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File-Sharing Ethics Taught In Classrooms?
shams42 writes "According to the New York Times, the movie/record industries are taking their concerns about P2P file sharing into the classroom (free reg. req.) Among other activities, they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free."
I think I'm going to brainwash little kids too.
We'll play a game called "Let's sue 12-year old girls!"
I wonder if they tell the kids the artists are starving since the RIAA gives them $0.00000083 for every CD sold.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
The children will also participate in a club called the Spies where they learn to turn in dangerous dissidennt traitors.
Can your child meet the expectations like Suzie Q. did last week when she overheard her parents saying that the RIAA should be ashamed of itself for sueing children and the elderly. She marched right over to the local police station and turned them in.
Can your child be as happysafe as Suzie Q.? You had better send them to the Spies and make sure!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
they could submit their music to mp3.com and maybe even make some money instead and see that the market is shifting..
btw. most of the records I bought the last few years I wouldn't have heard of if it wasn't for p2p-software..
but then.. I'm the kind of the consumer the RIAA doesn't want.. one who choses what he wants to listen too.
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
This'll be about as effective as...DARE
Presumably there will an advanced course where students will look at how a artist can market his work in an age when record companies monopolise the retail channels and are interested only in supporting artists conforming to some corporate identity.
not
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
they force that down childrens necks to, nothing like brainwashing to build strong character right ?
C = child, T= Teacher
;)
C: Yes, so I'll make the CD, the album art like that, and it will have 12 tracks...
T: It's already available on the net (smiling)
C: Hmmm... let me think... How many downloads? Yes, they seem to like it, hmm... Yeah, good, so now I'm famous. Let's prepare my next concert around the world.
T: !!!
Starving artist? No way! An artist to play for the public, to have tours around the world, yes!
A good artist will never starve because his art is priceless.
P.S. The "Starving Artist" game is stupid, as showed above
No it isn't theft. Probably copyright infringement under our current draconian and broken copyright laws, but not theft. I for one would prefer my child not to recieve morality lessons in school, especially ones containting brainwashing propaganda like this crap. I send my kid to school for academic advancement, not to be spoonfed some lobbiest's political agenda.
If the students come up with good ideas, the record labels can steal them. So, the students will create great ideas only to have them stolen by corporations and distibuted for free by online traders.
I can't imagine a better real-world education.
DARE is beyond worthless. I remember getting these lifesaver candies on a necklace that we had to wear all day, and try not to eat. (Supposed to emulate resisting drugs) I ate mine within 5 minutes. And, also if you think about, what they were really teaching us is that drugs are like candy.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I hope the teachers will make it clear that, while slavery was abolished many many years ago, the recordcompanies basically still treat their 'artists' that way...
And ofcourse they'll explain how, with record sales going platinum, you'll *owe* the record company money (see TLC, they declared bankruptcy).
And hey, while we're at it, try explaining the 'record breakage fee' of 10% (if i remember correctly) which is still in place, while records haven't been easily breakable since they went to vinyl (ok, you'll probably have to explain what vinyl is too.).
I could go on for a while, but i'm sure you get the picture.
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped ,or turned back, for their private benefit.
Robert Heinlein
fact is, unless you're eminem, michael jackson (jacko was at the top for years) or someone similarly successful with record sales (ie. worldwide #1) the take from album sales and royalties is a pittance once you have been charged all the expenses.
ever listen to Tom Petty's song with the lyrics "Don't wanna live like a refugee". that was a protest song over the screw deal the record label signed him to. he had hit songs and debts so high, he'd never be out of hock. this is still happening today. the record labels sign artists deceptively (with so-callled "A&R" reps) to long term agreements without mechanism for release at the artists discretion, then use these agreements to either lowball the artists, or keep their music off the shelves. its a dirty, dirty business.
fact is, the artists won't starve from filesharing. they are starving from being robbed blind by the big 5! damn shame.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
It was a rhetorical question. The thing is, if the crime is so henious that it can be punished by the amounts being claimed, should the defendant not have the same rights as a criminal in cases where the fine is considerably lower? Should we be using the civil courts ro punish wrongdoers?
How does "coming up with an idea..." to do something have anything to do with copyright? You have to actually produce something first. If this demonstrates anything, it demonstrates the issue of prior art, where they are not permitted to pursue their dream and copyright it because someone else already did.
If you want the kids to really get an idea, they're going to have to spend all their time and effort working on something, tell them that they'll be able to sell it when they're done, and then after months of effort, take away the fruits of their labors and tell them you were just kidding.
Of course, the problem with this is, they'll have to actually create something that someone would be interested in purchasing, and it's unlikely that the average 5-9th grader will be able to pull this off, no matter what it is, and most especially not a product of an intellectual nature. Sure there are the rare exceptions, but this is a project aimed at ALL students, not the TAG crowd.
