Hong Kong Boy Scouts to Protect IP

phresno writes "Declan McCullagh at C|net's News.com has a short article on the development that the Hong Kong Boy Scouts Association has teamed up with the MPA to create an intellectual property merit badge. Mike Ellis of the MPA hopes this program will 'provide thousands of young people -- future leaders -- with a better understanding of the value of intellectual property.' Those with tinfoil hats will surely be thinking of the youth in Orwell's 1984."

Comments

Children

[fembots]

Funny how you can still make use of children if you hit the right note.

This is sick

[Saven Marek]

Let me be one of the first to say this is absolutely sickening. Boy scouts are about honor and doing what is right and about self reliance and about all other good things like that. Not about serving commercial interests.

What next they have a McDonalds Merit Badge given to the kids who can eat a quarter pounder a day all week for supporting a good old american company? Well it means the same thing.

Re:This is sick

[stevew]

"Boy scouts are about honor and doing what is right and ..."

Think about this for a second. Whether you like it or not, MPAA DOES have some legitimate gripes. How they go about resolving those issues isn't nice, but theft is still theft.

Getting Boy Scouts (of whatever nation) to honor someone else's property is well within the concept of "doing the right thing" in my book!

Re:This is sick

[LWATCDR]

"Let me be one of the first to say this is absolutely sickening. Boy scouts are about honor and doing what is right and about self reliance and about all other good things like that. Not about serving commercial interests."
Frankly I guess I am confused. Is pirating and right? I thought that the main complaint with the RIAA was with there tactics, destruction of the princeable of fair use, and just general nastyness. I mean the FSF uses the very same IP laws to go after people that break the GPL. Are they just as evil since they go after violators of their IP as does the RIAA?
I really thought it was about keeping your rights to privacy not piracy.

Re:This is sick

[The Good Reverend]

Boy scouts are about honor and doing what is right and about self reliance and about all other good things like that...

Yes, because excluding gays and atheists from their organization is both honorable and good, right?

There are much, much bigger problems with this pseudo-military youth group than RIAA merit badges. They deserve neither our respect nor our money.

Re:This is sick

[Enigma_Man]

Right. It's too bad that instead of just keeping to "Please don't copy this music to other folks, thanks" they tack on the "also, pay us more if you want this in other formats, mwahahaha" bit.

-Jesse

Re:This is sick

[caino59]

Very true.

Being an assitant scoutmaster (and eagle scout) - I'm very interested in seeing what this merit badge entails.

Respect for others ideas and creations is good.

However, the extortion that the RIAA and MPAA are engaging in is terrible.

Re:This is sick

[LurkerXXX]

Since it's a social organization and has nothing to do with the government, I'd suppose theyd feel about the same that a pope in Italy is the religious leader of a large segment of the American people. They wouldn't care. It has nothing to do with government. If the Boy Scouts want to have a silly badge, well so what? It won't be the first silly thing they've done. Get over it.

Re:This is sick

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because excluding gays and atheists from their organization is both honorable and good, right?

If you're a moral relativist, the concepts of honor and good are meaningless. If you aren't, then you have to be willing to acknowledge that at least from their perspective then what they are doing is precisely honorable and good. Seems to me that you disagree with their view of morality, nothing more.

There are much, much bigger problems with this pseudo-military youth group than RIAA merit badges. They deserve neither our respect nor our money.

Fair enough. Feel free to donate to whatever orgs you do feel are honorable and respectable.

Re:This is sick

[netruner]

Before I get started, I need to say that I have had a college course that extensively covered IP issues and also was an Eagle Scout.

The thing that I find problematic about this is that the adult world hasn't figured out how much creedence to give IP rights, yet the group in question appears to be indoctrinating the youth. Understanding that Scouting in other countries can work differently, the core values should remain the same. I seem to remember something in scouting about being an upstanding, law-abiding citizen- so maybe it's not a total sell-out. It's entirely possible that the merit badge covers what is legal/illegal and not ethical/unethcal by corporate standards.

My final thought: We adults need to get our story straight before we start teaching the next generation what is right and wrong.

