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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."
Because, if you think piracy is bad here in the US...
In Asia it's all but legal. The problem is so big that mitigating it will take a lot more than a few boyscouts earning merit badges in Intellectual Property.
That is the most absurd think i've ever heard!!! Where is the world coming to?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Visitors to Hong Kong some years ago may remember the Golden Arcade. It was infamous for bootleg software, movies, video games, and anything else that resides on digital media.
After that got closed down due to U.S. pressure, they started opening up shops in dark alleys. I remember going to one of those places one time. There was a guy who stood in front of the dark alley way (I think I was 12 years old at the time), and I swear there was a 3-carat diamond attached to each of the numbers on his Rolex (and every one of his teeth, it seemed like). Talk about heaven. Through all the cigarette smoke, I was able to make out things like NT5 alpha CDs and PlayStation games. Those were the days. Although it seemed like you needed pretty good English skills to open up one of these outfits, since most buyers were British or Australian.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
The organization has also announced new available merit badges in the following categories:
- Fascism
- Lawsuits
- Falsifying evidence
- Misinterpreting technlologies they don't understand
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Why in the hell would the scouts take a position on a politicized issue like this?
This gives a whole new meaning to "Weblows"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'd like to propose the "Cleaning Out Spyware and Installing Firefox" badge :)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
That depends on what you mean by "criminal element". Not that long ago when I was a boyscout we copied songs and movies to tapes and shared them.(sure the MPAA would have loved to curb that) We also shared them electronically via ftp using our 9600 baud modems.(and we liked it, up hill both ways and whatnot) Plus there was the usual 12-16 year old stuff beer, pot smoking and ciggarette smoking. Since not much has probably changed in 10 years I would imagine these are the kids sharing movies and soon to be kids sharing movies that the MPAA would love to indoctrina^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H influence.
The real problem with P2P filesharing is that many people don't actually realize that it is illegal. I fix a lot of computers and I have lost track of the amount of times that I have mentioned to someone that they were guilty of distributing copyrighted material illegally only to have them look at me like a deer caught in someone's headlights. Some people understand that what they are doing is illegal, but lots of folks have no idea. These people thought that free music was one of the perks of having an Internet connection and were generally horrified once they learned that what they were doing was illegal.
If it becomes second nature for even honest people to download bootleg music off the Internet then no amount of legislation or litigation is going to help the music industry (and later the television, movie, and publishing industries as well). So someone in the scouting organization is simply pointing out to these kids that disregarding copyrights is illegal and unethical. Personally I am hoping that this sort of thinking becomes more widespread. There is no question that the music industry is evil, but I don't think that throwing out copyrights is the answer.
Heck, some little idiot 12 year old said that I was Satanic because I was playing with candle wax. And I was kicked out for a month.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
But who's this going to effect, the kids who go to Boy Scouts are more likely to be the ones who don't pirate films
The kids who sit at home on Kazaa and doing stuff other than helpful 'community building' activites will be most of the people who pirate things. Nice targetting MPAA. doh!
Business Voyeur
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7813/
The BSA needs to respond.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Actually, they don't use public resources as much as you may think.
I was in a scout troop when I was young and had friends in other scout troops. All of our troops used private churches to meet in.
I recall one scout troop that did use a local elementary school gym for their meetings. However, it is still within their right to exclude gays and atheists from joining their club. If a gay or atheist wanted to walk into the gym, the troop wouldn't force them out (unless of course they were being ridiculous, yelling and screaming or something). If a gay or atheist group wanted to use the gym, they could sign up just like everyone else. Yet, they can exclude straight and religious people from their groups.
Public resources don't mean that you have to be completely PC when you use those resources. They are just available to the public. If an equestrian club wants to use a public park, but won't allow anyone to join that doesn't have a horse, should they be banned from using that public resource?
And governmnet subsidies and public funds don't really make their way into the scouts anyhow. Pretty much all of the organization is run by volunteers, scouts pay dues to run their troops. Everyone pays for their own supplies, scout uniforms, scout books, etc. Camping supplies are paid for through fundraisers by the troops. They may take grants for specific projects though, ie: if a grant existed to clean up some wetlands, they might take on that project. But the goal of the grant is to clean up the wetlands, it doesn't care who does it. So the scouts will achieve that goal.
If you have any facts to back up your claims, I'd like to see them.
Copyright was introduced as an economic incentive. This is clearly spelled out in the US Constitution. My argument was that the content industries are already overstiumlated. Therefore, right now we need less copyright protection, not more.
The only unethical thing going on today is passing increasingly repressive, intrusive and draconian laws regarding copyright infringement when the breadth, duration, and enforcement of copyrights are already excessive.
Maybe it would be a good time to make a Knoppix CD for scouts? Help them get the computing merit badge and maybe a few others? I loved scouting until I dropped out because of a shitty group and gave up my hopes for an Eagle, but you could do worse than use free software to help more geeks get merit badges and get Eagle Scout free software evangelists. Actually it would seem to be natural to use free software if you are going to limit copying to that which can be done legally.
It can be argued that the ideals of scouting are much more related to the free software / opensource movement than to the current abuses of intellectual property (which isn't bad in itself).
This is the point raised by Marco Fioretti in his two articles on LinuxJournal:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7533
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7813
Maybe these articles would make a good Slashdot story!