

When I was in Junior Achievement, they told us that successful companies made "larger profits," not "smaller losses." Amazon may not be going anywhere anytime soon, but treading water (even if you're the size of a battleship) hardly seems like a "success".

Digital citizenship

Anyway the program is out in pdf files now; It's two files:
Xcellent Xtreme Challenge Parent Newsletter
and
What's the Diff? A Guide to Digital Citizenship - Activity Guide.

The first one is a take-home newsletter that students and parents are supposed to fill out together. The letter contains a "Dear Parent" arnt about filesharing from MPAA; with quotes like:

We hope you will use this opportunity to talk with your children about "digital citizenship" and how they use the Internet. It's important for you to be aware of their behavior online. "File-swapping," which is just another form of stealing, is morally and ethically wrong. It causes great economic harm to the creative artist who does not get paid for his or her efforts and to the thousands of others who depend on these industries for employment. "Fileswapping" can have very practical ramifications for you as well.

6. Stealing is stealing, whether from a store or from the Internet.

The second pdf is a big file with instructions to the teacher, two "introductions"; What's fair? and Patents and Progress. The students are supposed to discuss the material and learn that "file swapping" is wrong, illegal and hurts the economy.
There is a lot of ranting about P2P and copyrights. There is a introduction to why copyrights exist with some mumbling about the founding fathers. And oops they accidentaly forgot to mention that copyrights originaly expired after a time.

The rest of the pdf is devoted to two "classroom activities"; Living in a fishbowl and The starving artist (I'm not joking the rumors are true)
The fishbowl play is a discussion based role play game where the students gets to play actors, singers, directot, carpenters, producer and computer user.
I'm not that paranoid, but I observe that there is a factor of 5 to 1 in the "good guys" vs computer user. And they forgot to include some vital players like "the lawyer", "the executive" and "the stockholder".

The Starving Artist is a discussion based game where students are divided in group and shall produce a CD but then they are ripped off by "file swapping". "how does this makes you feel?"
Quote

Share the following statements with the students to summarize the lesson with the class. These statements help summarize the lesson and connect the concepts to the students personally.
- To legally own it, legally buy it.
- If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it.
- Copying a movie or CD for a friend is illegal.
- If you wouldn't take a movie or CD from the shelves of a store without paying for it, then why do it online?

I must say that MPAA got a killer program here.
The smart thing is the "winning of the teacher". Teachers are authority persons to children and getting them to explain why "stealing is wrong" is of course more effective than doing commercials.

There is some old industry saying that says: "get them when they are young" and I think thats the thinking behind this.
The whole project says a lot about MPAA but also about what kind of corporate sponsored projects that are allowed into american schools.
If I had children in USA I would have taken them out of this part of the education whitout hesitation.

Anyway the program is out in pdf files now; It's two files:
Xcellent Xtreme Challenge Parent Newsletter
and
What's the Diff? A Guide to Digital Citizenship - Activity Guide.

The first one is a take-home newsletter that students and parents are supposed to fill out together. The letter contains a "Dear Parent" arnt about filesharing from MPAA; with quotes like:

We hope you will use this opportunity to talk with your children about "digital citizenship" and how they use the Internet. It's important for you to be aware of their behavior online. "File-swapping," which is just another form of stealing, is morally and ethically wrong. It causes great economic harm to the creative artist who does not get paid for his or her efforts and to the thousands of others who depend on these industries for employment. "Fileswapping" can have very practical ramifications for you as well.

6. Stealing is stealing, whether from a store or from the Internet.

The second pdf is a big file with instructions to the teacher, two "introductions"; What's fair? and Patents and Progress. The students are supposed to discuss the material and learn that "file swapping" is wrong, illegal and hurts the economy.
There is a lot of ranting about P2P and copyrights. There is a introduction to why copyrights exist with some mumbling about the founding fathers. And oops they accidentaly forgot to mention that copyrights originaly expired after a time.

The rest of the pdf is devoted to two "classroom activities"; Living in a fishbowl and The starving artist (I'm not joking the rumors are true)
The fishbowl play is a discussion based role play game where the students gets to play actors, singers, directot, carpenters, producer and computer user.
I'm not that paranoid, but I observe that there is a factor of 5 to 1 in the "good guys" vs computer user. And they forgot to include some vital players like "the lawyer", "the executive" and "the stockholder".

The Starving Artist is a discussion based game where students are divided in group and shall produce a CD but then they are ripped off by "file swapping". "how does this makes you feel?"
Quote

Share the following statements with the students to summarize the lesson with the class. These statements help summarize the lesson and connect the concepts to the students personally.
- To legally own it, legally buy it.
- If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it.
- Copying a movie or CD for a friend is illegal.
- If you wouldn't take a movie or CD from the shelves of a store without paying for it, then why do it online?

I must say that MPAA got a killer program here.
The smart thing is the "winning of the teacher". Teachers are authority persons to children and getting them to explain why "stealing is wrong" is of course more effective than doing commercials.

There is some old industry saying that says: "get them when they are young" and I think thats the thinking behind this.
The whole project says a lot about MPAA but also about what kind of corporate sponsored projects that are allowed into american schools.
If I had children in USA I would have taken them out of this part of the education whitout hesitation.

Look for non-profit organizations such as the local Food Bank, the American Heart Association, the Red Cross, or Junior Achievement.

Even if these organizations don't need technical help, volunteer your time and encourage friends/coworkers to join you. It won't (or at least, it shouldn't) kill you to walk away from the computer world for a few hours a week.