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RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum
selven writes "In a blatant campaign devoid of any subtlety, the RIAA is fighting for the hearts and minds of our children with its Music Rules, a collection of education materials on how to respect copyright. The curriculum includes vocabulary such as 'counterfeit recordings, DMCA notice, "Grokster" ruling, legal downloading, online piracy, peer-to-peer file sharing, pirate recordings, songlifting, and US copyright law.' There is no mention whatsoever of fair use. Compounding the bias, it includes insights such as that taking music without paying for it is 'songlifting,' and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal. On the bright side, it includes math showing that the total damages from copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million."
There is no mention whatsoever of fair use.
Well, there actually is a mention of fair use in the parent guide but all it does is refer you to a better site. The only other mention is -- hilariously enough -- in their own terms of use about using the materials on the site under fair use.
... not the law. Because "fair use" is ambiguous and the so called "doctrine" is downright laughable. If you don't agree with me, go ahead and post a response arguing for or against my above Wikipedia edits being "fair use." I'll gladly play the devil's advocate if someone doesn't beat me to it.
But that's beside your point, let's play a game. Pretend you have the floor in front of primary school students and you want to explain fair use. What do you say?
I'm not saying they shouldn't mention it. Because it's not well defined. Fair use is, in my opinion, an abomination in that it's a "law" that's not defined in anyway. And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct! So with my masters degree in computer science, I am clearly unable to pin down what precisely constitutes fair use and what does not. I imagine that were I charged with uploading and editing fair use samples of every song off of David Bowie's Hunky Dory album (which I did) that my innocence would depend entirely on how much money I have for a lawyer
So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children? Or how you plan to "win their hearts and souls" with the fair use doctrine?
What I want for Christmas: someone in my government to man up and bring any amount of clarity to copyright law, fair use and (while we're at it) patents. Something shouldn't be unclear until you've already been sued for doing it. That's how you find yourself in situations like the RIAA suing thousands of people and watching court case after court case resolve to millions in damages awarded from an average citizen to a huge conglomerate of lawyers and labels.
My work here is dung.
When my kid reaches school age can I make sure she doesn't get exposure to this blatant pack of lies. Will there be a letter sent home so I can OPT her out of gettig this "education".
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Schools should focus on "The three Rs", Reading, wRiting, a aRithmetic, and secondarily on physical and sex education so people know how to be healthy.
After they have been taught these things and have mastered English and communication skills enough to differentiate propaganda from civics and distinguish logical fallacies from legal dogma, then they can be taught about the RIAA and copyright in a Political Science class, and not as part of a religion.
"...the total damages from copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million."
So, going by the 80,000 per song that Jammie Thomas had to shell out divided by the $7.8 million worth of damages stated here, this is saying that children in the US have downloaded a combined 97.5 songs!
I'm not sure that's true. For some segment of society, maybe.. but for others less so.
One of my earliest memories is of when a teacher was trying to tell me the alphabet and me demanding to know *why* B follows A and C follows B. I got 2 weeks of detention for that.. learned early that you don't ask questions in school, you just give them the correct answer and move on (one of my other lessons was - if you discover that the times tables can be done by adding numbers together, on no account let your teacher know. Another two weeks of detention for working something out rather than rote learning it).
I still react when someone states something without backing it up with evidence. I *want* to think for myself.
"Propaganda institutions" is the phrase you're looking for. Many libertarians claim that's why public schools were created - to fill incoming immigrants with pro-american propaganda, but I think those people are nutters. I think public schools started with good intentions (like most government programs), but evolved into nothing more than soapboxes for lobbyists & others with agendas.
See my sig for an example.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
My daughter is in 3rd grade this year and after reviewing the material I can say that if I hear of this happening in our school, I will be making a b-line to the superintendent's office. We don't need any more politically biased material perverting the minds of our children. If all aspects of the issue were discussed, my stance might be slightly different.
Who was that pointy-eared bastard?
I agree with you to a point (hey, I'm an IP attorney---IP is my bread and butter). But I can also see the outrage. I don't want lobbyists spoon-feeding my children propaganda. If they have a class that informs them about copyright, wonderful. But I don't think it's a topic for elementary school (middle school/junior high, maybe), and I want the curriculum designed by somebody other than a lobby group that's heavily invested in a particular business model (I know Jack Valenti was MPAA, not RIAA, but "If you want a backup, buy a second copy" is not good law). I have PowerPoints about IP basics that I'd be happy to take to local schools if they're interested in a legitimate primer on the topic.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
And until schools step up and start doing that, outsiders will come in to do it in their version.
We've seen it already with drugs and sex-ex. It's true, not fucking is the only way to not get pregnant. But that doesn't mean it's abstinence-only that should be taught. Yet, in many schools teachers would rather let someone else come in to talk about an uncomfortable subject; even if it's a little spun.
Same deal with digital downloads. The article mentions a few artists who do make their stuff freely available. But that's the exception, not the rule. A safe rule is, if you're not absolutely sure, don't do it.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
But illegal downloading really IS stealing.
No it isn't: Illegal downloading is copyright infringement - it may be against the law, but it has nothing to do with theft. In other news, dropping litter is not assault with a deadly weapon, and shoplifting is not murder.
Dropping gum on the sidewalk is reprehensible behaviour, but we don't call it "attempted shoe homicide" and send people to the Big Chair for it.