Re:This is sick

[NixLuver]

Of course, that's only if you buy the propaganda of the corporate weasles that have turned "copyright infringement" into "theft"; not equivalent concepts at all. The reason it was called 'copyright' is because - get this weird concept - it granted you sole right to profit from copying of the work for a limited period of time, which is very clearly different from 'ownership'. Remedies were all civil until our 'copyright' and 'trademark' process got turned into "Intellectual Property" by the lobbyists of the "IP companies" - those who would found an empire on a single concept rather than develop new ones often enough to stay afloat.

Re:This is sick

[The Good Reverend]

It's my right when they use government subsidies, meet at public schools, and use public funds. They can do anything they like as soon as they stop all those things.

Re:This is sick

[FirstTimeCaller]

Below are the requirements for the Computers Merit Badge which was "updated" a few years ago:
...
connect to a computer network or bulletin-board service such as Prodigy, CompuServe, or America Online.

Prodigy? CompuServe? I think they may want to consider yet another update.

Re:This is sick

[NixLuver]

By this rationale, the United States wouldn't exist. The Boston Tea Party was blatantly illegal. There is an obvious difference between "real properties" and so-called "Intellectual Properties" - so much so that our Founding fathers debated as to whether they should even be allowed, or must be required. Teach those kids the whole story - like the fact that most bands OWE MONEY to the company that distributes their first three cds, and that they only make MONEY on TOURS, and I think you'll see a completely different perspective from those kids.
I am really tired of the rampant 'corporatization' of the common perception of 'copyright'. It (copyright) is *not* ownership, and no one was confused about that until Disney and the *AA started spending big cash on lobbying Washington; and now we're exporting our brain-damaged brand of "Intellectual Properties" via economic blackmail.

Re:This is sick

[Tassach]

upholding the law is both right and honourable.

Upholding an unjust law is neither right nor honourable; disobeying such a law is both.

Re:This is sick

[da cog]

Boy scouts are about honor and doing what is right and about self reliance and about all other good things like that...

Yes, because excluding gays and atheists from their organization is both honorable and good, right?

Suppose the situation were turned around, and the local Atheism Club turned down a Boy Scout for membership because he was religious. Should the Boy Scout feel "excluded"? Of course not! It's perfectly acceptable for an organization of people to form around a shared value and to only allow in people who share that value. There's nothing dishonorable or mean about this.

Also, homosexuals are not "excluded" out of bigotry, as your post seems to imply. It's partly a value thing, as with Atheism, and its partly to assure parents that their children are going to be in a situation where no one will have sexual feelings for them and vice versa. The Boy Scouts don't think that homosexuals are bad people at all -- they just disagree with the behavior. Don't confuse these two things.

Besides, this is generally a nonissue. There's an unofficial policy of "Don't ask, don't tell." Even if you are an atheist or a homosexual, if you don't make a big deal out of it nobody's going to care. If you say, "Hey everyone, I'm an atheist and I insist on being a Boy Scout anyways!" then of course they have no choice but to not allow you in, but I don't think that most troops work particularly hard to enforce that rule unless someone forces the issue.

There are much, much bigger problems with this pseudo-military youth group than RIAA merit badges. They deserve neither our respect nor our money.

Boy Scouts is not really pseudo-military -- at least, my troop wasn't at all, but every troop is different. It's much more like an outdoors club that strives to teach leadership skills and the value of accomplishment (e.g. merit badges, etc.), both of which are very respectable things to have.

Re:This is sick

[The Good Reverend]

I would personally be less supportive of them if they chose that route

You'd only be less supportive? That's pretty fucked up. Do you support the KKK for their fantastic parades, even though there's all that "other stuff"?

The BSA is at least partially supported by government money - mines and yours. They should have to live up standards that don't exclude for reasons like race, religion, and sexual preference.

Re:This is sick

[replicant108]

Getting Boy Scouts (of whatever nation) to honor someone else's property etc etc

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/ a1_8_8s12.html

Re:This is sick

[ScentCone]

adult world hasn't figured out how much creedence to give IP rights

What? It's completely unambiguous, and there are very clear-cut laws on the books. You Cannot Rip People Off - what haven't we figured out about that?

