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Hong Kong Using Children to Hunt for Piracy
westcoaster004 writes to tell us that according to The New York Times the Hong Kong government will be using some 200,000 youths to scour the internet for piracy. Members of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and nine other youth organizations will be drawn from with the first 1,600 being "sworn in" this Wednesday. From the article: "Tam Yiu-keung, the Hong Kong Excise and Customs Department's senior superintendent of customs for intellectual property investigations, said the program should not raise any concerns about privacy or the role of children in law enforcement. The youths will be visiting Internet discussion sites that are open to all, so the government program is no different than asking young people to tell the police if they see a crime while walking down the street, he said."
Why do they think its so difficult. Go to google.com and search for Warez.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
to see porn and all its flavors, casiono/poker scams, spyware, popups, circle jerks, top20 gateways and all the other scum that floats on the bottom of the warez scene
The first problem with this that comes to mind is that there are a lot of piracy websites that have images unappropriate for kids.
Yes, yes, I know that any kid can go online and find whatever they want to look at. I'm getting at that maybe this isn't a task for children (in the government-run sense).
In my day, we used Pirates to hunt for children.
Yarrr!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Sending oodles of kids out looking for music-sharing sites is kind of like sending angry, unattractive, middle-aged cops to "stop" prostitution. I imagine these kids sticking USB thumbdrives in their cop computers and bookmarking wildly for the evening's Internet Cafe feeding frenzy.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Anti-Piracy Merit Badges!
To earn one you must:
Breaking news: Chairman Moa is doing 3,500 RPM in his grave.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Fear the Junior Woodchucks.
Hong Kong: Aha! You people are pirating software and video games!
Pirates: Aha! You are using child labor!
Joe Everyday: Oh no, who should I hate more?
RIAA/MPAA: The pirates, they're the worst kind of criminal!
American Government: Think of the children!
Joe Everyday: [glares] Not helping!
And then Canada just kind of laughs and goes back to whatever its doing.
Why do they think its so difficult. Go to google.com and search for Warez.
Anyone who spends ten minutes actually looking should be able to find enough to choke a hard drive. Go look in USENET groups, Google for it, get into chatrooms and ask 'Where can I get a copy of X' or even just look on eBay. Piracy and Knock-offs are rampant on there, despite their lame attempts to curtail it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
First of all; Warez sites have porn. Not just a boob here and there either. Real live penetration. Often times, you have the weirdest fetish shit to deal with too.
So let's dump that on 200k kids. Lovely.
Second, kids are idiots. Truly, they are. I remember when I was a kid, I was an idiot. So now we are turning out 200k kids in to an enviroment ripe for molestation. And porn, lest we forget.
This is a bad bad idea, no mater how you slice it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Ok, so we're going to:
1) Force children, who no doubt understand teh intarwebs better than those in charge of this, to swear that they will search out piracy
2) Encourage said children and young adults to spend time searching for movies and warez
3) Wait for the reports to roll in.
Whoever thought this up is brilliant. This plan has no flaws. Why didn't my government think of this?
I wonder if they're going to report on pr0n-sites.......
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
So 1% of the kids will be all into it and be good citizens... and 99% of the kids will laugh at and mock that 1%.
Great way to make piracy seem even more cool, and to make reporting piracy something that only losers do.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
The massive attempts (and manpower) China require to keep their Great Firewall of China up to date. Who knows if these "Youth Ambassadors" won't just have their task expanded to include reporting on objectionable material? After all currently Hong Kong isn't covered by the GFC.
Video Game cheats, hints a
a surge in enrollments, it would seem that the warez-hunters have found a sanctioned way to collect britney speers albums.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Isn't this against international child labor laws?
What next, use real kids to push child p0rn rings?
slippery slope!
'Betray your family and frinds, fabulous prizes to be won.'
It's horrific that a few years ago that was a joke, now it's true. My god...
"With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police."
Here in America, we have millions of youths scouring the internet for piracy!
However, we do outsource the collecton results in Sweden so I guess we can't take all the credit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Asking children to do something like that is a form of indoctrination, making the implication that "ratting" to the government is grand thing to do."
..." was a little overdone, but I do agree with you in principle.
/. meme.
Not a new idea (Hitler Youth, anyone?), but it seems our capacity for learning from history seems tied only to short-term memory.
