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Captain Copyright Targets Kids

frank249 writes "The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency has set up a copyright education website called Captain Copyright. There is a section for kids with comic books and a section for teachers for grades 1-3, 3-6 and 6-8. An example of a grade 1 class activity: 'Present the following situation to students: Your friend is downloading a song off the Internet. In comes Captain Copyright. Ask: What do you think Captain Copyright will say? Encourage students to brainstorm. Then hand out (or read) Line Master: Some Copyright Laws.' In Canadian law it is incorrect to download a song unless you pay for it. They also neglect to mention that Canadians pay a tax on blank media that is meant to compensate artists for downloads."

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  1. Re:It's in the National Interest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't be ridiculous.

    In 2005, the movie industry's total domestic revenue was a bit shy of $9 billion.

    Intel Corporation's revenue in the same period was almost $39 billion.

    So that's one company in one sector of the economy (albeit a big one) makes, all by itself, over four times what the entire movie industry makes.

    While we're here, let's toss off some other revenue figures: IBM earned over $91 billion, Microsoft nearly $40 billion, General Motors almost two hundred billion dollars. GM lost more money last year than the movie industry earned in total (not counting expenses), and barely noticed.

    The Copyright Cartel has done an excellent job as portraying itself as a critical industry, but don't be fooled. They are, at best, a miniscule piece of the American economy.

    Software is somewhat of a different story, but they have their own ridiculousness (BSA), and you'll notice that of the companies cited, only one of them makes most of their money because of software copyrights.