Slashdot Mirror
British Schoolkids Get Copyright Education
Krafty Koder writes "The Register reports that British school children will be indoctrinated in copyright law , in a scheme backed by the music industry, as part of the government sponsored Music Manifesto initiative. In response, kuro5hin have posted an open letter on this issue." The U.S. has its own version.
Jabber the Lawyer
Half of our kids can't even spell, now we're wasting time on this crap?
I like muppets.
I think it would be great if someone made a list of such things that we could xerox and pass out to all the students so they can be PROPERLY educated.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Is this brainwashing even legal?
What is next? Teaching them by prying open their eyes like in Clockwork Orange with Beethoven playing on the background??
Friends don't let Friends use Internet Explorer.
"We don't need no education"
But understanding the law is an important facet of every day life, whether you live in Albania or Zimbabwe. It is also important to understand the law in order to oppose it. I know knee jerk reactions to things we don't understand are the norm here at Slashdot, but that's precisely why all the venom against the DMCA/CPAA/etc causes no harm to those laws.
The first step is understanding. I don't see how anyone could be against legal education in schools.
Our educational system? Sure copyright is an issue that is controversial, and piracy is a problem, however I don't think that it is a good idea for corporations to be the ones funding this type of thing. It compromises the educational integrity of dealing with the subject subjectively from both sides. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future someone gets suspended for wearing a "bit torrent" t-shirt on anti-piracy day or something...
"And I'm right. I'm always right, but in this case I'm just a bit more right than I usually am." - Linus Torvalds
Great, this is just what we need...
more little non-sharing learned Senator Hatches running around with British accents.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Now lets hope that they are going to just teach just copyright laws.... and not why its a happy idea to have logging software on your computer to "prevent" copyright infringements...
.Hack//* Owns me.
Teaching kids about copyright law, ok fine, nothing wrong with knowing what the law is.
Teaching kids the music industry's idea of copyright law, very, very bad idea.
President of the MPAA Jack Valenti outright lied when he said the following:
n terview s/Valentis.Views-347207.shtml
"What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law."
http://www.hpronline.org/news/2003/01/25/I
What is going to stop his organization from lying to children? Nothing.
Btw, for those in the US fair use DOES exist in common law and in statute, specifically, TITLE 17, CHAPTER 1, Sec. 107.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The media giants have also bribed DECA to begin teaching their spin on copyright. I didn't beleive it when I first heard it. This is a highly complex subject that the best lawyers spend years to learn. How can we expect high school kids to come to an informed opinion on a multi-sided subject with only one angle being presented to them? I can't imagine them going to any length to teach children about their rights to copy something (like educational purposes or fair use). When I was in school the worst corporate sponshorship was Georgia Pacific's educational series on environmental conservation. When compared to the media giants, all I can say is that at least GP replanted seedlings after tearing down a forrest.
Really. No jokes. All /.ers that are UK parents should not only teaching the kids the value of open exchange of ideas. They should also go to the school and *loudly complain* against this if their kids are exposed to such disgusting political propaganda.
They could also organize counter-lessons, both in school with the aid of clever teachers or outside. We must reject this now, before it's too late.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When a commercial industry lobby can influence the curriculum, where the system is already barely covering the basics and government is ignoring the pleas of academics to invest more in proper education... makes you realise who owns you doesn't it?
Gotta eduh-kate them early on, before the little consumers grow up! It's only sensible!
I'm hoping the kids think this is bullshit, and it might trigger the opposite response. It deeply saddens me that the industry feels so strongly that people are just consumers of products and not that there is an inherent right to fair-use, sharing or collective ownership/stakeholders. Sharing something you own does not make you a thief or a commie -- it's a behaviour that is blessed by the spirit of copyright law, that of fair use and public stakeholdership.
Anybody who says this has anything to do with compensation of artists is arguing a red herring. We have wonderful (read: inexpensive, reliable, ubiquitous) mechanisms for mass information distribution now, and publishers are realizing that they are quickly becoming unnecessary, and they're scared.
