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Librarians to the Rescue
Duke Machesne writes "Citing concerns over materials being distributed to American students by the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA's evil minions, the American Library Association will begin distributing its own, more balanced material this winter. The material will deal with insignificant and oft-overlooked details like fair use. More information on Wired News."
In September, the ALA will hold focus groups with teenagers to better understand...what language they use.
OMGLOLWTFBBQ?
"Citing concerns over materials being distributed to American students by the BSA" The Boyscouts of America?! What's wrong with the Boy Scouts?
This wasn't because the information in the libraries was bad (actually, it had a lot of good stuff), but as high school students we were generally lazy.
Better than college though, where publishers will force people to buy whole new editions of math books just because they changed the order of the problems at the end of each chapter.
The MPAA announced today that they will begin filing lawsuits against two current fifth-grade students who were former winners of the MPAA's own student essay contest. Winners were provided with MPAA T-shirts as well as copys of last year's Best Picture winner "Return of the King". According to the MPAA, one of the winners showed the video to her entire class during a "pirate pizza party" while the other student allowed his cousin to borrow his winning t-shirt w/ out paying the proper licensing fees.
...by Kurt Vonnegut I Love You, Madame Librarian
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
This borders on the obvious but librarians love books, which means that they are often well-informed liberals in the enlightenment sense of that word, i.e., someone who is broad-minded and tolerant of the views of others and expect others to behave in the same manner.
They also understand that our cultural heritage depends on free sharing for its preservation and nurturing -as does innovation. Librarians are therefore quite suspicious of those who try to place limits on the sharing of cultural outputs, particularly when they do so to benefit from the social conjectures and economic dislocations produced by a given technological moment in history.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Actually, education begins at home, indoctrination begins at school.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
It's even worse than you think. Most parents repeatedly attempt to instill in their impressionable childrens' minds the idea that nice people share their toys with their friends. This is a clear enticement to copyright violation.
;-)
And it's even worse than that. Many of those parents knowingly hand over their children to "schools", which are institutions that also attempt to teach the children that they should share.
After years of this sort of indoctrination, it's not surprising that the result should be teenagers (and even adults) who think that it's ok to violate copyright by sharing ideas, documents and music with each other.
These organizations are merely trying to interrupt this process and teach the children that ideas and songs are like toys and other kinds of property: Every child should have his or her own, every one should be paid for, and they should never be shared. Sharing is an economic perversion that undermines the private property that is at the heart of our corporate economic system.
(Lessee; will I get a "Troll" or "Funny" rating here? Maybe I need a
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
When you have a dead poet's estate prohibiting a poetry festival from "performing" his poems, you know the system's gone mad.
Indeed. Anyone who's ever been to an open mike night knows that in a sane world it would be the poet who would be prohibited from reading his own works.
KFG
It is possible to be both a strong supporter of the philosophy of copyright and yet oppose specific copyright law.
Not to mention private interests being allowed to making their case as fact in the public schools without so much as a representative of a counterpoint.
I certainly hope school librarians take up the gauntlet, but my experience suggests that to do so might well endanger their jobs.
KFG
You mean, apart from all the rest of us people outside the USA?
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
"We're trying to educate children at a very young age about the importance of protecting copyrighted works," said Diane Smiroldo, vice president of public affairs for the BSA. "It's important to start talking to them at a very young age about creative works online and what you can and can't share with your friends."
Smiroldo compared the BSA's program to an antismoking or antilittering campaign. The curriculum doesn't talk about fair use but focuses on what are "right and wrong" behaviors online.
Hmm, lemme see, smoking harms the kid himself, littering defaces the entire community, and "pirating" copyrighted works hurts -- oh right, the Business Software Alliance.
And lemme see, these kids, having mastered all that readin', writin', and 'rithmeticin' -- ain't no child left behind no any more --, they've got plenty of time to spend learning a corporate lobbying group's version of "right and wrong".
I've never pirated music or software, and I do believe that the MPAA and the BSA should have the protection of copyright -- including the right to bring civil suit.
But when they try to co-opt the education of children and get the Department of Justice to bring their civil suits for them, and to pile criminal charges on top, well, it seems to me the corporations are getting much more than a fair shake.
Begins to remind me of the "War on Drugs" -- a "War" we'll never win but which benefits corporations building and running prisons (and the drug mafias and the prison guards' union) at the expense of cops and taxpayers and citizens.
It even makes me wonder if the "content providers" have gone so far as to forfeit their moral rights to copyright protection. There comes a time when you just have to say that the "cure" is worse than the "disease" (as for instance, the "War on Drugs") and tell those grabbing more than their fair share of money and legal power, "this far and no farther".
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Librarians are getting overruled these days, not just by national directives such as the USA PATRIOT Act, but by activist governors.
e /2004 4-07-13-sd-censor_x.htm
i brary y.cdsettlement.ap/index.html
Last month the South Dakota governor removed a section of the state library Web site because it gave health advice to teens.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlif
This month the Kansas governor had rap CDs removed from all libraryies.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/06/l
A Librarian
Imagine what it'd be like if anyone who wanted to read had to pay.
We'd have a culture where most people get their information from visual and audio media like television and radio and ignore in-depth analysis found in newspapers and magazines.
Oh.
You, MBCook, are a damned fool. The ALA supports a few things you might not have heard of on Fox News. We like to call them democracy, freedom, and liberty. You see, we, and I really mean me and the other library students with whom I am friends, believe that each American has the right to information and that access to information is the cornerstone of democracy.
Public librarians, of which my wife is one, do not want children to look at pornography. They also don't want children to wonder why they can't research papers on gay rights or learn about breast cancer. Filters do not work. They let some bad things through and they block some good things. Every day we see children unattended in the library. Their parents and apparently you would like to impose upon us the responsibility of parenting these children.
So, I find it lamentable that you hate the ALA who fights to protect your right to read without intervention by the Department of Homeland Security and defends Mark Twain from book burning "concerned parents". I am more disturbed, however, that you feel the ALA ideological slant (again, freedom;liberty;democracy) is evil.
Don't blame him. He's blindly spouting rhetoric. The reason he's a neocon is because neoconservatism strongly appeals to insecure people...i.e., nerds. Neoconservatism is a "manly man" political philosophy. (I'm trying to remain as neutral as possible.) Neoconservative rhetoric appeals to the insecure because it makes people feel dominant, in control, alpha-male, and morally superior.
As far as I'm concerned, as a recovered ex-neoconservative, this rhetoric does not correlate with reality. However, I can't blame him. It's taken him over like a virus, just like it had done to me. Even the most logically rigorous are prone to this powerful fallacy.