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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."
I'd like to propose the "Cleaning Out Spyware and Installing Firefox" badge :)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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
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.