Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Hong Kong Using Children to Hunt for Piracy

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jul 18, 2006 05:41 PM
from the history-repeats-itself dept.
Privacy The Internet
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."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Politics: Hong Kong Boy Scouts to Protect IP 617 comments
phresno writes "Declan McCullagh at C|net's News.com has a short article on the development that the Hong Kong Boy Scouts Association has teamed up with the MPA to create an intellectual property merit badge. Mike Ellis of the MPA hopes this program will 'provide thousands of young people -- future leaders -- with a better understanding of the value of intellectual property.' Those with tinfoil hats will surely be thinking of the youth in Orwell's 1984."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Hong Kong Using Children to Hunt for Piracy 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Search != Stumble Upon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord Grey (463613) * on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:42PM (#15740123)
    From the article summary:
    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 ....
    From the article:
    Starting this summer the Hong Kong government plans to have 200,000 youths search Internet discussion sites for illegal copies of copyrighted songs and movies, and report them to the authorities.
    Asking someone to report a crime they've happened to see is very different from asking them to actively search for a crime and report it. I would be pretty concerned if the government asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on in that part of town. 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. If the government needs help like this, they should offer up a bounty on the illegal material let some idle adults collect the prize.
    • Adults shouldn't have the amount of collective free time that children do. This is a way to capitalize (in a communist way) on an untapped pool of labor that the human rights people won't get upset about.

      • Re:Search != Stumble Upon (Score:4, Insightful)

        by post-tech-guy (975154) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @06:51PM (#15740430)
        Either communist or facist, either way it is a recipe for disaster. Remember the Hitler Youth, they were instructed to do similar actions with rating out people who didn't agree with the Third Reich

        • Re:Search != Stumble Upon (Score:4, Funny)

          by ultranova (717540) on Wednesday July 19 2006, @02:57AM (#15741696)

          Either communist or facist, either way it is a recipe for disaster. Remember the Hitler Youth, they were instructed to do similar actions with rating out people who didn't agree with the Third Reich

          Yeah, and let's not forget the East Germany snitch network [wikipedia.org].

          It's funny how copyright enforcement seems to create more and more such parallels, isn't it ? Kinda makes me wonder if we don't regard the Copyright Lobby in 50 years the same way we regard Nazi Party now.

          Yeah, copyright Nazi. Nazi copyright. Copyright mass murder Hitler Stalin terrorism evil RIAA MPAA DMCA DRM. Eat it up, googlebot :).

        • Re:The real reason (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jeremi (14640) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @08:28PM (#15740814) Homepage
          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?


          Sorry, but that's really dumb, even for a conspiracy theory. If you were the Chinese government and wanted to hack in to American information infrastructure, you wouldn't hire 200,000 children, you'd hire 200 really bright graduate students, and have them write automated attack programs. Not hundreds of thousands of amateur volunteers who are (a) not going to be very effective, and (b) are going to be impossible to keep quiet about their activities.


          There's also the minor detail of China having the USA as their largest customer -- attacking the USA is hardly in their economic interest.

            • I submit to you that those 'elite hackers' start off as motivated script-kiddies.

              You obviously know nothing about Hong Kong. China does not trust Hong Kong people politically, (having beeen tainted by British colonialism and western concepts of democracy) and they not allowed to join the PLA. For various reasons the Beijing govt keeps a hands-off policy with regard to HK governance (except for ruling out real elections, etc), and I can assure you this idea is entirely home-grown and in line with other of

        • 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?

          Ahem... Hong Kong has made some damned good movies (including some [imdb.com] of [imdb.com] my [imdb.com] all-time [imdb.com] favorites [imdb.com]). And I'm sure they get pirated.

    • "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."

      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 ..." was a little overdone, but I do agree with you in principle.

      Face it, it is hard for the would be dictators/over-control ty

    • I would be pretty concerned if the government asked my son to explore dark alleys at 3am, just to figure out if drug deals are going on in that part of town.

      I think there's a wee bit of safety difference between exploring dark alleys at 3am and surfing the net.

      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.

      So you're saying that you'll teach your children to ignore any crimes they see and just bury

      • Re:Search != Stumble Upon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sage Gaspar (688563) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:01PM (#15740488)
        So you're saying that you'll teach your children to ignore any crimes they see and just bury their head in the sand? If they see a little old lady being beaten, they should just stay out of it and not "rat" to the government on the criminal? I'm sure your children will turn out to be fine citizens.

        So you're saying you'll teach your children to report every crime they see? Old lady jaywalker is SOOOOO busted.

          • Re:Search != Stumble Upon (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Sage Gaspar (688563) on Wednesday July 19 2006, @12:58AM (#15741478)
            How do you discriminate against some crimes but not others?

            The same way I discriminate between anything else, common sense and my personal system of ethics. I obey laws when they're not too unreasonable. I agree with most of the regularly enforced laws in the U.S., hence me and a lot of other people in the same boat live here under a government that will enforce these laws and prevent other people from committing acts like rape, murder, theft, et al. Plus give us a fair shake if we're accused of any of that nasty stuff.

            We also have a police force to investigate these crimes. If we were to start telling little Johnny to keep on the lookout for nasty copyright infringers, we've just given him the go ahead for a witch hunt and breached another hole in the healthy distrust he should have for his government.

            Hell, the legal system already assigns different penalties to different crimes, ranking them by their severity. It's not really an astonishing idea.

