Slashdot Mirror
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???
"Students learn to repeat the program's motto: ''If you don't pay for it, you've stolen it."
That is so incredibly wrong I don't even know where to start.
Have I stolen the contents of the Harddrive on my linux box?
Have I stolen the concerts I downloaded from etree?
Have I stolen the toys I picked up at the last trade show I went to?
And the worst part is that young kids are really prone to being manipulated and indocternated.
Let's make a difference
Is it just me who is sickened by the use of middle school students? You can't claim it's part of a broad legal education such as most citizens should have; they're not teaching them about anything but media piracy. And why would any school allow a special interest like that to "educate" middle school children?
When I went through school DARE was just getting started. Everybody was jumping behind it as a way to target kids right in the classroom early-on and say "Don't do drugs." However, DARE has been an awesome failure. Some of the buggest potheads that I know sat right next to me in those classes, parroting the lines that "Officer Jim" told us.
I believe that this program will have similar results; Little Suzie says "I'll never download, that's bad" at school then goes home and gets the whole new Britney Spears album because, ya know, it's free!
Also, this part is particularly interesting:
The ''fair use" doctrine allows the public to use copyrighted material for educational purposes. One can use another's work to parody, review, or critique that material. You can even legally swap material, as long as it's not for commercial gain, said Seltzer. ''People tape movies on their VCRs and swap it with friends without getting arrested for piracy," she said.
so, by that logic, all P2P is legal. I'm not getting any commercial by sharing files out, nor are the people that I download from. What's the diff in having 3 friends that swap movies off HBO or 3 Billion friends swapping some AC/DC albums?
Kids are some of the sneakiest people alive. (This is not open for debate. We were all kids once.)
Even little ones are all over music/movie piracy. They already know the thrill of getting something for free rather than asking your parents to buy it.
That thrill and the associated material benefit far outweighs anything the RIAA/MPAA or teachers can do to endorse a strict policy of legal distribution.
The coolest voice ever.
Coming Soon: The Junior Anti-Piracy League?
Orwell is teh r0x0rz.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
What they need is a presentation on how to create content that can be legally shared (history of GNU, Creative Commons, and so on).
Yet Darrell Luzzo, senior vice president of Junior Achievement, defends the industry's antipiracy program by saying it's not meant to cover all aspects of copyright law.
Of course it doesn't cover all aspects of copyright law. They seem to have forgotten about section 107 (fair use).
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
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.
Actually, they're brainwashing kids into thinking that things which aren't illegal actually are (fair use). Read the article.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I propose that this will be as effective as the war on drugs. Sure, some kids will write their essays, get some free stuff, and the salespeople, uh, I mean, volunteer educators, will feel as if they did a good job.
But consider the following:
1. Low income children do not have the access to computers and network connections that more well-to-do children have. I doubt, therefore, that they're reaching their target audience.
2. What's more effective at influencing behavior, some JA instructor or your cool friends giving you a copy of the latest hit song/album that they ripped off the net?
3. One sided propaganda campaigns may make people feel good, but they gloss over serious issues (ie, copyright, fair use, etc) and end up breeding a ridiculous environment in which people claim to want such rules and laws yet break them anyway.
All of this sounds a lot like the war on drugs. We have our "just say no" campaigns in schools, celebrities tell us to stay off the drugs, and we make all these claims about how bad drugs are for you while ignoring or outright suppressing the truth about their effects as we trample civil liberties. And just how effective is that?
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
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.
School Principal: Well, it's been four weeks and I'd say we've done a stellar job of making Ultra Cola available to our students.
Marketdriod: Well, you might say so, and I'm sure I'd agree with you but unfortunately that won't hold up in court.
School Principal: Huh?
Marketdriod: The idea wasn't making the product available to the students. It was making the students available to the product. The Ultra Cola people say your sales aren't what they should be. You do want to make your quotas, don't you? Or the school won't get that nice big check.
The schools aren't making a lesson available to the kids.
The schools are making the kids available to the lesson.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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?
The students played roles such as ''The Film Producer," ''The Starving Artist," and were asked questions such as ''Has anyone ever copied your homework? How did this make you feel?"
Do they have one kid dress up in a suit, steal everyone's money, and drive away in a Porsche? Because we need a Jack Valenti.
--
I belive it was Noam Chomsky that said: "Education is a system of imposed ignorance"
I used to disagree...
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.
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.
Anyway, I don't see anything new here at all. Yeah, there's way too much corporate influence in the classroom - so let's talk about all those schools that have replaced milk machines and cafeteria lines with soda and sandwich vending machines and made the Nike swoosh part of their campus decor.
When I was in the sixth grade I was grounded from recesses for weeks because I started a petition for longer recesses. an innocent bit of play snowballed within a day and soon there were dozens of handwritten copies of my petition circulating in classrooms. When they found out it was me who started it, rather than take the opportunity to demonstrate real world governenace, I instead got a lecture and made to write something stupid like "I will not create disturbances in class." Which, ironically, means I really did get a lesson in the real world - unfortunately, not the real world as we had been told in the classroom (petitioning the government, speaking out, etc). Obviously this real lesson had a lasting effect on me, as I still can't remember what it was I was supposed to write but the message sent still rings clear 30 years later: don't try to buck the man or you'll get stepped upon.