I think the "...asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on
Face it, it is hard for the would be dictators/over-control types to acheive their agenda unless.....they "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", to use an old
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
"Dob, dob, dob" indeed.
the merit batch comes with an E.U.L.A. that makes it measure as a 3' circle
hard to stich that on your average girl scout/ boy scout uniform
additionally, due to D.M.C.A. rules, each boyscout/ girlscout must get preapproval from 5 separate companies and 6 layers of lawyers before they are able to legally wear the merit badge
and finally, anyone viewing the merit badge on the person of a boyscout/ girlscout must gain preapproval from the same companies/ lawyers or they are in violation of fair use of the merit badge
i mean come on folks, content creators have rights here! think of the starving merit badge stichers!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If they catch all of the pirates, Hong Kong could very well land themselves in some very hot water with the U.N. as this in no doubt aids in the proliferation of global warming
I'm not fat, just big boned...
After all the 700 pilot kids found 800 postings.....
;P
;p
I wonder what the other 693 kids in pilot program where doing during this time? Or maybe it slows them up when they decide to d/l them all,hehe. It is either that or the pilot program only lasted 20 minutes before they implemented it full-scale
Program is available for export...i dare you to try that here...hehe they would probably download 1600 for every 800 found
ok, back to how sleezey this is.....
Redmond WA (Hydraulic Press) - The Business Software Alliance announced today a settlement agreement in their long running trademark dispute with the Boy Scouts of America. According to the terms of the agreement, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) must use its swelling ranks to help the Business Software Alliance (BSA) sniff out piracy on the internet. Another controversial term of the settlement is the mandate that requirements for the Computing merit badge must be completed using only legitimately purchased Microsoft branded software.
The dispute started in 1998, when the Business Software Alliance noticed that the Boy Scouts of America, a quasi-military organization headquartered in Irving, Texas, had the same three letter initials as them. They promptly sued for damages and infringement. While many legal scholars believed that the Scouts would prevail as they have existed for nearly a century, the Business Software Alliance won the case by throwing wave after wave of lawyers at them until the Scouts relented.
"I cannot continue to sit back and allow the Boy Scouts to continue to sap and impurify all of our precious intellectual property," said a Business Software Alliance representative, "God willing, we will prevail, through the purity and essence of our trademarks and copyrights."
Bob Talbee, a scoutmaster in Grand Rapids, Michigan, stated that he would cancel the weekend campout to comply with the order, "Sorry kids, we've got to spend the weekend on the internet looking for something or someone called warez," he announced at a recent Scout meeting. Talbee, a bricklayer by trade, was not sure what a warez is, but thought it sounded thoroughly unwholesome and worthwhile for the scouts to work towards eliminating.
Unknown host pong.
Actually child slave labor is, by definition, so cheap, that I believe that soon the chinese government will replace the siscoo (a famous chinese networking brand) firewalls with specially trained kids that will analyse each packet. Of course this is going to make online gaming somewhat painful.
Your ad could be here!
Cmon Slashdot! On with the Peter Pan jokes!
"Mommy! Mommy! I got my Narc badge!"
The Asian equivalent of the RIAA has just recruited gold farmers.
So, basically, what we have here is children fighting pirates on an island? Where have I heard that before?
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Living in a post-communistic country, i remember from my schoolyears how we were 'trained' to look for and report saboteurs, spies and evil western agents. Given the state paranoia, the agents were portrayed as almost mythical creatures, with ninja-like capabilities, evil to the bone. The result was that everyone i know wanted to be western agent, so cool, merciless, almost invulnerable, able to get anywhere ...
.. way to go China! :)
So
Yes.
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
Instead of sending children up chimneys they're sending them down the internet pipes. Such cruelty.
Considering the adult (as well as illegal) content openly displayed on such sites, this isn't an unreasonable metaphor.
Since this is Hong Kong, one must wonder if they are looking for pirated materials in order to wipe out their competition, or are they looking for something new to pirate that hasn't as yet received wide exposure.
The idea that the children of Hong Kong are being sent on a crusade to supplement the RIAA is absurd, and should not be taken on face value.
Perhaps the Hong Kong politicians who have received gifts from the pirates along with honorariums (to cover expenses, of course) from the RIAA need to show everyone involved on both sides that they are making 'a sincere effort' to address the 'problem'.
... RIAA. Enjoy !
Read radical news here
FTA: "The program may work better here than it would elsewhere, local officials suggest. Hong Kong teenagers are surprisingly obedient, possibly because of a Confucian tradition and very strong social pressures to study hard and serve the community."
That's right! Their kids are more brainwashed! Go MPAA/RIAA.
Reminds me of the late '30s - '40s in Germany.
Remember good little kids, it's your duty to report if your mommy or daddy have anything bootlegged.
-
Please do not mod funny, that would be insulting.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
The Rat Fink
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
In America it is becoming Rumsfeld Youth, complete with the natural lead-in to the military.
This just in: Hitler has risen from the grave and is suing China for violation of his intellectual property rights.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
That would mean that 1 in every 5 youths would have to become part of this program. Sounds....unlikely.