            As for old lady jaywalker, there's some old ladies that shouldn't be crossing some streets. The laws exist so the police officers can stop them. The appropriate action for a strapping young lad that sees an elderly lady having trouble crossing the street, however, is to assist her, not to call the feds on her.

      • Re:Search != Stumble Upon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by S.P.B.Wylie (983357) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:16PM (#15740551)
        There is a difference between reporting a crime when you see it and hunting for it. You are making kids agents of the government to protect us. We are supposed to protect children, not the other way around. The big problem is that when you have children looking for crimes, they land in the environment of that crime, and from what I have heard about the sites that have piracy, that is not a safe place for children. So, in that manner, it is a lot like sending children down alleys to look for drug exchanges.

        Will you have children looking for online molesters soon? They are the most qualified to do so, even if it does put them in a dangerous situation.
        Think about it.
    • Considering the adult (as well as illegal) content openly displayed on such sites, this isn't an unreasonable metaphor.
    • Reporting illegal activity is one aspect of being a good citizen. Being willing to support law enforcement is another aspect. And this is hardly like walking down a dark alley at 3am. Risks to the child are nil.

  • Its not that hard (Score:3, Funny)

    by GmAz (916505) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:44PM (#15740131) Journal
    Why do they think its so difficult. Go to google.com and search for Warez.

  • they had better be prepared (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:45PM (#15740137)

    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

  • Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frosty_tsm (933163) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:46PM (#15740146)
    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).

    • Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Funny)

      by pilgrim23 (716938) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:52PM (#15740181)
      In a first coup for the Hong Kong police, the kids found 1000 copies of pirated Microsoft Offce and dutifully reported the discovery. The culprits in question turn out to be....the Hong Kong Police...

  • Save the pirates! (Score:5, Funny)

    by StikyPad (445176) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:47PM (#15740149) Homepage
    In my day, we used Pirates to hunt for children.

    Yarrr!

  • like 1940's vice squads (Score:4, Funny)

    by smellsofbikes (890263) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:48PM (#15740154) Journal
    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.

  • Oboy! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt (218170) * on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:50PM (#15740163) Homepage Journal

    Anti-Piracy Merit Badges!

    To earn one you must:

    • Identify a pirated song
    • Identify a pirated video or film
    • Turn in a friend or family member
    • Be able to recite from memory the RIAA & MPAA oaths of Allegiance to Lucre

    Breaking news: Chairman Moa is doing 3,500 RPM in his grave.

    • 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

  • I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by RyoShin (610051) <tukaro&gmail,com> on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:53PM (#15740185) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Wow, what a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa (657393) <skennedy@tpno-c o . o rg> on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:53PM (#15740188) Homepage
    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.

  • Nothing can go wrong! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gurp (7581) * <glennpNO@SPAMnull.net.nz> on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:55PM (#15740195)
    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?

  • The lesson.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aiken_d (127097) <aiken@bondage. c o m> on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:59PM (#15740222) Homepage
    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

  • this reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 56ker (566853) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @05:59PM (#15740224) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • a surge in enrollments, it would seem that the warez-hunters have found a sanctioned way to collect britney speers albums.

  • Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jason9x19 (951533) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @06:11PM (#15740269)
    "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."

      • Re:Sounds familiar. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by whitehatlurker (867714) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @06:47PM (#15740410) Journal
        'Who denounced you?' said Winston.

        'It was my little daughter,' said Jason9x19 with a sort of doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.'

        G Orwell [online-literature.com]

  • That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperKendall (25149) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @06:11PM (#15740271)
    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.

  • 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.
  • So, basically, what we have here is children [wikipedia.org] fighting pirates [wikipedia.org] on an island [wikipedia.org]? Where have I heard that before?

  • Reminds me of (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2006, @06:36PM (#15740359)
    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 ...

    So .. way to go China! :)

  • since this is Hong Kong (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Simonetta (207550) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:02PM (#15740496)
    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'.

  • Do not be fooled! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by posterlogo (943853) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:15PM (#15740549)
    The article makes it sound like this is another communist China authoritarian/totalitarian scheme to use the people for state aims. Do not be fooled! This program is the brainchild of MPAA/RIAA. Why not do it domestically?

    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.

    • Re:Do not be fooled! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Unlikely_Hero (900172) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:41PM (#15740645)
      I've said for ages that all this confuscian crap (yes crap) is the basic root of authoritarianism in asian cultures. And I'm always branded some sort of bigot.
      LOOK AT THE MAN'S WRITING. IT'S TRUE

  • A new merit badge (Score:3, Funny)

    by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:34PM (#15740623) Homepage Journal
    The Rat Fink

  • The numbers don't add up! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DJ_Perl (648258) on Tuesday July 18 2006, @07:56PM (#15740704) Homepage
    200,000 youths?!?!! Depending on which source you believe, there are only about 1 million youths ( ages 9-25 ) in all of Hong Kong. Even the sources disagree on the exact demographics of Hong Kong. Total population estimates ballpark around 6.9million.

    That would mean that 1 in every 5 youths would have to become part of this program. Sounds....unlikely.

    Sources:

    1. Wikipedia (Demographics of Hong Kong) [wikipedia.org] - 6.9 million in 2003
    2. Wikipedia (Hong Kong) [wikipedia.org] - 6.86 million in 2005
    3. CIA World Factbook [cia.gov] - 6.94 million in July 2006

  • maybe they've been reading (Score:3, Informative)

    by hachete (473378) on Wednesday July 19 2006, @04:20AM (#15741923) Homepage Journal
    http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/ [e-sheep.com]

    which is a damn fine webcomic as well

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.