MPAA Backs Anti-Piracy Curriculum For Elementary School Students 250
An anonymous reader writes "A number of groups, including the MPAA, are pushing to educate elementary school kids about the dangers of piracy. From the article: 'A nonprofit group called the Center for Copyright Information, which is supported by the MPAA and other groups, has commissioned a school curriculum to teach elementary-age children about the value of copyrights. The proposed curriculum is still in draft stage, but it's already taking flak. Some critics say the curriculum promotes the biased agenda of Hollywood studios and music labels. Others contend it would use up valuable classroom time when U.S. public schools are already struggling to teach the basics.'"
Godwinned in One Post (Score:3, Insightful)
The Nazis also pushed for youth indoctrination to attempt to create generations of followers. Glad DARE and MAFIAA learned the lesson.
Biased (Score:4, Insightful)
Education? (Score:5, Insightful)
I respectfully submit a request to change the tag on this story from "education" to "indoctrination".
Good on them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Movie execs need their private jets, blow, and hookers to relax after a hard day of not paying taxes and buying congress people.
Remember Kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't nice to share your toys, you're stealing money that the toy manufacturers deserve when your friend Johnny doesn't buy his own toy!
CAPTCHA: Retail
Oy, be good consumers (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't teach our children to think, we teach them to consume.
DARE (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just like the pharmaceutical industry funding D.A.R.E..
Re:Piracy makes more sense if stuff is worth money (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
Copyright keeps culture "hostage". No one is allowed to enjoy unless they pay-to-play. Short-term profit over long-term benefits to society.
Think of the children (Score:5, Insightful)
oh come on! Think of the poor MPAA losing their shirt just because times change. And hey, if schools are having troubles right now, they're sitting on a MOTHERLOAD of a profitable resource: A captive and impressionable audience. I'm sure the MPAA would be willing to part with a few dollars to have a SIMPLE and PRODUCTIVE message sent to our youths.
And why stop there? I'm sure that ExxonMobile would be willing to donate to our children's future and supply a brief explanation of the benefits of fracking. Halliburton would be able to give an up-close and insightful description of political issues to bolster their social science awareness. Microsoft would be able to explain what all happens when you agree to those complicated EULAs. They could also comment on the importance of sharing, caring, and litigating anyone who dares do it with your toys. Monsanto would do wonders in the biology class.
Just think of the possibilities [wikipedia.org].
Re:Looks like yet-another dupe (Score:3, Insightful)
A dupe, a movie advertisement, and 2 things which aren't even news.
You what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm understanding this correctly, the music labels are now resorting to re-educating future generations in a futile attempt to protect their obsolete business models. Their meddling with the legal system, constant redefinition of copyright terms and heavy-handed persecution of those they see as "offenders" have, as predicted by everyone except them, done nothing to prevent people doing what human beings have loved to do with audible culture for millennia - sharing it. These idiots probably see this as a good idea. What next? Selectively assigning breeding privileges to the population based on an exam paper sponsored by the Corporate Overloads of America to ensure your opinions conform to our scientifically proven CorrectThink(TM)?
Re:Education? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fabulous idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't we start with the fact that Hollywood was founded as it was about as far from New York and their IP laws about the movie industry as you could get in those days? Let's make sure we cover the theft of material from the public domain for corporate use too.
Don't forget to cover the MPAA's own history of corruption. The RIAA should not be forgotten either, they have a long history of ripping of artists and we need to make sure we educate people on that. We should have a special section on Hollywood accounting that covers how you have a billion dollar blockbuster that costs $100 million to make and officially loses money. Make sure that we cover how this works in the music industry too.
I also think it is important that people are educated on all of their rights that have been trampled and attempted to be circumvented by the **AA's and their like kind organizations overseas. By all means we should show the **AA's support of taking away your rights for a fair trial if your accused of copyright infringement. Don't forget to educate people on treaties and what they have done to take away your rights by treaty.
Don't forget to cover public domain and the history of extending how long something will last before being put into public domain. We also need to show how this has changed over the years. Libraries, those bastions of piracy! They have the audacity to lend IP without people paying for them fresh every single time, let's make sure we cover the history of trying to shut down libraries abilities to do lend things.