What you probably mean to say is that the part of the population that doesn't like to pay entertainers for their work haven't yet brainwashed enough eventual voters into thinking that they have an entitlement to free movies and music, and thus we haven't yet changed the laws to make it so. Right now it's unambiguously illegal to rip off the artists, and the only variable is the number of people that think it should be OK. The good news (for the artists) is that the people that are too lazy to be able to afford to pay for their entertainment are also, generally, too intellectually lazy to even go through the motions of justifying piracy in terms that the rest of the productive economy will endorse.

Re:This is sick

[The Good Reverend]

Suppose the situation were turned around, and the local Atheism Club turned down a Boy Scout for membership because he was religious. Should the Boy Scout feel "excluded"? Of course not! It's perfectly acceptable for an organization of people to form around a shared value and to only allow in people who share that value. There's nothing dishonorable or mean about this.

I happen to run a local Atheists organization, and we welcome all comers. But if I got money from the US government, or was meeting in publically owned building, I'd have to make damn sure I was open to everyone. I can choose to exclude, but if I'm getting any public help, like the BSA does, my responabilities change.

Re:This is sick

[Jafafa Hots]

Where did he say they don't have the right to exclude gays?
Where did he say they had to be forced to include gays? HE DIDN'T.

All he did is to point out that they are a group of bigoted, homophobic assholes. They have the RIGHT to be bigoted hompophobic assholes, and he has the right to point to them and say "Hey look! A bunch of bigoted homophobic assholes!"

Why are YOU to impose your beliefs on the parent poster and tell him he has no right to point out that he thinks a group is doing something he considers immoral?

He is not a hypocrite - the boy scouts are saying homosexuality is bad, the parent poster is saying the boy scouts are bad. You, on the other hand, are implying not just that the parent posters beliefs are bad in your opinion, but that he has no right to express them... the irony and hypocricy of your own statement clearly eludes you.

Re:This is sick

[natrius]

However, modern technology has called into question the validity of this definition of "property".

Who are you kidding? Technology didn't call into question the validity of intellectual property, human nature did. What happened is that it's so easy to disregard the laws that protect intellectual property that tons of people do it. This makes sense. Intellectual property has no basis in natural law, and as a result, most people don't feel bad about downloading music off the Internet. The notion of intellectual property conflicts with something inside each of us that sees nothing wrong with making a copy of something we already have and giving it to someone else.

What you don't seem to realize is that intellectual property was created for the sole purpose of giving content creation a viable business model. If you're the only one who is allowed to make copies of the work you create, you can sell those copies for money. Otherwise, it's infinitely harder to create content as a career. No one wants that. We want all this content to still be created so we can enjoy it.

If anything, advances in technology have proven that intellectual property is necessary for a vibrant creative industry. Since it's so easy to copy things now, everyone does it. There need to be artificial barriers in place, such as intellectual property law, to make sure people don't do that. It's easy to tell the creative industries to come up with a new business model, but that has two problems. First of all, people are still taking their content without paying for it. This leaves them no incentive to keep on putting out albums. That's bad. Secondly, no one has suggested a viable alternative business model. One model that is frequently suggested is that artists would distribute their albums for free as an advertisement for concerts and merchandise. What this fails to take into account are the artists that already sell out tours with the current model. All you're doing is taking away an avenue for the artist to make money and claiming that it's a better business model. This also ignores other creative works, such as books and visual art. The people who create these works derive most, if not all of thir income from the sale of their works. If their works start being distributed online as widely as music currently is, there won't be an alternative business model to turn to at all.

If people continue to disregard intellectual property law, the business models that the creative industries use will change. However, the industries as a whole will have to change as well, and this will likely result in far lower production of creative works. That's exactly what intellectual property law is there to prevent. Sure, copyright duration is too long, along with various other problems. The solution is to fix the problems, not get rid of it all together. Intellectual property rights are rights that we give to creators as a society, and we can just as easily take them away. I don't think it's wise to do so.