So at best this will be another boring assignment that the students will only half heartedly pay attention to. And at worst, the few students that have yet to figure out what "that there interweb" thing is all about will suddenly realize that they're missing out on a ton of free music.
This is probably another one of those sugarcoated efforts to make the public cry for the poor starving artists that are being robbed blind by the malicious 12 year olds who download their music, instead of realizing that the record industry is the one robbing them blind.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I have another game, where you plant a tree, wait for it to grow, cut it, and use the wood to painstakingly make a table, using your bare hands and a pocket knife. After all your efforts, you find out that tables better than yours are available everywhere for almost nothing, done by machines.
So you stop making tables. Big deal.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Ouch, sorry. About 2.2 milliseconds after hitting "Submit", I realised that you were actually asking that question. Sorry for attaching my rant to your post.
For what it's worth, I agree. Intellectual Property law needs to be revisited and some consistency brought to it. Why, for example, is it a criminal offence simply to obtain or supply a tool to break the encryption on a DVD? Why is it not a criminal offence to actually create or even use the tool to make a copy? Why is it a criminal offence to produce and sell shirts with a trademarked Nike logo, but not a criminal offence to sell copied CDs?
The only aspect of the RIAA's position with which I have the slightest sympathy is that they really do have to educate people about this area of the law. However, the fact that they're lying about it (consistently calling copy right infringement "theft") disinclines me to cut them any slack.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If that were the case, you'd think that the RIAA would have a hard time finding bands willing to sign contracts, and 7-Elevens would be inundated with job applications from band members who didn't make any money.
But of course, there never seems to be a shortage of new bands polluting the airwaves, so I have to conclude that either your facts aren't entirely true, or aren't entirely complete. Afterall, SOMETHING is driving these bands to aspire for a big contract, and it's not poverty.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
My god. Freaks like you have been complaining about "kids today" for the last two thousand years. Every generation is lazier, more stupid, etc.
Nevermind that there are more literate people in the world now than at any previous point in history. Nevermind that the renaissance followed the dark ages, not preceeded it. Jazz was the tool of the devil. Elvis ruined our youth. Young people can't even use the English language anymore - they say things like "you" instead of "thee" and "you were" instead of "you was!"
"Kids today"? Gimme a fucking break. If anyone's monumentally ignorant it's you.
Adopt a strategy of [shock!] playing live at concerts, using the MP3s as advertising instead of your revenue stream. You also realise that you can still make bucketloads of money by selling t-shirts coffe mugs and anything with your logo on it, including (horror!) the actual CD. People want to own memories, and a digital recording is not a memory.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I wonder how much money the record companies spend to have such an influence in schools. Its a well known fact that kids make up the recording industry's largest market, so why is it that this commercial entity has an influence on children's morality and education? What kind of message is this sending?
Why not play the real starving artist game? The kids can sign a contract and never make a dime off of their intellectual property for the rest of their lives while the record company makes a fortune but still claims they haven't recouped their costs!
Sound waves should be free!
Well my version of the game is that you practice guitar since when you were 13 years old, finally get a good band together, do a few local shows for free, eventually get a once-in-a-lifetime deal with a record label, sell a million records, only to find that you still owe the record company $50,000 because they spent so much 'promoting' you, and that you can't make any more music until the record company agrees they like it. Then the record company decides to stop promoting you, and you have to do infomercials and mall openings since you're no longer allowed to make music without the record company's consent. Now that's a fun game.
$8.95/mo web hosting
...for the rest of the musicians in the business. J.Lo represents the top .01 percent of musicians in the industry (that's one hundreth of one hundreth of all people playing music for a living). For the vast majority of musicians, a record contract is a fast route to bankruptcy, which is what the "one-hit wonder" phenomenon is all about. More than a two thirds of professional musicians can't make a living wage doing an album, because the contracts are so draconian that they have to be a huge success before they can pull in a dime. It's telling that Glenn Campbell, a fellow who has had hundreds of songs on the radio and twenty successful albums, has said that he has consistently lost money on making records because of the contracts.
Oh, and by the way, less than one percent of albums sold sell more than one million copies. So next time you pick up a million-seller and have trouble shedding a tear for the artist, consider the 99 other artists who didn't get a thing for all the work (while the record company did) or the 54 who had to declare bankruptcy because they owed so much money to the record company that they couldn't pay it back, while the company actually turned a net profit on the whole thing.
Oh, and one last thing. Musical tastes aside, any artist you've heard of on the national circuit is far, far above "mediocre" in terms of commercial success. Puff Daddy may not be to your liking, but saying his success is mediocre is pure insult to the venue bands that play the clubs all around your house, who can only dream of being as well recognized.