Sources:
-- Subvert the dominant paradigm. Repeat as desired. http://ownlifeful.com/
wow. this is just like the spies in orwell's 1984.
The Internet is not something that you just dump some kids on
[/sarcasm]
1) Hong Kong (of China) is producing about 0% of quality games/movies/software
2) Hong Kong is losing about 0% due to piracy each year?
For some reason, however, HK wants 200,000 kiddies to start looking around the places that will introduce them to the underbelly of computing
Now let me ask you, what would China want with some 200,000 script-kiddies?
Considering that the US of A already has a computerized powergrid, huge internet backbone/banking systems/telephone/cellular networks/freaking traffic lights and building ACs? Half of Navy's networked computers still running Win 98?
Not even takling about our trends to move towards Aegis-style computerized battlefield management, computer-heavy ABM shields, reliance on sattelites for CCC?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
A simple formula.
1 parts - Living Wage that provides a quality life, and covers all medical needs.
2 parts - Lower Prices for software
3 parts - Lower Prices for music
4 parts - Lower Prices for movies
Put them all together in a bowl, mix them up gently.
Here are some information. You will see more shop selling pirated everything in shopping mall (and on the street) in HK than you can find Starbucks in US (I am sure those who visited HK know what I am talking about)
Nobody seem to try to crack down on those, well, I guess because those are control by ganster or dirty cops, who knows... But those should really be the kind get crack down first..
In Communist Russia....
Warez finds you!
Pirates search for children
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
"In 1984, brainwashing and instilling loyalty to the political parties begins at a very young age, similar to the situation during the Holocaust. In Orwell's novel, children were encouraged to be spies, and even to turn in their own parents."
from http://www.angelfire.com/blog/1984essay/index.htm
Sorry for the off topic post, but there's a term for laws against things that aren't, in themselves, wrong, like illegal immigration. Can anyone tell me what it is?
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/
which is a damn fine webcomic as well
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
injustice
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It is what the government in East Germany used to say. I think it is a similar motto in Fidel Castro's Cuba ot in North Korea.
Very good citizens there, I tell ya.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is just another OMG TEH KIDDIES!!!!!111 story isn't it?
Hong Kong kids can do law enforcement in sleazy sites if they want to. They don't need your moral objections.
Jesus.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It's not just muslims ..... christians and jews are every bit as bad. All monotheists are fucking evil cunts who need to be stopped -- by whatever the hell means it takes -- from believing that there is one god. All the evidence points to there being either fewer than one or more than one god, but certainly not exactly one.
No gods => everyone is responsible for their own actions.
Many gods => even gods you don't worship can still punish you if you transgress against them.
One god => any fucking thing is justified because it's in the name of the Law-Giver, you filthy infidel scumbag.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Heck give them brown uniforms with cool symbols on them instead of those blue ones.
I wonder if they get extra credit turning in their parents?
I can just see this happening, piss your kid off and they plant pirated goods in the house and turn you in. In the US they train the brats to threaten their parents with calling DYFS if you smack them in the bum.
Kind of like the Twilight Zone "It's a good life" or Star Trek "Charlie X".
Fear the children.
Long have I wondered how to combine the awesome coolness of combating free software/porn with the law-abiding edginess of working for the Man.
Oh so long have I wondered!!
Not that this raises disconcerting images of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age or anything.
A better analogy would be the children telling about their friends/family thoughtcrimes... I think I read that somewhere...
Clearly this is a step down the double plus ungood path.
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
I think I've figured out what's really going on here. This is all part of the Chinese government's campaign to eradicate global warming and embarass western leaders by taking all of the credit. Here's how it works:
1. Children locate pirates
2. Chinese government detains pirates
3. Pirates begin reproducing during long, boring confinement
4. More Pirates = Less Global Warming
Brilliant!
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
- Jews should be allowed to bomb innocent civilians for the crime of not being jewish
- Muslims should be allowed to blow themselves up on buses because some of the passengers are not muslims
- Catholics should be allowed to spread AIDS in Africa because condoms are evil
- Protestants should be allowed to go on "orange order" marches with the sole intent to piss off catholics
?Simple fact, all these religions have "nasty" sides which are neither separable from the "nice" sides, nor reconcilable with one another (at most, one monotheistic world view can be true). I think the short-term consequences of outlawing monotheism are a small price to pay for the long-term benefits to society.
I also believe that all means to the same end are equally valid; and if a monotheist can't be persuaded gently to give up their dangerous beliefs, then I think less benign methods are called for. If it later turns out that one of the religions we banned was right all along, well, we can deal with it then.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
....Dr. Tran!!!!
In Vista it says "Join the online community that helps identify and stop spyware" ... followed by advanced membership or "Join with a Basic membership"
I must not be a joiner type of guy.