Re:This is sick

[An Onerous Coward]

You seem to be going out of your way to be inflammatory. Not everyone who complains about draconian IP laws are simply out to score free stuff, and--despite your comments--you know it.

The laws are not always clear cut, and where they are clear cut, they do not always represent the best interests of fairness, justice, or society as a whole.

Do you think it's right that a documentary maker loses the right to use a shot because it happened to catch a few seconds of a TV playing "The Simpsons?" Do you really think our society is served by keeping "The Grapes of Wrath" under copyright until 2038? What about the literally millions of copyrighted works that no longer have value to the copyright holder, or for whom the copyright holder can't even be found? Should we make sure those works can't be copied either, until those copies which do remain have crumbled into dust? Should researchers face criminal prosecution merely for discussing the copyright protection measures of a new gadget?

If these are the sort of fair laws that you want Boy Scouts to be taught to respect and obey, then your endeavor is doomed. Even a twelve year old can see that "IP law" is just a big, corporate-sponsored power grab, and any attempts to teach them to respect those laws will only result in their losing respect for all laws.

Re:This is sick

[serutan]

intellectual property was created for the sole purpose of giving content creation a viable business model

The key word is a small one: "a". The content industry wants everybody to keep thinking "a" viable business model means "the only possible" viable business model. They also want people to keep thinking "representative government" means company lawyers handing pieces of paper to senators to introduce verbatim as laws. When the big kids play dirty it gives the little kids an incentive to follow suit, and to some degree I think it's a reasonable justification.

Re:This is sick

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What you probably mean to say is that the part of the population that doesn't like to pay entertainers for their work haven't yet brainwashed enough eventual voters into thinking that they have an entitlement to free movies and music, and thus we haven't yet changed the laws to make it so.

You can't "rip-off" a dead person by making a copy of their book. If anything I think most authors would prefer that their work was available forever, instead of deleted from history. In any case the author's wishes do not trump the rights of all mankind. Copyright is supposed to be a two-way deal. Author gets a limited term monopoly on publishing, the world gets as many copies as they want in perpetuity. Unfortunately, limited term has become "forever" and works or art, literature, music, film, and even video games are vanishing daily. Gone and destroyed never to be seen or read again, because it is illegal for anyone but one person/group/company to make new copies and they won't or can't or don't even exist anymore.

Have you ever heard of the book "Solomon's Crown" written by a notorious but anonymous 1950's pulp author? Niether has anyone else. That is because although the book is wonderful it is impossible to get a copy and illegal to make a copy if someone can find it. That applies to about 70% of all blues music in existence. It also applies to the vast majority of video games more than 10 years old.

How about "It's a Wonderful Life," have you heard of that movie. Well you wouldn't have if the copyright had not expired. It bombed at the box office and was tossed into storage. When the copyright expired PBS aired it and it was instantly a hit. Then through some legal voodoo it became copyrighted again, and PBS has to pay if they want to play it. Now if you haven't noticed nothing has come out of copyright for the last 29 years. All those great works like "It's a Wonderful Life" are just rotting, or thrown out, or in storage, or abandoned all so they don't compete with whatever media companies are pushing today.

If anyone is being ripped off it is the populace in general who has been robbed of all those works, all that heritage erased and destroyed by greed and corrupt politicians. I've spent years trying to find particular books. They aren't for sale, most can't be found in any library. It used to be any work that was to copyrighted had to have a copy sent to the Library of Congress. That was repealed too. Now there are no copies. And even if their were, most people could not read them, because it would be illegal to make more.

It's completely unambiguous

I agree, but I don't think I agree that copyright is moral or ethical right now. In it's current state it is killing our literary and cultural heritage. It is sickening.

Re:This is sick

[Jherek Carnelian]

If this is really that lucrative of a business model, why aren't more people doing it? The reason is that it's not as profitable as traditional, intellectual property-backed models.

Just how profitable are these "traditional ip-backed models" when everyone is copying the "ip" on the net for nothing, despite it being illegal with draconian punishments to do so?

