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California Elementary Schools To Test Anti-Piracy Curriculum
New submitter newbie_fantod writes "Ignoring the fact that the surest way to get a child to do something is to tell them not to, the RIAA and MPAA have developed an anti-piracy curriculum for kindergarten through grade 6. The pilot project is scheduled for testing in California schools later this year."
Mitch Stoltz, an EFF attorney, isn't impressed: “It suggests, falsely, that ideas are property and that building on others’ ideas always requires permission,” Stoltz says. “The overriding message of this curriculum is that students’ time should be consumed not in creating but in worrying about their impact on corporate profits.”
It's worked for years with every other product...
Get them while they're young and you'll have a "___________" (insert appropriate noun here) for life... Customer, slave, zealot, etc...
The only problem is that government is allowing corporations to push their agenda in the classroom... It wasn't enough to have it at the beginning of every one of their Disney movies --you know, the ones that kids watch ad infinitum, now they're allowed to spread their FUD in the schools, too! Yay!
How long before we see "Lunch! Sponsored by McDonald's", etc...
That's not the only issue at play here...
The backers for this program (RIAA/MPAA) are all wealthy, so their kids will never see these things in school. They'll be free from the propaganda and allowed to be creative and free. But, not the common man, because he can't afford freedom...
Hrmm... I wonder if that's how this is supposed to work... Freedom for those that can afford it...
Makes me wonder if there'll ever be a Star Trek-esque Utopia...
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
We learn by copying. Write what you see on the board. Repeat after me. Read the book aloud ....
Overlaying an "anti-piracy" theme is just going to be confusing and counter to the whole process.
Industry trade groups have no fucking business writing curriculum for children.
These assholes are of the impression the own everything, and that all of our laws and rights are subject to their approval.
Whatever idiot in the education system decided that indoctrinating children to the viewpoint of corporations should fired.
I can almost bet this will have things which are an incorrect interpretation of the law as it exists, and is nothing more than corporate propaganda.
This is the problem with America, whatever a company wants is considered right and good -- even when it's bullshit.
Most family's are forced to send there child to public schools by there circumstances. What idiot is letting a private organization force propaganda on them DARE was bad enough.
No sir I dont like it.
Is it really the case that you have companies and special interest groups creating the curriculum for your children?
How do you, as parents stand for this? You do know that you can go to the school board and freak out right? I think step 1 would be to organize a district wide freakout on the school board. Step 2, private school.
So, with me being a private entity with an agenda, how do I get my ideas to be taught at school?
Is there finally hope that we can teach the toddlers to not use emacs?
Maybe they should teach them other stuff like math, science and reading before consuming resources protecting the income of Justin Beiber. Just sayin...
working together. There's a word for that.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
The real problem with "kids these days" is that the internet has made it easier than ever to copy someone else's work and pawn it off as one's own. Of course, it's also become easier to Google a few sentences of a kid's paper and find that they cribbed it from a website, but even so, this is a pervasive problem. So if you're educating children that taking other people's intellectual property is wrong, how about starting with academic dishonesty and plagiarism?
Maybe it would be better to pay religions to convince the faithful that they will be tortured in Hell for copying things. Religions have a lot more experience with this kind of thing. I mean, WWJD? Would he download that torrent? Really? (Ignoring the incident with the money changer's tables for a moment.)
Well, yea but, how can we make this Obama's fault?
That make me feel dirty when I actually give money to these big media companies by going out to the theater and paying for content. I shouldn't be sitting in a movie worrying about how the $10 I just paid is going to be spent repressing me.
I think whoever is allowing this to happen has his/her pockets stashed with RIAA/MPAA fund. This is indoctrination in the most evil sense. I want to ask the executives of RIAA and MPAA who are pushing for this to come forward and given an affidavit that they never copied anything ever in their life. The next thing they will come up with is "You cannot dress like James Bond" because that look is a someone else's idea. We all learn by imitating, this is the easiest and most basic form of learning. I thought California was a state of smart people, but I guess it is now inhabitated by dumb asses.
How can it possibly be justified to use scarce instructional time on this industry propaganda? California public schools have enough trouble teaching the stuff that society expects and needs them to teach, and they're seriously considering this garbage?