Last time I looked, the only religion which included "Thou shalt not infringe copyright" in its commandments was Scientology.
That's the problem: there's nothing wrong with teaching kids the facts about copyright. The problem is with teaching kids industry propaganda about copyright which exagerates its seriousness, and is really about vested interests trying to maintain control of the industry in an age when most musicians would do better by givimng away music and making their money from gigs and t-shirts.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
RIAA is flagrantly dated in its message and mission. the site features clipart kids from the 90's, one with a device that looks more like a minidisc or walkman player than any IPod or Zune ive ever seen, and both sporting headphones that look nothing like those that might be worn by the average school kid (buds, or clips usually.)
I feel whiney for mentioning it, maybe im wrong...am i the only one rather concerned both kids are black?
Good people go to bed earlier.
With a teacher's help, students then calculate how "big a problem" songlifting isâ"by multiplying the total number of songs by $0.99.
So they're basically admitting that the actual damages are just $0.99 a song? Seems like a way to take the RIAA on under the 8th amendment using their own propaganda against them.
one of my other lessons was - if you discover that the times tables can be done by adding numbers together, on no account let your teacher know. Another two weeks of detention for working something out rather than rote learning it
Wow. We were told that multiplication was a function of addition when we learned the tables, I'm fairly shocked not only that you weren't, but that you got in trouble when you figured it out. The correct way, IMO, was the way my elementary school teacher explained it: "Multiplication is simply addition of the same number to itself "multiple" times, and you *can* figure out 3x4 by simply adding three together 4 times. This can be really cumbersome with larger numbers though, so we memorize the multiplication table to make things easier. It may seem hard to memorize all of this, but it's easier than having to add "8" to itself nine times every time you want to know what "8x9" comes out to." Of course that's not a quote, and I'm sure she used simpler words, but that's the gist. Give the theory, then explain the practical way to do it if the practice varies from the theory: Education 101.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
If you start with one copy of a copyrighted work and end up with n copies of a work, where n is greater than 1, in the hands of m people, where m is greater than 1, without the permission of the copyright holder, then unauthorized copies have been made. There is no fair use defense, because there is no fair use for that situation.
In this case, I have posted a comment. You have quoted it, and it resulted in n > 1 copies being made in every browser's cache in the hands of m > 1 people, and all of this without my permission. Either your description of an unauthorized copy is wrong, or your fair use defense is wrong. One has to be.
My Sirius subscription expires on the 22nd and I called to renew. After reviewing their packages I selected one and as we got around to taking my card number they said... "Ok, we have you set up for the monthly plan at $12.95 plus the $1.98 artist royalty fee so you will be charged 14.93 a month."
I said not a chance am I paying a royalty fee on top of my subscription fee. You just lost a subscriber.
I know the classes exist. My question was how it fit into the "core" subjects. IMO, we spend too much money on music, art, sports, etc., in public schools. I was homeschooled and those things were not part of my school curriculum. They were things that I was allowed to do after I finished my school work. Well, I was "made" to practice piano/instruments, as I showed some talent but, as a typical kid, didn't particularly like practicing. Video games, reading for fun, and sports were extracurricular non-school activities. "School" was math, language, and science pretty much. I did have physical education in high school (even homeschooled) for one year.
Seems like in most public schools, math-language-science type courses are not really the priority. "Self expression" has taken precedent over "learning." Which makes sense, I suppose, since the current popular world view appears to be that it doesn't really matter what other people think, it just matters what you like doing... follow your dreams (even if your dreams are stupid) :)
Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.
Step 2: There is no step 2.
Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.
I know that exaggerating is generally a bad form of argumentation but you did use the phrases 'never, under any circumstances' and 'any belief' and I would just like to point out how absurd that is. For the definition of indoctrination I'll choose Wiktionary's "to teach with a biased or one-sided ideology".
The belief that human life should be valued, even when you don't directly benefit from it yourself, shouldn't be indoctrinated to children? The belief that other ethnicities and people who disagree with your view should still be considered human? Hell, the trust in critical thinking, belief that scientific method (not referring to any specific theories or their validity) should be preferred over blind trust is a belief in itself.
Children can not just be taught to critical thinking. Even ignoring all the problems with the ways with which their brain is still undeveloped, they need axioms to base their critical thinking on. Those axioms, or values, don't define how they'll end up thinking but they certainly define the limits of possible results and the problems tackled first. A person might think women are inferior and can be held as property even if he thinks critically. His axioms just might be different than ours or his priorities might differ. Perhaps he has a good theory about how the society as a whole would benefit from men being able to exchange and trade in women though individual women would lose their human rights. Or perhaps he simply doesn't consider right to freedom as important... Or perhaps he would end up thinking about women the way we do but his priorities are different and he considers that very unimportant detail.
All the children have to get their axioms from somewhere. They don't live in a vacuum and they don't come up with those all by themselves. We can argue about who should teach them those values (School, society, parents, 4chan, the church...) but I don't think that we should strive to avoid teaching them those things. In fact, I think it is our responsibility to teach our moral values (all the way from appreciating human life to fair use) to our children by the best of our abilities. Choosing to not raise your child to your religion is not choosing to not teach him your values. It is about choosing which ones of your values to teach him.
right, memorise that number and throw it back in their faces every time they start pulling ridiculous billion dollar figures for damages out of the air again...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...