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MPAA School Propaganda Program Examined
Anonymous Coward copies-and-pastes: "'As part of its campaign to thwart online music and movie piracy, Hollywood is now reaching into school classrooms with a program that denounces file-sharing and offers prizes for students and teachers who spread the word about Internet theft. The Motion Picture Association of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the business sector." Only $100,000 to advertise to 900,000 students? What a deal! We mentioned this earlier.
The artists live in multimillion dollar mansions
Very few of them do... as a former professional musician I'd venture a guess that less that 1% of professional (full time, no other work) musicians have enough $$ to retire off of today.
There are songwriters whose sole income is from royalties that are paid off of album sales. One could argue that they should find other work, but then again, one could argue that I as a programmer should find other work if all of the sudden all software becomes easily pirated (wait, it already has). Currently, there is no change on the horizon for publishing companies, who pay a pittance to writers as staff, in paying writers a decent wage. That should probably change too. But these are the people that are writing hits that the general public were buying, and are now sharing.
The bottom line is most artists are getting by like you and I are, without millions of $$ sitting around collecting dust. The ones you see on Cribs are a very small fraction of the professionals out there.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Atha, Pete
Vice President
Board Development & Planning Support
patha@ja.org
(360) 782-1512
Godsey, Tami
Director-Accreditation and Best Practices
tgodsey@ja.org
(719) 540-6285
Holladay, Jack
National Service Consultant
jholladay@ja.org
(719) 471-2172
McDougall, John
Regional Vice President -- Eastern Region
jmcdougall@ja.org
(804) 883-7680
Rose, Irene
Regional Vice President -- Western Region
irose@ja.org
(719) 540-6291
Wendt, Linda
Regional Vice President -- Midwestern Region
lwendt@ja.org
(269) 721-4232
Bartner, Howard
Regional Vice President -- Southern Region
hbartner@ja.org
(719) 540-6282
Willis, Lee Director -- Volunteer Alliances
lwillis@ja.org
(719) 540-6283
Ehhhhhxcellent! You can also find more ed-related addresses at
http://www.ja.org/near/near_nat_staff_ed.shtml [ja.org]
There is a difference between Blank CD-R's and Music CD-R's. I'm not sure I've got the links right, but if you go into best buy, over in the computer section, there's the computer CD-R's, and over near the CD's and Movies, there's the blank Audio CD-R's, which usually come in 30 packs and are more expensive. It's the "audio CD-R's" that you are paying the premium for recording music on. So unless you've been buying the more expensive kind of CD-R's, you haven't been stacking up credit towards downloading music.
The catch is that (as I'm sure most everyone on slashdot knows) CD-R's and Music CD-R's are identical, or virtually identical. I think since the higher spindle speeds of CD-R/W drives for comptuers, they have had to mess with the computer CD-R's, as the Music ones were origionally designed to be used in the "dual deck duplicators" over near the CD players in the Audio section, which burn at about 2x or 4x. But, we all know that almost every CD player will read a CD-R, even if it's been burned at 52x.
The riaa should learn from this lesson, too. If you try to charge someone more for a product because you assume they're going to do something illegal, people will find a way to get around the higher price. Proactive high prices don't fly in a capitalist society where everyone is waiting for the sale price, and unwilling to believe bullshit about "these are for data, those are for music" when they're identical except for the price.
~Will
sig?
Molding students has already been experimented with, and it's frighteningly simple. A propaganda campaign in the schools could turn the students into MPAA stoolies with little cost and effort.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
In public schools in the US, that is generally your right. But what you (and the rest of the crowd) could do, whether or not you are parents -- which can actually make a difference -- is to go to your local school board's regular meetings, see if/when this issue comes up, and voice your displeasure and the reasons for it. Far too few people generally attend such meetings, but they are open and public, and the boards generally listen fairly carefully to public comment.
But that takes actual time and patience, not just shooting off an irate /. post
The difference between PWC and Andersen is that Andersen did it in the US. PWC did it in Russia and they got away with it (although they eventually lost their audit arrangement with the RCB. Frankly PWC, should be dismembered like Andersen.
If those thieves ever accuse my kids of stealing from the producers, I will quite happily tell them how much they conived in stealing fom the Russian people and the IMF.