The Don't Copy That Floppy campaign has been a marvelous success. Floppy disk piracy is now down 100%. Cali can expect similar success with their initiative.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
The RIAA and MPAA message to children:
"To care is not to share"
The message I hope this sends to children is that possessing music or movies, even if legally bought, is potentially dangerous and to be avoided.
Lets move towards a world that is devoid of song and stories, and forget the fact these were a part of the fabric of humanity for thousands of years.
Do you own an eye patch? yes or no
Do you own a little raft with an outboard motor and an RPG?
Do you believe the letter "R" is also a word?
If you answered yes to any of the above, we found our violator.
Your test makes no sense. So kids with a lazy eye in tiny boats, carrying a copy of D&D are rapists?
> “Justin Bieber got started singing other people’s songs, without permission, on YouTube. If he had been subjected to this curriculum, he would have been told that what he did was ‘bad, ‘stealing,’ and could have landed him in jail,” says Stoltz.
I think I speak for everyone when I say that I fail to find the problem in this outcome.
There will be less piracy of Barney videos and KidzBop disks, but this isn't going to affect Justin Bieber's work much. It's after grade 6 that people start watching and listening to stuff the RIAA and MPAA are annoyed people want to consume without paying for!!
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Lots of big corporations fund initiatives in schools to get students on board with their agenda. A lot of high schools require a "personal finance" type of class where you get a pretend monthly salary and have to budget like an "adult". The fucked up part is that the program is sponsored by Comcast, ATT, and other big companies and you are required to budget for cable, land line, cell phone, internet, new car, ect... So we're letting big corporations convince high schoolers that being an adult means buying a bunch of shit that you really don't need anymore. You can bet they aren't teaching that you don't need to buy cable or a land line (especially if you cant afford it), you can drive a used car, you can split internet usually with people that live in your apartment building.
This has been going on for a long time and no one gives a fuck about it. They aren't going to start giving a fuck about it now.
that building on others’ ideas always requires permission
Well shit, I guess all those games I played on the playground as a child were bad, i never once asked for permission to use them or add new rules.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Idealism's got nothing to do with it. "Content creation" (and support) is one of California's largest employers.
Remind me again why schools are funded by taxes?
If they are going to be teaching propaganda instead of teaching them what they're supposed to be teaching them, I think I'd rather have them teaching creationism.
It's like they're trying to fail. I guess the same people who choose to stick with a business model that clearly doesn't work anymore, don't have the judgement to create effective deterrents either.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
with beginning grad students. In papers, they often feel like they have to cite every . last . factual . assertion . and . word . that . they . use, to the point of having paragraphs with 20 citations in them, unreadable. But they're so terrified of "plagiarism" and heard that lecture so many times at the beginning of so many classes that it's hard to talk them out of citing Pythagorus or some writing about him when using the Pythagorean theorem, Perskyi when using the word "television," and so on. Exhausting.
As an analog to this, they often hesitate to say anything new (i.e. anything they can't find a citation for). It's as though they feel like only institutions and the famous have license to make new things in the world, and then be cited. It recalls for me the similar divide between creators/consumers, with a hard territorial border in between the two camps, that RIAA/MPAA/BSA et. al. have tried to inculcate into the cultural consciousness.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Hopefully parents will have the courage to let even their youngest children in on the fact that not everything Teacher says is true. She may even lie.
Most Americans have WAY to much respect for authority and to strong a faith in government. This might be a good instructive moment.
Tell the child look your teacher is telling you mommy is a criminal who should be in jail; do thing that's true? Well keep that in mind when the man on TV behind the podium says things about someone like 'snowden' it may or may not be true; so always draw your own conclusions.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How broken does a society have to be to allow corporate interests to determine curriculum? In so many ways the US leads the world in notions of making knowledge available to the public. Try getting the rights to include an image of a painting held in a British museum for an educational documentary, then try getting the rights to one held in a US museum. Is the cultural empire the last leg of US superiority? What happens when we start dancing to pop music from another country and a foreign country exceeds Hollywood in terms of Box Office (China wants to in 5 years)? I can't help think the *AAs and the US govt have a larger agenda than mere downloading of film and music.
Therapists.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Morality should be taught at home. Leave the three Rs to schools.
In a Libertarian system, there would be no mandatory public schools. You would have the choice of any number of private schools. Don't like the tuition or curriculum? Place your kids in another school. Yes - an oversimplification, but no Libertarians that I know would have Government force anyone into any public school system.
