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Ask Slashdot: How Do I Explain Copyright To My Kids?
orgelspieler writes: My son paid for a copy of a novel on his iPad. When his school made it against the rules to bring iPads, he wanted to get the same book on his Kindle. I tried to explain that the format of his eBook was not readily convertible to the Kindle. So he tried to go on his schools online library app. He checked it out just fine, but ironically, the offline reading function only works on the now-disallowed iPads. Rather than paying Amazon $7 for a book I already own, and he has already checked out from the library, I found a bootleg PDF online. I tried to explain that he could just read that, but he freaked out. "That's illegal, Dad!" I tried to explain format shifting, and the injustice of the current copyright framework in America. Even when he did his own research, stumbling across EFF's website on fair use, he still would not believe me.
Have any of you fellow Slashdotters figured out a good way to navigate the moral, legal, and technological issues of copyright law, as it relates to the next generation of nerds? Interestingly, my boy seems OK with playing old video games on the Wayback Machine, so I don't think it's a lost cause.
Have any of you fellow Slashdotters figured out a good way to navigate the moral, legal, and technological issues of copyright law, as it relates to the next generation of nerds? Interestingly, my boy seems OK with playing old video games on the Wayback Machine, so I don't think it's a lost cause.
He's not incorrect. Two wrongs don't make a right. It seems like you want to do the right thing and pay for the book but you still got the book from an illegitimate source. If you were to take the Kindle or schools version and convert to PDF, there you have done a format shift. The problem is that TOS of those services probably prohibits converting to PDF, or even if it doesn't it is probably encrypted to protect the book. Defeating the encryption is circumvention that would be against the DMCA. So, he is correct and you just need to man up and not make excuses for your actions when you know they are wrong. People download illegal copies of books and music, get over it, but don't try to build a house around the excuse of why you did it.
Copyright is a pure (artificial and arbitrary) product of capitalism. Socialism is the library. You're just brainwashed by the western propaganda as his kid is.
The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.
Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.
And don't forget that you brainwash your kids too, just with the ideas and beleifs you hold. Public school for all its flaws, exposes them to other ideas, some good, some bad
do you have any data/study that demonstrate kids exposed to social world of a real world community, including among other things, "church, sports, and social field trips" etc, are less exposed to reality, than kids who grow up in extremely juvenile social world of american public high school(an artificial world of recent construction, very different from "real" world")?
also , given the snow-flaky behavior of kids coming who come out of public schools, who loudly, and sometimes violently, demand they want to to be protected from ideas that conflict with dominant establishment "liberal" ideology, there is enough proof, that contrary to what you say, brainwashing and inability to deal with reality is definitely a public school thing. whether it is also home school thing is yet to be demonstrated.
9. Explain the Sony Betamax suit that those producers lost allowing people to "time shift" and how this is an extension of that same decision.
10. Explain the concepts of the public domain and why that is the sole reason for the existence of copyright.
11. Explain how those producers lobbied (read bribed) legislators to extend copyright to the point that nothing will be released to the public domain in his lifetime.
12. Explain that the DMCA was created by those same politicians in the same manor as the extensions to try and prevent format shifting.
13. Explain what the definition of greed is (on both sides of this issue).
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Then follow up with The Right to Read by Richard Stallman for how it's evolving.