Virg
The obvious moral to your little story is that trying to make money in the music business is a bad gamble. Is somebody forcing artists into it? No. They are usually driven by pipedream fantasies to the point of being stupid. The music business is a *business*. Get a lawyer. If it's a bad deal, go into a another line of work. If artists did this, the music business as it is would die. It's the unwise artists that keep feeding the machine.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
You shouldn't. If the law in question was reasonable and just, people wouldn't *need* "educating" because they wouldn't be breaking it in the first place.
The law is not self defining. "Because it's the law" is not sufficent justification for enforcement.
Sure. What's driving them there is fame and exposure. I remember one artist, whose name I don't recall, :-) said that she made more money by starting her own label and selling 250,000 albums than she did by selling a million when she was with a major. The tradeoff is, only one quarter the people actually heard her music. Likewise, even if the average artist could make more by independent distribution, they would reach a fraction of the audience -- probably much smaller than my anonymous example since they hadn't sold a million in the first place.
The record companies work hard to maintain this kind of clout, including some $200 million paid to radio stations every year to decide what gets played. (Do a search on salon.com for 'RIAA payola'.) As long as they can decide what gets heard, they could get whatever artists they want, even if the artists had to agree to actual, nonmetaphorical rape instead of the money kind.
Is paying the artists jack squat a requirement in order to support this business model? Of course it isn't. They could easily split off a fifth of that 6.6 million profit. *They don't have to.* It's cheaper to buy an audience, and get the band for free.
It doesn't matter -- that's not your decision to make.
That's like justifying stealing Star Wars action figures by saying "I saw the movie 25 times, so I've given George Lucas enough money to compensate for it".
You can't make that call -- not legally, morally, or ethically.
Bottom line is that you're preventing people from making money the way they are choosing to make it by taking their service but not paying for it. That's wrong, and you know it, no matter how much you choose to justify it.
I'd be the first to agree (hey, I am, in fact), but I do believe that there's a moral and pragmatic foundation behind copy rights. The problem is that the law isn't consistent, and it isn't clear. Until we can get it cleared up, all that the RIAA can do to support their (theoretically moral, pragmatic) position is to play the cards as they're dealt.
I'll also be the first to point out, however, that that's not what they're doing. They're buying laws and misrepresenting the morality. Once they get back to working for creative talent rather than owning it, I might change my mind.
But that said, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with copy right law in principle, it's just a clusterfuck in practice, and getting worse with each revision.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Theft" is not a legal term but rather a colloquial term. Those who discuss law seriously find it more productive to use the legal terms such as "larceny," "grand theft auto," "armed robbery," and "copyright infringement" that have different sets of statutes and different sets of case law behind them, rather than some blanket term such as "theft."
Some legal dictionary may actually define "theft" along the lines of "any offense involving the unlawful taking of another's property." But now define "taking," and define "property." If the copyright in a work is in fact property, why don't copyright owners have to pay property tax?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Since when is taking a photograph or replica of a statue the same as using a crane to hoist it away?
It's been a long time.
That's like justifying stealing Star Wars action figures by saying "I saw the movie 25 times, so I've given George Lucas enough money to compensate for it".
Oh crap, I hope it's okay with you that I read that, otherwise it would be the same as if I had stolen your pencils and pens.
For those who didn't read the article, the Starving Artist game is only a little blurb in the middle. But if that's your hot button and you have kids in school, find out if the school plans to bring in this presentation. Talk directly to the teacher(s) involved. The school also has a PTA or PTSA where you can stand up and object publicly.
Be prepared that teachers in general tend to be unsympathetic toward behavior that seems to break rules. However, they also tend to frown on deceit and deception. Your best argument is the truth about how the music business works. Try this explanation:
Musicians don't make money from record companies selling CDs, they make money by performing. Recording contracts are deliberately written so that all the expenses for producing, advertising and distributing an album are taken out of the musician's share of the profits, which then magically turns out to be ZERO. What musicians get out of CD sales is exposure, which makes them more famous and gets them better paying performance gigs. They get this same exposure whether a person buys a CD, borrows it from a friend, listens to it on the radio or downloads it from the Internet. The record industry's "poor starving artist" mantra is a flat out lie.
Whatever you do, don't beat this into the ground or launch into a tirade about the Evils of Capitalism or whatever. Just tell the real story matter-of-factly and give them a chance to digest it. Tell them you don't want the Recording Industry or any other industry bringing in a marketing campaign disguised as a learning experience.
I find it odd that this is called Starving Artist. The reason that they starve to begin with this that they receive a small fraction of the revenue from sales of their work. It reminds me of the poly sci folks agonizing about foreign aid to countries with corrupt regimes. The dictator scoops a huge portion of the funds meant for the starving masses which is a huge waste - but the only way to get any money to those masses is through the current regime. So, do you give foreign aid, knowing that it is supporting a repressive regime and keeping them in power - but still feeding some folks - or do you halt aid and wait for the system to collapse under its own weight and hopefully something better emerges? Personally, I think the parallels are actually pretty frightening between the RIAA and say, Sadam Hussein, Mobutu or Idi Amin.
