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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!"
In school they told me that smoking was bad, I should eat a balanced diet, I shouldn't drink, and I should never smoke pot.
And look at me now!
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.
It gets better, I hear they're also sponsoring classes on how to drown puppies for kids who want to become Recording Industry Ass. of America lawyers.
(yes, this is a joke. Probably.)
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
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
1) Their CD will be sold for $20 of which they will get 20 cents.
2) Their new and creative song will be played once per day while they have to listen to boy bands have their song played twice per hour
3) Their CD's will be used to test the latest anti-copying technology which winds up ruining their bands reputation.
4) They will have to pay their own money to make their own tape, and the "record industry" will give their music to a prettier classmate to create a cover song for a totally lame commercial that ruins any hip appeal their song might have had.
Can anyone else think of anything?
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.
After suing a 12 yr old, knowing that they did it, and STILL they settled for $2k US? I think they should play a game called "Greedy Lawyer". Here the kids go up infront of the class, make a band, songs, album art, etc... then the RIAA says "Hey thanks for that, you get 1 cent an album we sell!".
Is this even legal? They are not a public entity like the Fire Dept or Police Dept that can come in and give lecutures on safety and saying no to strangers. They are a privatly owned firm of lawyers that will brainwash our kids to think their way. I really don't want my kids comming subjected to that. Yes, I could keep my child out of school that day but then they would lose any other classes that they would have that day also.
Is this what the education system is comming to these days now? Coperate sponsed education? It's bad enough that M$ is pushed in all the schools (nice that they get free computers though) now we're going to have the RIAA pushing their ethics? What's next? No, seriously, this is frightning to me. My two childern are just entering the school system now and with things like this croping up what will they be learning?
I remember at school being encouraged to share with my peers because it was nice, now big multinationals are giving early lessons in consumerism, what the heck happened?
Well isnt it nice to know that education isnt revolving around history, math, literature, science and technology, etc.. Its about how to become a comsumer for the bigger companies. And some people wonder how the american education system seems to falling apart. I think this answers it.
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
Wow! You must listen to some REALLLLLLLLY stupid artists.
:-)...10 songs and thats a good chunk even if ya know some of the standard accounting practices...
The artists I work for that have major label deals all make between $1 and $2 and album.
The guys that I work for that do their own stuff -- pay for all their studio time out of their pocket, pay their managers completely out of their pocket, do all their own promotion, arrange distribution through the various means -- make considerably more than that.
Funny thing...the two guys that I consider to be equal amongst my clients make almost the same each year. One major, the other independent. One tours with a 12 piece band and puts on KILLER shows...the other puts on an acoustic show with him and MAYBE 2 others if he's feeling like it. Both are friends (I met the one through the other as he'd mentioned his friend needing help on his ProTools system)...and both privately tell me that if they were in the others shoes they would milk the system so bad that they would be mad rich.
So what would you prefer? $1.00 per album on 2 million sales? Or $7 on 30k of albums (and STILL have to split songwriting with Harry Fox doing the accounting and taking their chunk because they bill ya directly because you don't work with a label)?
There are advantages and disadvantages to all of this. I have never read a contract that wasn't clear. I've worked with a few artists that didn't read the contract and then complained about it. I've worked with artists that don't even want to know what's in their contract. Hell, I worked a video shoot a few weekends ago and a few of the artists just signed what was in front of them not realizing that this paid them solely for their work as a hired hand assigning their rights to the lead artist...I mean they would have signed it anyways if they wanted to keep their jobs, but afterwards I heard the same ones that said they were wondering how much they were going to make from DVD sales...ummm...nothing...they got one lump sum and nothing more.
Artists are not ripped off blindly...anyone that cares to know what they will get paid has it in front of them. They took a bet that it would pay off more than the alternative.