There's nothing natural about the way our copyright law in the United States and "intellectual property" in general work. It's a social contract, and, frankly, that contract is tilted rather sharply in the direction of publishers at present. Of course, it only makes sense now that the publishers are going to catch the children at a young age, and indoctrinate them into this idea that the present social contract is "just how things are", and squelch the very idea that society might want to renegotiate the terms of the different monopoly grants afforded by our "intellectual property" law.
It's fucking depressing. We need "intellectual property" revolution while there's still enough of a public who understands that things don't have to be this way.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Will you bother to tell him that the victims of illegal sharing are the artists and creators themselves?
The victims of the existance of the "publishing industry" are the artists and creators themselves. The advance of new models of compensation for artists and creators is hindered, to the point of non-existance, by the "publishing industry".
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
I used to take copyright law at least halfway seriously; I have published a minor piece or two myself. Copyright law was always intended to foster creation of new works by offering a monopoly on their duplication for a few years. It seems to have worked well enough, but where is the justification for extending the period of expiring copyrights? For that matter, has there been a shortage of new material requiring new incentives? It all strikes me as stealing from the common wealth.
Our educational system? Sure copyright is an issue that is controversial, and piracy is a problem...
Violations of "intellectual property" law (please don't call it "piracy") are a problem IF SOCIETY SAYS THEY ARE. "Intellectual property" law is a SOCIAL CONTRACT where society grants the creators of works of "intellectual property" a monopoly on their use, distribution, derivation, and/or duplication for a limited time. Of course, in the United States the contract has been so perverted by the lobby of the publishing industry that it bears no resemblence to what was originally specified by the Constitution.
What we need to be teaching is the history of "intellectual property" law, and teaching our children that it's right to question the law, and to ask "Why does this have to be this way?" Anyone who believes that law is static and unchanging, based on the collective opinion of society, needs to recall "blue laws" and other such antiquities.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
A class is not going to teach right and wrong. You know right and wrong. You dont care about someone elses version of right and wrong, you have your own. And whether you choose to do what they consider wrong or what you consiter wrong anyway isn't going to be decided in an ethics class.
Business owners that engage in shady deals aren't sociopaths- they know that what they're doing is 'wrong'. They simply don't care. Business Ethics classes won't give a criminal a bleeding heart and convert him to charitable donations.
Likewise, teaching copyright law wont do a convert evil file sharers into saints. If a person believes its wrong, they'll either do it anyway or they wont. If they believe its alright and the laws are screwed up, they'll likewise do it anyway or they wont.
The only good you could hope to get from classes teaching copyright law, sponsered by the music industry, is to scare kids into compliance at an early age. Make sure they understand that sharing a single MP3 in this day and age could potentially screw them over more than say, unprotected sex or smoking.
The class isnt there to teach people to be more 'moral'. It's to scare them into complacence. It's to get it into their heads that this is the LAW, so that from this point on, noone will question it just as noone questions cigarette taxes (another societal evil that no one questions because smoking's undesirable and it doesn't affect the nonsmokers that voted for it).
Its the parent's job to teach little johnny the difference between right and wrong, based on THEIR concepts of morality.
It is NOT the job of some monopoly ( or government ( to invade our schools and attempt this 'teaching'.
Get the hell out of my child's classroom. This is way out of hand.. and needs to stop. NOW.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Short version: if we're going to find time and money to educate our children on music copyright, how much more important is it to include music in our children's educations?
Because the real agenda is to teach children that the publishing industry is the only way that artists can be "legitimate", and that the creations must be owned by corporations and "protected" by "intellectual property" laws. It has nothing to do with teaching why-- rather, the point is to teach the kids not to ask why.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Corporate America has been influencing schools for a while now. Would a kid getting suspended for a bittorrent shirt somehow be worse than the kid who got suspended for wearing the pepsi shirt on coke day (or was it the other way around)?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Since when did corporate interests/organisations have any say in school curriculum? Does nobody see anything wrong with this??
Oh brave new world.
My theology teacher once described in class what happened at a Sunday school she teached at.
She would sit the children down and repeatedly ask them "Who loves you?" and the children were to reply "God loves me," every time.
I was horrified, but I was the only one.
That was the very moment I realized that I was not one of these people.
I'm tempted to believe you're trolling, but I'll reply anyway...
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them.
