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MPAA Funds School Programs In Copyright Dogma
Matthew Skala writes "This article from the Boston Globe describes the 'What's The Diff?' program, in which U.S. students and teachers can win prizes by learning to endorse the MPAA's version of copyright law. They're using volunteer labour from Junior Achievement - not an organization I would have expected to see doing this kind of thing. I guess I'll have to move its card over in my mental Illuminati: New World Order game."
I don't know, back in the dim and distant past when I were a lad, it was considered harmful to use brainwashing and coercion in education. I guess that's the price you pay for progress though. I hear they're moving onto aversion therapy next - "just put this down your pants lad, no it doesn't matter where, trust us, we know what we're doing..." ZZZAAAPPP
Doesn't this also count as political education - I mean the MPAA/RIAA are making a big deal about buying senators and so on to fight their "cause". You'd have thought they couldn't have their cake and eat it!
Oh well, it's a damn sight better than the UK at the moment anyway, with the mad blind fascist Josef Blunkett attempting to ID all and sundry
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
"We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control"
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
This is as bad as that swill known as channel one that is pumped into classrooms for 10 minutes everyday. I just can't wait until they start a program to convince school students that the TCPA is a great idea.
If Junior Achievement recieved sigificant feedback from "concerned parents" who do not approve of an supposedly neutral and exists-for-the-benefit-of-minors organization like Junior Achievement being used as a hired hand for the PR firms of corporate interests and would as a result in the future not consider Junior Achievement to be an organization they would want them or their children affiliated with... do you think that might cause them to rethink things perhaps?
:P
I mean, this is of course just hypothetical, since after all, how many slashbots actually have kids
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Actually this would only effect really dumb sheep-like teens.
The smarter ones;
1. Will see the $ advantages of downloading stuff.
2. Will question what teachers feed them ("Is it stealing?" or "Is this worse than speeding like everyone does?" or "Don't we have something better to do?")
3. Will just do it for the cash and prizes but not really believe in it.
4. Will just see through corporate crap and start to make fun of it.
5. Will look at the arguments against stealing from the pockets of artists and ask themselves "Does this person look like he/she is hurting?"
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I don't know if a similar thing exists in US law, but certainly under UK law the anti-smoking lobby made use of a little-known clause about 20 years ago which essentially meant that for every minute the tobacco companies were advertising on TV, the anti-smoking groups were entitled to equal TV time at little or no cost. Contrary to popular opinion, it was that which eventually persuaded the tobacco companies to give up on TV advertising - it was causing them more trouble than it was worth. (I would dig out some urls on this, but my ADSL is down and I'm on a modem at the moment)
Couldn't someone like the FSF or Creative Commons use a similar law (if it exists over that side of the pond) to do something similar with this?
I think that one of the problems with this sort of thing (referencing mainly from drugs are bad things) is that just just block it out. Its like advertising- im not saying adverts never effect me, but the average person sees what, several hundred adverts a day? 99% of them they just ignore.
I remember one time in high school (several years ago) we had a policeman come in to talk to us about drugs. He actually talked to us sensibly, rather than enforcing a "drugs are evil and if you use them youll go to hell" idea.
I cant rememeber most of it, but I do remember 2 things he said: (which is pretty impressive)
a) if you want to do drugs, fine. Do NOT do heroin and cocaine. They will fuck you up.
b) Dont inhale sprays. Some girl sprayed aerosol directly into the back of her throat, and the cold caused her throat to contract and she suffocated.
So there you go. Teaching kids the IMPORTANT things, rather than blanket bombing everything you dont like.
Obviously the MPAA/RIAA cannot get "directly" into the schools, so they use Junior Achievement to get in under the guise as "business education". How much of a "bone" did they throw JA to allow this?
Second, once the school finds out what the "topic of the day" is for JA, why do they allow it at all? Unless the teachers are mindless sheep, this kind of "eduation" should not be allowed!
Concerned parents should be asking some hard questions of both the School Boards and Junior Achievement about this, because if they are not going to show both sides of the issue, they should not be there at all!
Kids are some of the sneakiest people alive. (This is not open for debate. We were all kids once.)
This is open for debate. Just because you were a sneaky kid doesn't mean that I was.
When I was a teen, there were always those adults who were hell-raisers when they were my age. They'd look at me with a 'knowing' eye and tell me that I couldn't fool them, they were a kid once.
I didn't like it then, and now, that I'm an adult, I still don't like it.
I didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs as a teen. I didn't lie to my parents or steal. I had good grades, and obeyed the law.
Stereotypes are bad, no matter who they are applied to.
There isn't exactly a "law" that requires equal access to schools, but the FSF and CC could create a similar presentation of their views of copyright, and then complain to the media if schools aren't willing to give them equal time in front of the kids.
That was the main thing that kept this kind of group out of my high school, the fact that somebody would complain in front of the local school comittee at an otherwise quiet meeting, and therefore get a make-the-school-look-bad story in the local newspaper.
the DARE program in my school suffered a major setback after the officer was arrested for drunk driving. Oh, and after one of my friends parents said he could always get the best deals on pot, because, you know, he was a cop.
i always thought he knew a little too much about what he was saying.
