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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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).

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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.