I don't know where you live, but the independent record store is the only one thriving in major cities (Amoeba in L.A., for example.) Stores that cater to collectors, that have knowledgable staff that caters to people with taste beyond the mainstream will always have a place. If the previous owners failed, they weren't good businessmen, plain and simple. It wasn't because the music was, as you perceive it, weird.
I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame.
Two thoughts. The first is, they aren't very Christian, are they?
The second is, perhaps it's your business model that's to blame, not the internet. You just might be selling something that no one wants. Christian Rock, for example, tends to be really bad music, a pale imitation of what was popular two years ago. Most teenagers are too hip to buy that crap.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
Alright, forget this, you're not even a good liar. The dialogue is straight from a Chick tract. Except Jack Chick wouldn't have a Christian record store owner use the word "shit."
Though I have to admit, the "lete (sic)" was kind of funny.
It should work if it's delivered as well as sex education. Myself and my geek friends attended all our sex ed lessons at school and always paid close attention. It must have worked because I've just turned 30 and have never caught an STD or got someone pregnant, oh wait..
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
The music industry is not dumb enough to believe that a simple class will cause a drop in downloading. I believe the motivation here is to take away a child's ability to plead ignorance on the minutiae of the copyright laws, so the record industry can better sue them.
We all have heard of that little girl whose family was forced to pay thousands of dollars because she downloaded a few harmless songs. Now, the record industry aims to take away the "kids don't know better" loophole, and wash their hands of responsibilty. "Hey, you broke the law. It says so right here and here, in the packet we gave you. Now we're going to make your family pay thousands of dollars for your little error."
It makes sense to me. You get a five minute time out for kicking your brother, and your parents lose a weeks salary for you downloading a three minute pop song.
Does anyone imagine how guilty and horrible that little girl must feel, for costing her family so much money? Apparently not the record industry. She is to be only another wide eyed lamb sacrificed upon the altar of cold money.
He is trolling. This is an old troll.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
You do not have a "personal relationship" with the millions who happen to connect to Kazaa.
They are my fellow humans. Why should I not share with them? I have not deprived the creator of HIS COPY by distributing a COPY. Plus, I do not deny him access to the internet, which is already worth far more than any one human could ever produce - Let's reward artists with free internet access, at most!
The argument that I have deprived him of profits and therefore copyright law is justified is invalid (circular), as those monopoly profits would not exist without copyright law.
It's time for an end to the tyranny of the few fascist bastards who CONTROL (and, mark you, it's all about control) what information you as an intelligent entity may or may not process.
TOTAL FREEDOM OF INFORMATION!
When you realize that when students for instance use the wikipedia, which is a rich source of knowledge, are flunked because their teacher refuses to accept any other source than the "official" recources.
I wonder what would stop a company as Microsoft changing information to make it spin their way just because their Encarta is being seen by the Microsoft sponsored teacher as the only "official" source?
I use Microsoft only as a well known example but essentially you can fill in any corporate name here...
The quest next century will be who's info is been seen as a truthfull reference to things.
Same goes for blogs, which are only very clever marketing tools to spin desinformation towards the badly informed masses.
Using the word friend loosely, everyone who is not your friend is your enemy. Therefore, everyone is either your enemy or your friend. Introducing the moral rule "Love your enemies as if they were your friends", "Sharing with your friends" implies "Sharing with your enemies". Combining these two statements you get "Sharing with everyone". Therefore if "Sharing with your friends" is ok, then "Sharing with everyone" must be ok, too.
"British Schoolkids Get Copyrighted Education"
British school children must now pay lifetime royalties for the privilege of an education.
Pretty scary, but it does seem to be the direction in which we are going.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with educating kids about something like copyright law, even if it is supported by the music industry. Except the problem, as everyone already knows and pointed out, is that it will end up as an extremely biased education.
Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
You better watch out,
There may be dogs about
I've looked over jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seem.
What do you get for pretending the danger's not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.
Bleating and babbling I fell on his neck with a scream.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as you're told.