MPAA, is that the organization which represents the movie studios that are constantly copying the plots etc. of each other? The "let's make a James Bond movie with Vin Diesel and call it XxX" guys?
Bah.
What next, will they have NAMBLA come and tell the kids their interpretation of age-of-consent laws? How about letting the KKK educate the kids about how laws regarding blacks should be?
I think a different view of this is that if a generation of children is allowed to grow up thinking that music, movies, software and anything else they can find on the Internet is there for the taking we are looking at some fundamental changes in both our way of life and our economy. And this applies not just to the USA but to Europe, Australia and (probably) Japan as well.
For example, what use is there in having a library when all books are free? Why would anyone donate books to a library or check off a box when the vote to fund a library with more tax dollars? Assuming the library actually pays for their books, music, art and so on, wouldn't we have a generation of people just thinking that was stupid?
Folks talk about how buying music is funding an obsolete distribution model and nothing really goes to the artist. Fine - if you have a high-speed Internet connection, maybe you can make the decision to "only download" music and never buy another CD. What if you don't have that connection? What about the folks that need to spend that $50 a month on food rather than the Internet? There are still a large number of people (more than 50% in the US I believe) that do not have access to the Internet at all at home or work. Sure, they can go to the library - but I thought we were closing the libraries as obsolete anyway.
I think there are a lot of issues here before it can be assumed that physical distribution is obsolete.
Anyway, if we aren't to raise an entire generation thinking that anything that can be distributed digitally should be free, then it makes sense that eventually all industry groups associated with anything covered by copyright will be promoting their cause in schools and anywhere else they can get a forum. This is their last hope for the future, folks. If they cannot succeed in convincing people that their ownership/property rights/copyright/whatever means something then we need to start figuring out what the effects are going to be and how to deal with them right now. All I've seen here is the blanket assumption that
- There will be no serious effects
- Artists will be compensated, somehow.
- Creative works will still get made for the joy of doing it, not for some dirty profit.
- Maybe there will be no effects at all...
I think we need to think this through a lot more before deciding this. The potential consequences are there and some discussion of how to adapt is worthwhile.This is no longer outrageous. You can try it too if you have the money. The society no longer thinks this is ridiculous, they think it's alright, because the corporation is doing it (technically MPAA is not a corporation, but you get my point). Want to promote genetic engineering and stem cell therapy - fund some biology lessons. Want to oppose genetic engineering and stem cell therapy - fund some biology lessons. All you need is money. And political power (just in case), which can be bought rather cheaply.
What the USA needs is a bunch of revolutionaries (soon to be branded terrorists), who would compensate their lack of money with personal energy and motivation. Kind of another King. EFF is not adequate to the threat, they are too soft. Someone should start a militant wing of EFF, with bombs, assassinations, self-immolations and stuff. This isn't some radical idea - everyone is doing it (IRA, Al Quaeda, etc.) - a front (party, organisation) for legitimate action and a group of fighters.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to just rant and rant. I will, however, try to restrain myself.
The most important question here, in my view, is this: Why the hell are corporations and 'business groups' teaching classes to kids anyway? Well, obviously because they see an advantage in it. So let me rephrase that: Why the hell are they allowed to do this? This is basically nothing more than advertising delivered directly at the kids, and hey, get this: They can't ignore it, because it's happening in their school, which they are legally required to attend!
There is something fundamentally wrong when publically funded, mandatory education is subsidized by private corporations in order to spread their own agendas. And 'best' of all, it's usually the poorest schools that end up simply needing to do something like this, just to afford basic necessities.
Allright, so this has probably been a rant. But it needed to be said. Just one more thing: Just how is this class learning? How can anything so biased, so value-laden, be classified as learning? I for one, am obviously a little to unimaginative to see that ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
It is a matter of degrees, but you're wrong about which degrees. Regardless of your misinformed opinion, it is actually legal for you to tape a show off HBO, and it is legal for you to lend that tape to a friend. The degree part comes in because the law is fuzzy and ill-defined as to the point where increased volume of copying and sharing actually becomes illegal.
To repeat: most people are not currently breaking the law with their VCRs. Your assumption that the vast majority of the population are petty thieves is simply wrong. What is being tested by this matter of degrees is not how much illegality is being tolerated; it is what activities are legal and what are actually illegal.
Now, P2P is probably beyond the fuzzy line defining illegality, but that's a different matter altogether.
- Is everybody stealing FM radio and over-the-air TV broadcasts?
You raise a good point. I haven't paid for any of the TV and radio content I listen to every day. Also, let's not forget that the MPAA used to say that video recorders would destroy their business. Now they make a bundle on sales in that area. But of course they were against it at the start.
We're seeing this now with downloads. They were against it and now they are turning around and figuring it out.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
All the more reason parents need to take the initiative and teach their own children about this sort of thing before the schools brainwash them.
