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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"
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
Ok, well note that they're not educating these kids on patent laws, tax laws, murder laws (manslaughter vs first degree murder, for example), etc. Only copyright infringement. How innarestin....
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't see how anyone could be against legal education in schools.
Do you see how people could be against misleading and inaccurate legal education in schools? That is precisely what will happen if we let the RIAA design the course material, which is precisely what they are doing.
The proper response when RIAA people start pushing schools to do this is for the schools to push back by saying, "You want us to educate people on copyright law? Sure thing - but *WE* are designing the course material then, not you. And well teach it to them accurately, including it's history, and why it was created, and including how you keep pushing copyright terms longer and longer... now, are you sure you want kids educated about this sort of thing...."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
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