What you are describing is Fascism. It's a mix of Corporate and Government rule - the worst of all worlds.
We just didn't get to smoke in school.
Hi I have a very simple solution. If this is implemented in my child's school, I will simply keep him home on the days that this "curriculum" is taught. AFAIK public schools need attendance for funding. All you parents out there, we can vote with empty classrooms. Problem solved!
Let's leave the creation of content to the big music and movie companies. They only want to dictate our consumption and the development of culture, for our own benefit. Maybe eventually we'll leave all science and innovation to big companies as well, finally freeing the general population from the burden of creativity and thinking. How could this possibly be bad?
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What ever happened to sharing is caring?
"I always do what Teddy says"
I think they need a short, pithy slogan to really push their message home.
One that is tried and true; that has worked well in the past.
Wait...wait...it's coming to me...ah!
Just say no.
If any teacher in the California public school system has even an ounce of self-respect, they will refuse to teach such skewed bullshit to their students.
Skewed how, you might ask? from TFA:
[The Internet Keep Safe Coalition's] president, Marsali Hancock, says fair use is not a part of the teaching material because K-6 graders don’t have the ability to grasp it.
That's not teaching.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Too close for comfort?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And what are our choices for this year? Where should we be spending our time and money? Pick carefully, the ones you want will be included in the curriculum and the ones you don't want won't be taught!
And the winner is....
Why not let the RIAA and MPAA write curriculum? Thanks to Common Core and Race to the Top, we are already paying big businesses such as Pearson tons of money to write curriculum that teachers aren't allowed to veer from. Then we pay these companies more to administer tons of non-developmentally-appropriate tests which parents and teachers are forbidden from seeing. Then, when the kids inevitably fail (in New York, only 30% of kids passed the tests... many of these kids were straight A students who were now considered failures), these companies "helpfully" have textbooks, teacher seminars, extra help sessions for students, instruction for administrators, etc all designed to improve the students' scores on the tests the companies wrote. And all available for a price, of course.
Don't even get me started on our education commissioner who was looking into taking legal action against parents who refused to let their kids take these tests.
Then there's the fact that charter schools are being pushed hard. These are schools which take public school funds, but are run by businesses, don't need to take any of the tests, don't require their teachers to have any sort of training in education, can pick and choose which students are allowed in. (Bad grades? You're out. Need special services? You're out.) Politicians seem to love charter schools so much and push them whenever they can. Governor Andrew Cuomo has already suggested using the "death penalty" for public schools that don't pass the overly hard tests. Of course, you can guess what he would replace them with. (No comments from him on what would happen to the kids that the charter schools refused to serve. Would a K-12 education become only for the select few that businesses decide can have it?)
I have a fifth grader and first grader who are dealing with all of this now so, yes, I might be a bit bitter.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
While I didn't have an entire curriculum dedicated to anti-piracy, I did have to take CompSci as a graduation requirement from my high school. One of our assignments consisted of writing a children's book on the evils of hacking and piracy. Naturally, I took the opportunity to make a complete mockery of the assignment. Mr Peepers and the MegaVirus was the result. Highlights included an over the top evil mastermind wearing an adamantium mask, a virus causing a computer to get so hot it exploded, and impalation on a mounted unicorn head. Oh good times.
The RIAA was silent on the standard industry practice of directly ripping off the hard work and experimentation of underground alternative rock and electronic artists without so much an iota of credit.
(one of countless examples: http://flavorwire.com/newswire/is-kehas-stage-show-ripping-off-the-residents)
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Well, I guess one of the problems is that in a lot of states, schools are getting a decreasing share of tax dollars. The legislature of the State of Idaho is almost comically opposed to education, K-12 and higher, despite our constitution having included specific language requiring the state to fund public education. The school districts actually had to sue the state, in a case that went all the way to the state supreme court, to force the state to continue to pay for critical maintenance of school buildings (things like making sure the roof doesn't collapse).
I guess what I'm getting at is that if we don't want corporate funding of schools (and the corporate influence on curricula that inevitably comes with), then we should be adequately funding schools with tax dollars. Perhaps by diverting some money from prisons (which is where a lot of the education money has gone in Idaho).
