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."

Comments

Okay, You Have the Floor

[eldavojohn]

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.

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 ... 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.

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.

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[eldavojohn]

"You have the right to use small parts of something covered by copyright (like quoting a book for an essay) to comment on it, write a review about it or parody it and you're allowed to make copies for yourself to use."

So you're saying that if I take very small samples of The Beatles' White Album (as I consider the album an entire work) and make new songs out of those small samples, it is completely legal and I can distribute or sell said reconstructions because they are small parts or parodies? Do I need to merely include a comment on my "mashup" to make that legal?

Or if I take a single episode of the Family Guy (the whole series is what seven seasons now?) I can distribute that with my website with commentary on how it's great for society?

Re:Okay, You Have the Floor

[amicusNYCL]

making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal

This sounds like FUD to me (courtesy of "selven", apparently). Here's one of the "activities" in one of the PDFs:

Take a look at these scenarios. See if you can spot the songlifters who are breaking the copyright law...

Caitlin wants to listen to music as much as possible. She copies all the music she buys online onto blank CDs so she can listen to her music when her friends come over to play. And she transfers the music she buys on CD onto her MP3 player so she can listen to her music when driving in the car with her family.

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

I'd like to see a reference on where they say that it's illegal to play your music for your friends. That's specifically what I'm trying to find in the PDFs, I think that claim by TFS is false.

Of course, this entire "program" seems like a nightmare to sit through. Look at this stuff, in the teacher's guide:

Write the word songlifting on the chalk-board and ask students what they think it means.

*raise hand* I know! That's a word that was made up by a shady corporate lobby.

Have students conduct the survey [to find out who they know is a "songlifter"] as home- work, emphasizing that they should only collect information, not names. Use the chalkboard to compile their findings and investigate trends. For example: Which is the most common type of songlifting? Which age group has the most songlifters? Have students use the results of their survey to determine whether or not songlifting is a serious problem.

So Billy, do you download songs? Oh yeah, what do you use? I haven't heard of that one, I should check it out. For research, I mean.

Next, draw the copyright symbol on the
chalkboard. Ask if students know what this
symbol means and where they might have seen
it

I weep for our nation's schoolchildren..

Is it like Sex Ed can I opt my Kid Out

[haplo21112]

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".

The three Rs

[unlametheweak]

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.

Classrooms as a political playground...

[ivogan]

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.

Re:What's wrong with teaching?

[itsdapead]

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.

Damages figure, anyone?

[TX297]

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.

$1.98 per month royalty for Sirius?

[bachnit37]

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 sent an email...

[samcan]

I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...

Dear Sir or Madam,

It was with great interest that I perused the materials on the Music Rules website. (On a side note, it doesn't work properly with Firefox 3.0.) I agree that piracy of music is a problem, and some reform of copyright law is needed. However, I believe that your educational materials are misleading and sometimes directly contradict actions of the RIAA in the past.

In the teacher's guide, on page 4, the answer to question #2 (left column) is given:

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

This however contradicts earlier cases where the RIAA has pursued music pirates for doing this exact same thing. A Washington Post article from 2007:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The teacher's guide also ignores the term, "fair use." While fair use is quite limited in U.S. law, generally being restricted to purposes of research and parody, if the RIAA wants to teach third-graders the term, "DMCA notice," why not "fair use?"

Coverage of alternative forms of copyright appears to be non-existent as well, such as the Creative Commons licenses, which allow the creator to turn over specific rights to others, such as the right to modify, or distribute. Public domain coverage is missing as well. Old recordings from before 1923 (such as Edison's early record player) on the Library of Congress site thus would be public domain, and free to download. The materials would scare kids into thinking that everything is copyrighted, and thus illegal.

The materials also should recommend sites where music can be legally downloaded for free. One example is Musopen.com, which contains recordings of public domain works, but also contemporary works where the composer has expressed willingness for his music to be shared. . Warnings should be balanced with alternatives. Also, you could recommend the students to whenever possible purchase music directly from the artist, so that the artist is paid a fair amount.

U.S. federal government training materials ignore this distinction, preferring the "all downloaded music is illegal" mantra. For example, see this training website (it's screen 27 of 48). I can disprove this by visiting this Wikipedia link, where I can download a copy of the W.W.S.S. Wind Ensemble with Dennis Smith playing Arthur Pryor's arrangement of "Blue Bells of Scotland," released under the EFF's Open Audio License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Pryor_-_Blue_Bells_of_Scotland,_for_Trombone_and_Band.ogg). Similarly, recordings by U.S. military bands, being created by the U.S. government, are generally also public domain.

Copyright reform does need to be effected in the United States. The clause in the Constitution governing copy