Artists are NOT starving because of any $0.00000083 payment. I know its an exaggeration, but hell, I think statutory payments for the song writer end up being something like $0.15 a song as it is (thus its always better for artists to write their own damn songs
I don't know why the parent was moded insightful...I hate responding to things like this, but even though the poster is a clueless idiot, enough others need to know this isn't the case and the truth about the industry.
Big Bird: Look Elmo, I downloaded all this neato music on the 'In-ter-net'.
Elmo: That's stealing. People who pirate music should die of cancer. You're going to hell. Hehehe, that tickles.
Listen, if I'm sitting in the catbird's seat at a major label, I wouldn't be punking these kids out about how filesharing hurts artists, I'd be showing them how the pros do it - legally.
Vanishing royalties, recoupable expenses, double-standard accounting, ball-gripper contracts, long-term litigation - by the time these kids are finished with the class, they'll be dying to work in the industry instead of in front of it as performers. Screw the multiplication table, show 'em how to do math using the Royalty Calculator. Those proficiency tests will get hammered, at least mathematically.
Anyways, your mileage may vary.
Peace.
Wow. The album is available for download before it's even been created. Piracy must be more out-of-hand than I had imagined.
Well, I think the problem here is that you don't understand music very much.
YOU: "Bands wouldn't sign contracts to produce albums if they didn't make money."
History: Music has been made, for free, for several thousand years. Musicians have lived off of tips and patronidge and "day jobs" forver. Music is not about money. The music INDUSTRY, which feeds your CD shop and your radio, is about money. The two aren't necesarily exclusive, but it seems that way a lot of the time.
If you are in a band, making what you feel is the best music ever played (and all musicians do), and I tell you that I will give you money and you'll get fame and airplay, and you can quit your day job because of the advance, wouldn't you do it?
Musicians are interested in music, not money. They see the advance check and don't do the math. $100,000 to make music? Better than mopping up at the A&P, so they take it. This makes sense...would cautious, sensible economic planners be humping electric guitars on stage 5 nights a week until 2 am and doing crazy drugs when they have to work at 9 am the next morning? Hell no.
Still, with a big label contract, there's always the chance you'll be the next big thing. And then they make SCADS of cash. This is why so many acts sound alike...even if your sound is fresh and original, your producer reminds you you'll have a better chance of getting BIG if you sound more "commercial." End result is, you trade a little creativity for the possibility of never having to work again, ostensibly so you can regain your creativity after you're comfortably rich. You sell out. The result is the bands you hear "polluting" the airwaves. Yes, they are in it for the cash grab. But it's a big lottery and like all gambling, the chances are much better that you'll fail miserably.
People play music because they want to appeal to others with their music. They take contracts because they are told they will make doing just that. In the process, the goal of making money can often obscure the goal of being heard, and even if it doesn't, chance is not on your side. Chances are, with a big label contract, you will make very little money in the long run, and you'll probably squander it anyway.
Nowadays a lot of artists, especially ones who want to play their own thing and not appeal to the masses with generic sound, are opting not to get the big advances and small print of the big record label. Small labels will press your sound and give you a much larger cut but with no promotion, no advance, no whatever. You have to self promote, appeal to the few remaining independent media outlets, and you have to pack people into your shows. Still, you will never have the exposure of the big boys, so it's very hard to get gold or platinum level sales. But it's much more likely that you'll make enough to live on comfortably.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
There are criminal penalties for certain levels of copying. See U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec. 506 [cornell.edu] for the offenses and Title 18, Chapter 113, Sec 2319 [cornell.edu] for the penalties.
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That's not exactly true. Copyright infringement is actionable in a civil lawsuit (by the copyright owner) or in a criminal lawsuit (prosecuted by the US government). You should check out the the copyright act's section 506. It's a higher burden to prove criminal copyright infringement (you have to infringe "willfully"), but it still happens, and not just for cable, DMCA, etc. The bottom line is that the labels are suing because they have the money to do it and they can control the legal strategy. Also, the US government may not want to sue because it has other priorities (and a more limited budget).