No miss, I wrote to the shakespeare estate asking for permission to do a paper on romeo and juliet but their lawyers haven't gotten back to me yet.
get to develop their own curriculum for our kids?
I think this is a great idea! I mean, let companies help dictate the curriculum for our kids. We can get Monsanto to handle one on agriculture! How about Walmart on the effects of employee rights and unions?
How about just punishing wrong-doing? When I was a kid, some guys threw a football at a hornet's nest on school grounds. There was the predictable result of everybody running. I got 3 in my jacket, and one of them stung me before I could shake it out. These guys got in trouble eventually.
There was no call for "hornet's nest education".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In USA RIAA/MPAA owns you.
The hilarious irony of this is how many teachers are committing "piracy". My math teacher had an old out of print workbook that he would make copies of(single pages, not the whole thing) and hand out to the class as homework because the workbook had better problems than our current text book. My choir teacher made copies of music clearly marked with "DO NOT COPY" because it was out of print and there was no way to get a legal copy of it anymore. My English teacher copied an excerpt of a story out of one of her old text books that are no longer used and handed it out to the class.
So yea... this is an extremely stupid idea
"Remind me again why schools are funded by taxes?"
Because this gives them an effective monopoly to better ensure that the children of the poor and middle class are indoctrinated in corporate-statism early and thoroughly.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Would you shoplift a book from the book store? Why not?
It's the same IP, just stored on a different medium.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Let's not forget this little gem: Facebook is trying to get into classrooms as an educational tool. Not only will the childre learn from a RIAA-approved curriculum, they will use only corporate, closed walled gardens as their learning and social platform. They will not know a world outside corporate control. For decades here in the Central Europe there was a special name for the perfect Soviet citizen: Homo Sovieticus. Not only does the corporatocracy in the United States (and the rest of the world, increasingly) create a Homo Corporaticus, it creates it in the image of the Eastern counterpart. Oh, it would be so funny had it not been so sad.
I worked for California schools for 4 years as a technical consultant. It hurts me deeply to say, especially since my first son is just starting Kindergarten, that these schools really are going to go with whatever is recommended to them at the highest corporate/political level. I helped bring LTSP and thus Linux to thousands of elementary school kids over this period as a pilot (and after successful pilot, transition from aging Windows PCs in media/computer labs) in 7 schools. It felt so amazing for me to have the honor of exposing this many children to open source software. But, after the acting technoogy director retired, a new one stepped in and quickly pulled the plug on the whole setup, reverting back to Windows.
It's the same at deeply rooted non-profits for kids. I worked for Boys & Girls Clubs in California, doing the same thing - in addition to LTSP, though, we also had Linux on the back-end fileserver and firewall. It was a great setup. Then, we heard that Microsoft suddenly (and unexpectedly) had given them a grant for new PCs, on the condition that Windows was the only OS installed, and they essentially weren't allowed to "tinker" with them.
The RIAA and MPAA are very large and rich corporations. They have that much money to throw at conditioning young children that software is something that comes with many restrictions and cannot be shared freely, modified or "tinkered" with. Schools will go along with it as long as there's a benefit for them. The moral standing of the people at the top of the education system's pyramid aren't exactly the best, from what I've experienced, and I'm sure many of them have very close ties with other "industry" executives. Scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Makes me think of "National Lampoon's Senior Trip". Ha!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
First Step: Pirate the curriculum.
Step 2: Post to internet, create memes
Step 3: Ridicule curriculum to the point that it's worthless.
Step 4: Profit?
the U.S. was created very explicitly with the premise that [1] there is a God [2] that this God gave freedom and dignity to each individual (therefore the individual matters)
Boy, did you get your history wrong. Did they teach the First Amendment where you went to school?
and [3] those individuals LEND limited power to government .
Which is it, Christ or Ayn Rand? Can't have both.
The fact that a couple of antiquated cartels are trying to cling desperately to their obsolete business model isn't surprising. The only thing that is surprising is that the State of California is cooperating. If the MPAA / RIAA want to spread an anti-piracy message to children, let them buy advertising time on Nickelodeon, Disney & Cartoon Network. I don't really have a problem with their message, I just see no reason for the state to spend its resources to spread it.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Tobias: No, no, it’s pronounced a-nal-ra-pist.
Buster: It wasn’t really the pronunciation that bothered me.
Where's the funding coming from? Are my kids going to be getting "just say no" lectures when they should be having art or music class instead?