Anything else that we should educate people on?
Re:Biased (Score:5, Insightful)
also lead to mass layoff and unemployment and be the direct cause of the next great depression.
Hey, now, this is Slashdot; I'm sure, with our collective intellect, we could come up with a rationale explaining how media piracy is directly responsible for smallpox and the Holocaust.
At least, one equally as convincing as any argument the MPAA has made thus far; admittedly, it's really an easy task when you consider the fact we're talking about a group of people who once claimed to have lost more revenue to piracy than the combined GDP of the entire planet. Ridiculous is their bread-and-butter.
Demand an Opt-Out Option (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious people can opt-out their children when it comes to evolution and sex-education. Seems only fair that parents get the option to opt their children out of this unabashed intrusion of the classroom by media corporations. From an economic educational standpoint, I don't want my kids learning that having the right political connections can be used to compensate for a broken business model.
Re:Godwinned in One Post (Score:5, Insightful)
It all starts with a pledge of allegiance...
Re:Education? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am probably going to draw flack for this but WTF, here we go...
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8 of the US Constitution makes it a right in the US. Besides that, let's play Devil's advocate here for a while:
Tell me just how an artist or distributor of content is supposed to make a living regardless of the length of time given for the "limited time" as listed in the Constitution? Right now, things are showing up on the illegal sites even before they are officially released by the rightful owner. Just how do you overcome that? Look at software piracy for example, as soon as a vendor of a popular program (think Photoshop) makes a new version, it is usually up at the torrent sites at most 2 days after initial release and sometimes before initial release. So just how are they to reap the benefits of their work when the next day it is being distributed with no benefits being returned?
Don't get me wrong, I do think the term of copyrights are too long. I also think the public domain is getting the shaft. But given that they can't win in today's connected world, just what is the solution? You see many here bitching about copyrights and the "old business model failure" but no proposals for how to realize benefit out of your hard work. Because you see, regardless of what you think as you download that pre-release program, it still boils down to putting food on the table for those making it to begin with.
Re:You what? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you are not understanding this correctly.
You used the term "re-educating" incorrectly. You imply that people who violate copyright are not actually offenders. And the slippery slope argument about breeding is so ridiculous right now that you deserve to be stripped of your posting rights.
As you said, people have the natural instinct of sharing things. On a normal basis of friend to friend, this is generally tolerated. Buying one copy and sharing it with everyone on the planet is illegal in pretty much every part of the world, by social contract. At some point between giving it to your friend and giving to the world, this becomes illegal.
Educating people that this is part of the social contract, and sharing is permissible only within the confines of fair use, if such a concept exists in the community, is not unreasonable.
You should divert your energy to fighting the parts that need fighting. Copyright length is clearly absurd, armed swat team enforcement is clearly overkill. Hyperbole and misinterpretation gets us nowhere.
TL;DR - you are not helping.
Re:Biased (Score:5, Insightful)
Justification-- for downloading? No, you have it backwards. Natural law is the justification. Copying should not be a crime, copying should be encouraged because it is good for us all. Rather, those who seek to block us all from using our technology are the ones who should justify their position.
We've all heard their justifications. They claim that poor starving artists can't make money without copyright, that copyright is the only way or only fair way to compensate artists. They are wrong. How can they ask that we all forego the enormous flowering of cooperation and culture that the Internet, computers, hard drives, writable optical media, and flash drives has made possible? We could have the entire Library of Congress online, for free downloading, without risking a single precious physical copy. We could have research that we already paid for freely available. That perhaps is the most galling of all, that these thieves of our most valuable works, works of science that are important for our future and which we already pay for through grants, really believe they should have the right to lock it all away behind paywalls.
You should also recall their history. The media moguls fought the player piano, AM radio, cassette tape, VCR, and DAT, to name a few of the big ones. Their business grew despite the losses they suffered. No, these guys have shown that they aren't friends of art and artists, they are public enemies seeking control and rent monies that they do not deserve.
Re:Schools Teaching Morality (Score:4, Insightful)
If there's one set of people I'm glad I didn't learn all my morality from, it's my parents.
I mean, some things they taught were brilliant. But a lot of what was going round in their heads... oh boy, anyone would think they were just a pair of average humans.