This program is certain to spawn a new generation of adults with similar memories. Indoctrination of this sort is doomed to fail as soon as the child begins to realize she can think for herself.
Now, getting back to those school lunches and corporate sports programs...
What's the diff in having 3 friends that swap movies off HBO or 3 Billion friends swapping some AC/DC albums?
2,999,999,997 people.
*snicker*
"The success is measured in how many kids did learn from it."
A *LOT* of kids learned from DARE. They just didn't learn the lesson their teachers and the police expected. The course may be diffrent now, but back when I was an elementary and middle-school student (10-15 years ago), the emphasis was on shocking the kids into obedience, not giving them real information. The first lesson we learned was that drugs will mess you up, destroy your life, and eventually kill you. Then we had friends who smoked a little weed and didn't get addicted, messed up, or killed. Then we learned the real lesson of DARE: Our teachers, our school principals, the police, Nancy Reagan, and that girl on TV with the frying pan lied to us all through our childhood.
0 1 - just my two bits
Technically you're quite correct. But what annoys me (and, I suspect, many Slashdotters) is the following:
1. Mass-produced CDs have a unit cost of a couple of pence/cents.
2. Many musicians never get signed to a major label, and thus never get any of their music in stores or on the radio.
3. The musicians who are signed to a major label are sidelined by whatever the label thinks will sell - eg. Britney Spears.
4. The label charges the artist for the privilege of advertising & distribution. So much so that in order to make $1,000,000 the artist may have to pay various suits $900,000.
5. The Internet eliminates parts 2-4 - if you want to ensure everything's fair, a bunch of artists could easily set up some sort of a "co-operative" to market their songs over the web, charging a nominal fee for the song and giving most of it for the artist, only keeping a relatively small amount back for bandwidth and system maintenance. The only reason this hasn't happened more is the dot-com boom has taught us that such things are very difficult to market successfully.
6. The RIAA is well aware of point 5. If it actually takes off, their entire business model evaporates.
7. The RIAA is therefore doing everything in their power to prevent this from happening. Brainwashing people that "MP3s are Evil!" is vital to this.
Actually, they're brainwashing kids into thinking that things which aren't illegal actually are (fair use).
Yup, and this is why it is so frightening. If all you know about rights is what some corporation tells you, if you don't know what your rights actually are, then do they even exist? Not for you they don't.
Your kids are being fed to corporate interests, who are trying to prevent them from really understanding what rights they have. This here is an actual threat to liberty. When does the bombing campaign start?
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
I have this horrifically produced avi on CD where the SPA (? the software equivalent to RIAA/MPAA) made a moral parable hip hop rap "don't copy that floppy" so kids in school wouldn't copy oregon trail (or the like) and play it at home...
.. almost as amusing as those clips mpaa sponsored theatrical trailers where the set designers try to say how piracy hurts them the little guy...
very amusing
*Shrug* I should divx that and put it up somewhere... (they actualy give you permission to redistribute THAT PSA turd ironically enough...)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
It's okay if corporations do it, it's just not okay when the leaders of other, autonomous countries, do it.
- Sir, have a look at this comment from "danila".
- Oh dear. I see here that he gained three watchlist points just last week. For this we have to give him, hm.. say five additional points.
- 75 points, that just tipped him over the scale for manual phone monitoring, sir. Do you really think that is called for? The sampled transcripts from his previous calls and letters...
- Now, now, lad. We can't be too careful these days. Before we know it we might have him sitting in a clock tower with a rifle.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
As someone who lived basically the same life, I have one word for you: BOOOOOOOOO-RIIIIIIIIIIIING!
I spent my whole childhood thinking that rules were there for a reason. Rules were there to protect us, to keep us safe from terrible dangers, and to keep us working towards becoming the best people we could possibly be. To me, rule-breakers were slime. They were worse than slime. They were violating the Great Social Contract that kept everyone from setting fire to old ladies and blowing up kittens.
After high school, I joined the Army. Learning a whole new and intricate set of rules was an interesting experience. I followed the rules dutifully, but ninety percent of the rules governing soldiers in Basic Training are there solely for the purpose of teaching the soldiers to obey without questioning. The need for that obedience is understandable in some situations. The military is just one of those places where sometimes lives depend on swift, coordinated action.
But in the end, I realized that sometimes the rules were wrong, arbitrary, self-serving, or simply lacking in coherence. Sometimes the process by which the rules are made exhibits the same flaws. Enforcement was either non-existent or arbitrary, and breaking them was more than merely harmless; sometimes it was the only way to get things done.
About the same time, I was becoming aware of the effects of being raised in an extremely rule-oriented religion.
Unquestioning obedience is fine for four year olds. But as soon as possible, kids need to be given explanations for the rules, to the best of their ability to understand. If they don't learn the difference between good rules* and bad rules**, then we're all doomed. The whole democracy thing doesn't work if everyone just does what they're told.
I worry almost as much for the kids who follow the rules compulsively, and are afraid to do anything without explicit permission, as I do for the ones who go around vandalizing and stealing out of boredom. I like the kids who creatively push the limits, game the system, and question those who wield power over them. Especially if they show some level of judgment about the actions that will do real damage, as opposed to the ones that merely make things more interesting.
* Don't set fire to old ladies. Never give your passwords out.
** You must request permission to go to the bathroom, and be back in precisely three minutes.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!