Maybe the reason more people aren't doing it yet is inertia. Intellectually, most people are still stuck in the payment via distribution system and haven't seriously considered any other option. Technologicly, the internet is still a baby. File copying has been easy to implement because there is no government involvement - money transfers is much more complicated due in part to all of the regulation, just ask paypal.

Arguing that any other approach is invalid because it is not already in use is just circular reasoning.

With this model, a creator only makes a fixed amount of money, whereas a creator can sell their work for the duration of their copyright

You are arguing that it is better to gamble on the popularity of a product after having invested in the effort to create it than it is to take a known return on an essentially risk free production? I know A LOT of investors that would love to be able to earn a guaranteed return of even just 10% a quarter.

all the proposed alternative business models have one thing in common: less profit for the creator.

I believe this to be false. The current approach encourages superstars and abject failures - for every michael jackson, there are 100,000 nobodies who gambled and lost.

I don't care about the creator, and neither does society.

I believe this to be false. Society cares about the creator immensely, the creator is effectively a brand name. If the creator has a good reputation for producing desirable work, then consumers are willing to trust that the creator's next work will be similarly desirable. To argue otherwise is to deny the obvious - Tom Cruise, Stephen King, Led Zeppelin, Quentin Tarantino - creators in all genres are just as important, if not more so, to the buying public than the most heavily promoted coroprate brands like Nike and Coke.

A work-for-hire mechanism can be at least as lucrative as the current system. Today, anyone starting out pretty much works for free - musicians either give it away on the net or give it away to the RIAA. Indie film producers are lucky to even be selected for a film festival, much less get distribution. So given that baseline, a work-for-hire model requires that initial creations be sold for little or no money in order to build a reputation for the creator. If the creator is good, he will be able to command increasingly higher fees for each new creation - not because people are necessarily willing to pay more, but because the better his stuff, the larger the pool of people who have experienced it and liked it enough to pay for the next work will be. For example, with roughly a billion people on the net, if only 0.1% think that Joe Cool's next album is worth $1 to them, that's $1,000,000 direct to Joe Cool. That's the kind of money only the super of the super-stars see on any regular basis.

The Badge

[Artax]

Really at the end of the day its just a badge. Sure it brainwashes kids to keep their intellectual property safe. Maybe if they keep the property then they will begin to think that the government can't interfere with their own intellectual property. This would be a huge step forward in China.

fucking disgusting

[SirSlud]

When a large industry has trouble enforcing rules it effectively set (speficially copyright terms and reductions on what constitutes fair use,) and begins to use Boy Scouts to 'spread the gospel'/'indoctrinate', you have to wonder if the law really is in the interest of the people.

Yet another case of people serving the economy, as opposed to vice versa.

Or..

[Sanity]

Those with tinfoil hats will surely be thinking of the youth in Orwell's 1984

Or in Hitler's Germany. Co-opting the youth is a common tactic for those that wish to exercise control over society. This is easy because the youth tend to be more gullible (sorry but its true, Pokemon anyone?).

The key question is why the education systems we all pay for are facilitating this (although perhaps not in this particular case, many schools in the US have also been willing channels for pro-intellectual property propaganda).

Re:Or..

[Anonymous Coward]

Adults are pretty gullible too. "They hate our freedoms".

Re:Or..

[deanj]

First, Godwin's Law invoked, so you lose the argument by default.

Second, that's Hong Kong we're talking about, not the US, at least for this story. ...I agree with everything else you said though.

The "Polticially Correct" speech that's forced in schools these days IS what was warned about in 1984.

Those not saying the "right words" are accused of "thought crimes", or "hate speech" just because they used words someone else didn't like. So much for free speech.

This is ++good!

[Scrameustache]

Boy scouts are about honor and doing what is right and about self reliance and about all other good things like that.

Well, it's a para-military brigade that was originally advertised as a good way to keep young boy's hands busy (i.e. to prevent them... going blind).

So it's a pretty good choice for an organisation who's been attempting through various means to indoctrinate the next generation into their view on copyrights.

Re:This is ++good!

[Your_Mom]

Why do the submit and preview keys need to be so close?

"Obviously spoken like someone who has either never been, or never participated in the program. Your blanket statement reminds me of when Microsoft globally condemns the work of OSS, without even know what it actually does."