We need media literacy as a core skill taught in all levels of education. "Who is bringing this message to you?" "What do they want you to believe or do after receiving this message?" "How do the parties responsible for bringing you this message benefit if you accept its message?" "Who disagrees with this message, and what do they have to say about it?"
"Intellectual property" as a moral right that never expires wasn't put into the Constitution. It was created by lobbyists, robber-barons, and corporations. Copyright that lasts forever is illegal, so the goal is "forever minus one day" which is effectively the same thing but looks better in the courts. It's time to tell the RIAA and MPAA companies that enough is enough, and to curb their power to turn participatory culture into mere consumerism by putting an end to never-ending copyright terms. Cut it off at five years - no extensions - and be done with it.
Copyright law was originally written to enrich the public domain, not impoverish it. Now, all it does is the latter.
Are you advocating that people should be arrested and charged with shoplifting if they go into a bookstore, read a chapter of a book, and put it back deciding they don't like it? After all, they get the same IP and they didn't pay for it...
Holy crap! At PSU (graduated 2012) we only got the plagiarism talk in writing-intensive classes, and while I don't remember the exact rules there was no instant-fail of the course unless you were caught multiple times. You'd instantly fail the assignment if they had direct proof you plagiarized a significant potion of it. Otherwise they'd maybe write a note that you need to cite your sources and take a couple points off.
"Hey Kids... Everybody having a greeeaaatttt day???? Raise your hands if you've seen Mom or Dad ever use a program called Utorrent. It looks like this," "Hey Johnny, you've done fantastic today, so fantastic that you've won a free game!!!! Just plug his free usb stick into your Moms computer and hit Next and Ok and you'll get to play this great new free game!"
The taxes pay for SOME of what's needed, but the schools are under funded. That means they are NOT being funded by taxes, they're being *partially* funded by taxation.
So if it's part taxes, why is it that part of the curriculum being set by commercial interests and private industry a diatribe against paying taxes for it? If you don't like the propaganda from private industry PAY MORE FOR YOUR SCHOOLS.
I'd be happy to pay more for schools. Let's take the funding out of the money that''s going to systemic corruption and non-cash-balance public pensions, rather than being some evil organizations bitch.
We had anti-piracy education when I was a kid. It went like this: "Stealing is wrong. Don't do it. There will be bad consequences if you do, and good consequences if you don't." Our society creates technology to make taking something you didn't buy or create easy and at the same time relegate personal ethics to the trash can. But, really, this is great commentary. Absolutely hilarious. And while you're at it, get off my friggin lawn.
This has to be one of the best reasons for yanking kids out of school and turning to homeschooling that I've ever heard! (Barring specific medical conditions, etc.)
It's time to tell the RIAA and MPAA companies that enough is enough, and to curb their power to turn participatory culture into mere consumerism by putting an end to never-ending copyright terms.
I'm all for this. How do we do it? Especially if they're even half as entwined with the government as the tin foils suggest...
I don't think you enter tinfoil land by acknowledging how law is written in this country, and by whom. Industry lobbyists frequently come to Congress with exactly the legislation they want already written.
I presume that since this issue is (briefly) referenced in the Constitution, it would probably require a Constitutional Amendment to alter in any meaningful way that isn't continued extension:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
I discussed this a bit in a blog post, SOPA, the Open Act, and Copyright: A Five Year Plan and flesh it out there a bit more than I do here. The Amendment process is probably the only way this can ever happen because it's the only method that doesn't count on Congress doing the morally defensible thing.
No, seriously.
Schools are free to not use it, not pay for it. No one is putting a gun to their head.
So then, are the kids in those schools similarly free to not use it, and not be subjected to it?
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Because the Motion Picture Association of America are totally unbiased when it comes to interpretation of intellectual property law.
Bad analogy.
Copying the movie or tune is the same as stealing the book.
Standing the bookstore and reading the book is a pretty classless thing to do, but it's not stealing. Listening to a tune on the radio is actually part of the marketing plan as they believe you will want to buy it for yourself. Same with watching a movie. You can take it with you in your head, but you can't show it to someone else.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Who said anything about showing it to someone else? I was talking about possession, not distribution.
For all but a few people, watching or hearing is a far cry from possession. Maybe for the Rain Man.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.