California Elementary Schools To Test Anti-Piracy Curriculum 356
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.”
School == Copying (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Not always. DARE, despite being only incrementally less popular than apple pie and jesus, consistently turns in effectiveness numbers somewhere between 'useless' and 'teaches impressionable children about cool drugs that they should try' whenever some killjoy stops taking its effectiveness on faith and tries studying it.
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem is that government is allowing corporations to push their agenda in the classroom...
Well, it's not the only problem: I distinctly remember as an elementary school student getting "lessons" about how awesome the latest war effort was, and being required to sing patriotic songs, and of course the reciting of the Pledge of Allegience which requires students to profess a belief in God. Oh, and watching "Channel 1 News", which was sometimes informative but often not and supported by commercials.
Basically, the problem is that it's easier to dupe kids than it is adults, so there are lots of organizations who are positively salivating at the prospect.
Corporations and Government (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which I should think would have about the same effect as telling your elected representative your displeasure ... the people who pay them huge money in campaign donations get their ear, and the rest of us can go pound sand.
The *AAs likely made some donations contingent on having their views on copyright be required in school. And they will skew the facts the way they always do on the topic of copyright, so the kids will be getting lied to.
And, I'm betting the vast majority of parents can't afford to send their children to private school.
Re:School == Copying (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
DARE... It's a great program... Just poorly marketed...
What? I think you got it backwards. The marketing must be great, because it's still in use all over. But it is a terribly ineffective program, as has been shown repeatedly.
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:5, Insightful)
"Makes me wonder if there'll ever be a Star Trek-esque Utopia..."
The USA seems to me more en route to a Babylon 5 police state under president Clark.
Re:What about getting it into Church as well? (Score:2, Insightful)
WWJD? Make copies of fish and bread and feed everyone. Duh.
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no problem with people believing in God. I have all sorts of problems with government-funded schools demanding that students say they believe in God.
Re:School == Copying (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The whole idea of IP defies basic notions of cultural inheritance and evolution. I get that it might be useful for a limited time, but any extended period of time begins to subvert the very processes that lead to innovation.
But this is what you get when you let sociopaths run the economy. The kinds of people who reaches the upper tiers of governance and corporate power are the kinds of people we should be locking away.
Re:School == Copying (Score:5, Insightful)
Science is about copying.
"If I have seen further it is by paying my proper license fees to stand on the shoulders of giants."
-- Sir Isaac Newton, according to next year's California standard textbooks about science
Re:Indoctrination and Propoganda (Score:0, Insightful)
This cannot be! Every time I hear about a new tax in my state it's always for EDUCATION!
Re:School == Copying (Score:4, Insightful)
The poor have been so drained by the predation of the wealthy that they have no blood left to sate the appetites of the plutocrats, now their eye turns towards the middle class, and you too will be made poor and then bled.
Re:School == Copying (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you are told to write what you see on the board. But did the teacher copy that from somewhere. Did they have a performance license is it transferable?
If asked to read from a book does the student have to get a performance license first or enquire about the existence of such? Does the teacher have a performance license to read from a book. Does the school have a license to play the recording of the national anthem in the morning?
When passed a test the student should refuse to do anything until the teacher either asserts that the creation of the test was original work and that the copy thus produced was allowed or provide a certified copy of licensing agreement allowing the reproduction of question from the book onto the test.
And you expect grade school kids to catch onto this? Some of them will talk to parents and latch on to things do stuff like the above and drive the whole process to a standstill. Are you going to have the teachers say "we don't worry about that in the class room", if word of that gets out the parent calls the school and reports the teacher.