Re:This is ++good!

[3terrabyte]

Hell, we just learned to race pine wood derbies, and how to have fun. It helps when your dad volunteers to be a scout master. Like they say... take an active step in raising your kids.

Sorry yours had an agenda.

As an Eagle Scout,

[jockeys]

I feel compelled to say that this is utterly wrong. A scout is a lot of things. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. But not "aware of copyright laws." I don't recall the Scout Oath containing anything about being a corporate shill for the recording industry; merely promising to do your duty to my God, my country, my community, and myself. This is absurd.

Re:As an Eagle Scout,

[xenocide2]

I don't think that camping is part of the Scout Law either, but the merit badge does exist. And I fail to see how stamp collecting keeps one morally straight, mentally awake or physically fit.

Re:Suggest Your Own Merit Badges Here!!!

[Alpha_Traveller]

Uh...Why is this funny?
(Yes, I get the joke and yes, funny.)

Frankly, it's a great suggestion. I'd love to have America's youth thinking good things like the Mantra of GPL, instead of bad things like "...let's keep all the good things to ourselves and make some moolah or shut out the little guy"...

1984?

[tktk]

Those with tinfoil hats will surely be thinking of the youth in Orwell's 1984."

Orwell was an optimist.

Mod Me Down Troll (-1)

[coolGuyZak]

What's next, a /. moderation merit badge?
What's the point? Noone would qualify.

Re:Hong Kong Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Har, har. It's insane what passes for "funny" around here now.

It's obvious they're doing it because of the rampant piracy in HK. The goal is to have kids that are ordinarily buying warez at small shops turn in the owners instead. Except even if they do, the shops will open up a week later under a different name, two doors down, and run by the same guys. Are all the guys running these places in sham shui po and mong kok going to go out of business? Hardly.

GPL = IP ?

[mosb1000]

Shouldn't that be included under the IP merit badge, since it protects the intellectual property of open source developers.

Re:could be good or bad

[3terrabyte]

Maybe the scouts also get to learn about barratry, buying politicians, ripping off artists, and price fixing! Boy scouts might finally be able to outsell those Girl Scout Cookies!

Morals?

[mosb1000]

I thought the Boy Scouts were supposed to morals and leadership skills to future generations. I think respecting other peoples IP falls under the morals category. They already teach you not to plagiarize other peoples work, which is really the same thing, so I don't see why you find this so upsetting. I suppose next you were about to complain that they teach kids not to cheat on tests.

Could be a good thing...

[MaestroSartori]

...since surely the first step in changing unjustly-attained corporate sponsored IP law is educating people why it is such a bad thing in and of itself.

"Copying a shitty CD will get me fined a billion dollars and raped in prison? That law sucks! Where do I sign up to change it?"

Also, I don't know if scouts in other countries is much like scouts here in the UK, but we used to make our own music, perhaps they could encourage these kids to create stuff instead of stealing/copying-with-infringement (delete as applicable) the shit the corporate machine is spewing out.

Re:Suggest Your Own Merit Badges Here!!!

[wankledot]

I think that last statement describes America quite well.

Re:Hong Kong Piracy

[Marxist Hacker 42]

START?!?!? For those of us who grew up in the tin foil hat crowd, the Boy Scouts were corrupted long ago- this is just putting that corruption to a new use.

Re:Hong Kong Piracy

[Hoi Polloi]

Well, Hong Kong is the perfect place to earn your "The Ruling Party is Not to be Questioned" merit badge.

They could issue that one in this country pretty soon.

Boy scouts scare me

[hyfe]

Partly offtopic, but I just have to say it:

Boy scouts scare the shit out of me.

Small children required to stand at attention, swearing oats they don't understand. Small children learning obidience to elders, to an organisation out of their parents control. Ever read about that anywhere? (this was a core element in italic/german fascism for the knowledge-impaired)

Sure, the organisation is benign and all nice and stuff now, but will it stay that way?

Re:Boy scouts scare me

[CommieOverlord]

The Scout Promise

On my honour,

I promise that I will do my best,

To do my Duty to God and the Queen,

To help other people at all times,

And to carry out the spirit of the Scout Law.