Don't believe me? So go search the internet for "lesson plans" together with "homosexual" or "lesbian" or "transsexual" or "ecology" or "GLEN" "animal rights" or "immigration" or "zionism" or "Israel" or "civil rights" or "hate speech" and you will find thousands of propaganda sites just stuffed with free propaganda plans (social morality sermons, really) to reengineer kids' thinking.
You can spot the moralizing propaganda a mile away. A typical one-sided and awful scenario is followed by essays, roleplaying and discussion, all calculated to engineer the students' beliefs and thoughts along the correct social paths.
A typical example by a MADD group might be as follows:
"Jimmie was just run over and left for dead in the street by Bob, a teen drunk driver. Have your students roleplay a meeting between Jimmie's mom and Bob. Have them write an essay about what they could do to stop drunk driving."
If the teacher is ever challenged by parents for preaching her morals and religion to their kids instead of sticking to Math or Spanish or whatever, the teacher has plausible deniability, since:
(1) someone else wrote the lesson plan [yeah, but she selected it!],
(2) the NEA approved it [they love any left wing cause], and
(3) she didn't tell the students what to think, they came up with it all on their own [yeah, right, after she presented them with a transparently one-sided scenario calculated to sway the students in one direction].
It all started 100-150 years ago when manufacturers and social engineers wanted to create a docile working class of factory drones.
Go to this website and learn why you are taught the way you are and why you are deliberately taught not to think:
"The Underground History of American Education" at
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m
Hold on guys, this isn't the argument to put forth. The response will simply be "we're talking about downloading of copyrighted content, not stuff that's given away."
Focus on this instead: The MPAA (or the RIAA for that matter) does not have the proper view of when something is paid for. For example, they equate the increase in CDRs sold as an increase in piracy. This motto sounds righteous in favor of being morally sound, but the reality is that it can still get you into deep doo doo.
"Derp de derp."
The only reason people think so much about the music and movies that have a price tag is because they are heard over and over and over again on public air waves. Up until the mid 80s there was a law that required a percentage of the content that traveled over public air waves to be non-commercial and public. How much free movie and music content do we see comming over our public air waves? None. It's time to get laws passed that reclaims the publics stake in public airwaves. How about 51% of the airwaves be used for public domain artists and movie makers. It's a good start. It raises the question why public airwaves are used for commercial use at all. Commercial content can be accessed via the internet. If poor people watch commercial TV because they can't afford broadband that should tell us something about why they are having problems prospering. Right now I'm picturing a national garage band TV channel run by an administrative mechanisim based on a network of colleges. cow
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
From the article:
At the end of the school year, students are asked to write an essay ''to get the word out that downloading copyrighted entertainment is illegal and unethical," according to the teachers' guide.
From my memory a piece of history of totalitarian: back in the communist era, we have been indoctrined in schools on many subjects. We wrote assays on how perfect socialism is, and how evil and illegal capitalism is, and what a genius a local party leader was or how soviet heros were heroical for many times every year then, also according teachers' guide.
An ideal of ethics in school was the "Moral Codex of the Communist". But it works only up to age of ten or so. Teenagers did not take it. We had a czech folk proverb in the darkest age: "Who does not steal at every hour, steals from himself and his family (Kdo nekrade kazdou hodinu, okrada sebe a svoji rodinu)."
Finally, at the end of era (1989), including party leaders no one believed any of official propaganda.
Today, all that ideology and ethics of a "real socialism" is gone. I guess, nor the Hollywood will last forever. Human is a very adaptable and inteligent animal. Every historic attempt to herd it consistently for long time has failed dramatically.
There you are, staring at me again.
"... Winston found himself staring longingly at the girl's red earplugs, the symbol of the Junior Anti-Piracy League. He imagined ripping them off, violating her ears with badly ripped MP3s of AC/DC and Nirvana..."
"In the little cubbyhole out of sight from the telescreen, Winston took out his MP3 player and turned it on, well aware that the mere act of having it was a copycrime punishable by death. Hands shaking, he started the first song - Britney Spear's 'Toxic'."
"If there is hope, Winston wrote, it lies with the peers."
Don't cry for angry men with guns, you might get it. You are bitter which is quite understandable. But the only way to change the world is not by brute force. It's by changing the way how people think. Since a people as such is a very slow learner you might have to wait for a generation or two. It took Germany one generation to clean out the mess the Nazis left. The Nuremberg trials didn't do it. It wasn't the GIs handing candy left and right either. It was the kids asking questions and demanding change. Have a little faith in common sense and try to spread it with words. Expect some personaö sacrifices down that long and laborous road. Instant karma is a myth.
20 minutes into the future
I just called my little brother up and told him to IMMEDIATELY let me know if they start anything like that at his school. I told him why what they are doing is wrong (he didn't see a problem with a company paying to have their corporate interests taught as lesson in school), and that I would give him a list of questions/topics to bring up in class if they tried to push any of this stuff on him.
So what sorts of questions/comments would you guys bring up if you were in this class, if you wanted to poke holes in it and rally the class behind you?
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