What teacher would allow this as a part of his/her curriculum? Good grief. Here you go kids--create, have fun, but just so you know, it's the money that makes it worthwhile, not the satisfaction and joy that comes with the act of creation and knowing a job well done. What a crappy lesson to be giving our kids. That's as bad as suing 12 year olds, actually worse, because their propaganda is teaching children corrupt and false moral truths. As a parent I'd be pissed as hell to find out the schools were allowing my children to be taught these things. How about teaching them the importance of obeying the law because it IS the law, and if the law is wrong, it can be changed, but that the law is important and the law should be followed?
I have a suggestion for those who would like to continue selling those pieces of plastic.
Include a live video of your concert with your studio release(or hell, just release your live show) Package it all on a DVD or two and sell it for $20.
That's what Rush is doing - and at $20.99 for 3 hours of live music + extras on 2 DVD's, it's no wonder their DVD set is in amazon's top 50 nearly a month before its release.
And really, who is going to try and download 2 DVD's worth of material(8-10 gigs) when for 20 bucks, they can get the real thing.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I hope I am not the only one that is violently opposed to public schools trying to teach our children about ethics. First of all I don't aggree with a government organization trying to teach children ethics (whatever happened to parents?) and secondly the teaching of ethics by a heavy handed corporation. This is wrong in so many ways that I have to question the ethics of the school boards that allow such a curriculum in the first place.
Stay tuned for new sig...
BUT...Any charting artists you see on MTV are banking fat rolls at live shows. We did a show with Eminem several years ago (just after his first Interscope release), and we got a discount due to it being a student function. He still got paid over $30,000 for that one show. And that didn't include the costs that went into paying the Roots and other bands that performed.
And that was just after his major label debut. Imagine what he commands nowadays.
Artists bank major cash on shows. Even your well-known indie hip-hop/underground artist gets paid fairly decent (see, $1,000 for a club show + hotel + food + transportation). Multiply that by, say, sparingly, 100 shows per year. That's $100,000 with virtually no marketing campaign to pay back.
Being that it's an indie artist, royalties (or, profit if they paid for it themselves) skyrocket percentage-wise. Like others have said here, making $7 an album because you paid for it yourself, and then selling 30,000 (a paltry sum), just netted you $210,000. Many popular indie artists have banked from being indie. If you know hip-hop, think Company Flow (El-P/Big Juss/Mr. Len) or Hieroglyphics (Del/Casual/Souls of Mischief/etc.). Both groups sold over 100,000 copies of their first, indie-released albums.
Not to mention all the other sources of income that an artist has (guest appearances, show appearances, advertising, sponsorship, etc.)
I work for a company now that sponsors about a dozen (mostly independent) hip-hop artists. They get free clothing from us (we're a clothing company). We're new so they don't get paid (yet), but we have a history together and they wear our stuff. However, that's free clothing and free bags.
Imagine not having to spend money on food, clothing, transportation, etc., during the course of one year.
Show promoters pay for all kinds of stuff. I've been a part of dozens upon dozens of shows. The only thing the artist ever paid for was...um, absolutely nothing.
Now do that for 60 or 100 or, in a lot of cases, 200+ dates per year.
Cha-ching.
Why do you think artists like J-Live and Defari (Alkaholiks) finally quit teaching in the classroom to focus on being artists?
It's easy to figure that most artists make the majority of their money from live shows, etc. (Unless, of course, you count the divas and consistent 10 million + selling artists).
My .02
-SD/WAXDADDY
how can schools allow them into classrooms? are they paying the schools off or what? the way i see it, time is money, and every minute they waste on this crap they are not learning something else that is much more important
Neil Postman wrote an classic book called Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Everyone should read this.
Parents should be more involved in their kids' education. You should at least have an idea of what your kids' school is teaching them. Meet their teachers, and if they are teaching your kids something you don't approve of, you have every right to complain. Do not trust the school system.
First, who says what the posted limit is? If it is arbitrarily set at a low point, then the speed cameras are placed where the speed limit is artificially low, then who is that saving? I would argue it increases driver frustration and may lead to more accidents.
Second, you don't seem to understand that there is more to traffic fatalities than speed. The vast majority of traffic fatalities fall into one of two categories: impaired driving, and not wearing seatbelts. People continue to drive under the influence and/or without seatbelts. Speed could potentially kill at 30mph. What do we do? Lower it to 5mph? That'd defeat the purpose of automobiles, wouldn't it? Since you obviously don't live in an area where this is a problem, take a look at this link and find out what happens when automated enforcement gets out of control. On another note: traffic fatalities are already double in Edmonton what they were last year. Goes to show that speed cameras are nothing but a money grab.