The Scout Law

A Scout is

Helpful and trustworthy,

Kind and cheerful,

Considerate and clean,

And wise in the use of all resources.

You're right, that's pretty scary. "Do my best"? I mean that's obviously training them to be corporate pawns. "Kind and Cheerful"? What sort of Commie trick is that?

The people running scouts ARE parents.

Re:Boy scouts scare me

[Edward Faulkner]

Small children required to stand at attention, swearing oats they don't understand. Small children learning obidience to elders, to an organisation out of their parents control.

Scouting is entirely within their parents control, because nobody can sign up without parental permission, and the vast majority of the people running things are parents.

You comment does apply to public school however, where parents truly lack control, and children are truly taught to love and obey the State.

For me, scouting was an excellent antidote to school. I got to accomplish real things. Unlike in school.

Re:Baden Powell would spin in his grave

[periol]

Just because you think "upright character" doesn't include having a feminine side or homosexuality doesn't make you right.

There are many paths to the truth. Some are more convoluted than others. Thank goodness the Boy Scouts have finally started to acknowledge that life doesn't come in one flavor. I don't like the IP merit badges anymore than the next geek, but at least my head isn't buried in the sand.

But it's not a binary world

[PCM2]

That's a slippery slope you're heading down. Public funds are often used to promote things that are ostensibly in the public interest, but may not hold up to individual scrutiny 100 percent of the time. You might not like it that your local public library keeps copies of "Mein Kampf" and "Huckleberry Finn," but I would argue that a library system that doesn't carry those books on principle is not a library system at all. I might not agree that teaching abstinence is the best way to prevent pregnancy and transmission of STDs among teenagers, but I'm willing to have my tax dollars support groups that teach abstinence to teens, regardless of my opinion of their underlying political slant, because the benefits of teaching abstinence probably outweigh the negatives. (In other words, it's worth a try.) Similarly, you might not agree with everything the Boy Scouts teach, but as an institution it's probably done more good for more boys than it has done harm. It seems a little harsh to suggest pulling public funding on the basis of your personal opinions about the organization's ideology. That way of thinking isn't too far from the idea of withholding public arts funding from art that isn't to your personal taste (something else I disagree with). The world just isn't binary like that. Very few things are "all good" or "all bad," so why insist on trying to impose all-or-nothing solutions on them?

Re:Criminal Element stemming from Boy Scouts?

[Jason Earl]

We already have way too much content, and almost all of it is crap.

I tend to agree that popular music is crap. However, millions of people disagree (which is why the music is "popular"). Either way, disregarding someone else's copyrights is hardly ethical.

These industries could use some extensive thinning out.

Which is why I support artists that are outside of the mainstream. There is plenty of quality music where the artists are happy to let you download their work. I support these artists financially because that is the ethical way to change the music industry. Disregarding copyrights doesn't help anyone. It simply makes it more likely that laws will be passed that force DRM down all of our throats. I may disagree with the musicians that turn their copyrighted material over to the music industry, but it's a choice they made of their own free will. I know that I would be upset if someone used my copyrighted material contrary to my wishes. You simply can't claim the moral high ground while going against the wishes of the folks that created the music in the first case.

Basically, just because I don't like the music industry doesn't give me the right to violate their copyrights.

Re:Hong Kong Piracy

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm sorry, I must have completely missed the corporate oligarchy part. I learned how to tie knots, and do first aid.

What, you missed walking little old ladies across the street, being truthfull and upright, and following the law (the last of which was written by the corporate oligarchy for their own interests)?

What kind of Boy Scout troop were YOU in?

Maybe an overly moral one- but I'm talking more about stereotypes than reality anyway.

Re:Not Theft is still Not Theft

[serutan]

1. This isn't court, it's a discussion forum.
2. I wasn't defending copyright infringement, I was explaining how it's not "theft," and why I think it's important not to call it theft.
3. By posting my opinions here, I am lobbying to change the law.

Re:Baden Powell would spin in his grave

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that that kid the pope now?