Get out of the road if you want to grow old.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
While I can't speak for the British, it's really too bad how selective schools are in teaching history. "Sure, we'll go in-depth with copyright law because we're getting kickbacks, but only give a passing glance at how the rest of the government really works and the mechanic behind it and its creation..." I mean cripes, it's obvious from the last election that half the population of the United States doesn't even know what the electoral college is, let alone its purpose.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
When CDs were invented, nobody thought of patenting "method of distributing music by recording it on a CD and putting it in a plastic box." But that will change. Governments, following the lead of the US, are increasingly allowing patents on business practices. Someone has already patented the idea of recording and mixing a live concert and producing CDs on the spot to sell to audience members as they leave. There's no reason this couldn't happen with whatever new thing people are going to buy when they stop buying CDs. Recording companies need only wait a few years for the next leap in media technology, patent not just the technology itself but the methods of using it to distribute entertainment, and they will have a lock on licensing it to anybody who wants to use it. Say goodbye to the idea of bands cutting their own albums. P2P and other file sharing systems will be illegal (see other /. story today), so musicians will once again be workers-for-hire for record companies.
Through the 20th Century record companies controlled who was able to publish recorded music because the technology to do it was expensive. They could keep this control in the 21st Century by controlling the use of the newest media technology through rights-holding. That's why this school indoctrination thing is evil. The idea of copyrights and patents may not be all that bad, but it's been badly subverted. Intellectual Property laws need to be fixed, not worshipped. Letting the entertainment industry come into schools and shove their agenda down kids throats is a very, very bad idea.
Free Speech On The Approved Reading List
I once read that a story is a way to slip past your emotional immune system. It's like a virus that makes you feel something you wouldn't always feel. If that's true, then it's no wonder that certain stories are banned, that we won't let our children read some of them. Do we dare allow them to feel something that we don't think they should?
I was told by my teachers that school was to help prepare me for life. It was to give me vital skills that I would need in order to achieve something in this world. I don't believe that's the case. What I think our schooling is for is to prevent us from thinking the thoughts we'd think otherwise. Maybe we've even convinced ourselves that general schooling for everyone beyond a certain point does us good, but I think we're deluding ourselves.
One of the most ironic situations I've been in was having my history teacher telling our class that indoctrination was absolutely wrong and that it should never have been done. If you don't get the irony, please put this paper down and walk back to your place in line.
It's because of the severe irony of this all that I'm sitting in the back of Mr. Johnson's English class writing this, instead of having him tell me just how I'm supposed to interpret the story we're currently dissecting. I stopped listening to his opinions when he told me once that my interpretation of a story was completely wrong with no basis. I spent half the class describing exactly why my opinion on this was what it was.
He agreed that just maybe my interpretation could be valid. Unfortunately, it wasn't the 'right' interpretation, so we couldn't be bothered to look into it. Once again, if you believe there can only ever be one correct interpretation to a story, please shuffle back into your line.
Lisa's interpretation of the story we're looking at right now didn't agree with what's sitting on that paper in front of him. What scares me is that she isn't even saying why she thinks she's right. Lisa just sat down again, because she knows she is wrong and this isn't the way she should think.
In another severe dose of irony, I just recalled a cartoon from the forties that a friend showed me once. It's a Disney cartoon showing just how evil Hitler's indoctrination of the German children was. It talks all about how Hans is taught to believe that mercy is wrong. The cartoon, targeted at small children, tells us that telling small children what to think is absolutely wrong.
In our school systems, we teach children that they must be accepting of everyone, though there is only one way to read this story. Is it any wonder that we have kids who are unsure of what their place in the world is? They've got no idea what's supposed to be happening at this time in their life. The haven't had it defined for it yet. You in the back. The one who's only reading this because it's an attack on the current system. Go stand in line again.
I have a friend who is rather talkative, especially in group conversations. Except that all he says is taking the last opinion, then not even bothering to reword it. He's an excellent parrot. It scares me that no one else seems to notice this about him.
Mr. Johnson is wondering what I'm writing down. He never dictated any notes for us to take on this story. Why am I writing? God forbid I might be learning on my own.
Conforming to what they say I'm supposed to be would be so much easier if they just gave me a list of the thoughts I'm allowed to think. It couldn't be more than a couple of pages long.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a religion class.
The owners of copyrighted material often say they suffer "harm" and "economic loss"
resulting from illegal copying. Like most arguments put forth by copyright enthusiasts, it holds little water - for several reasons:
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them. The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" gotten paid. That is based on the assumption
that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby