Get ‘em while they’re young. That’s  corporate goal Number One with penetration of school classrooms around the world now a matter of routine.

Unscrupulous marketeers  know the value of corrupting children at the earliest possible opportunity, getting into their heads with flashy ads and mind-worm soundtracks, as Microsoft demonstrated  in a school in Pennsylvania.

It “forced a bunch of middle schoolers in Pennsylvania to learn, and perform,” Jonathan Mann’s Bing song, says TechCrunch.

‘Bing’ is Microsoft’s answer to  advertising giant Google’s search engine.

“The horror,”  said the story, going on, “It’s hard to watch this without immediately thinking about parents who accept money to allow their child to be sponsored. Is this the future of branding?

“Mann actually sent us the video along with the following note: ‘I literally cried a little bit when I saw this video. On the one hand I’m happy I was able to provide some kids with an excuse not to do school work for a few hours. On the other hand, not sure how I feel about these kids being indoctrinated into the cult of, well, whatever. It’s kinda creepy … ‘ ”

It’s more than creepy. It’s criminal.  But what else is new?

Intellectual Property merit badges

All segments of the entertainment industry have been getting away with this kind of thing for years  with corporate indoctrination specialists masquerading as ‘educators’ even using movements such as the Scouts to carry their specious messages.

“Funny thing,” said Rafael Venegas three years ago in a comment post to a p2pnet.net story highlighting the fact Hollywood had weasled  its way into the Hong Kong Boy Scout movement.

“You put two USA lawyers in opposing sides of any infringement lawsuit and they can’t agree on how to interpret the law and its frequently contradictory jurisprudence,” said Rafael. “They can’t even agree on what infringement is. And someone expects some kids in China to have knowledge of IP law’?”

No only China. Soon afterwards, the MPAA  proudly announced Los Angeles Scouts would be expected to ‘earn’ Intellectual Property merit badges.

And the corporate record industry came under fire, “after launching a scheme to teach primary schoolchildren — possibly as young as five — not to illegally download music from the internet,” said Britain’s the Daily Mail, recently

“Lessons teaching pupils about copyright law are already being piloted in six schools and could be rolled out across the country,” but,”Critics suggest the initiative is designed to protect commercial interests rather than provide a valuable educational experience.”

The get ‘em while they’re young child mind-rape scheme was organised by music industry ‘consultant’ Ruth Katz — who also works for EMI, said p2pnet.  But no worries because she’s, “funding the school scheme independently,” although by another amazing coincidence, she’s backed by music industry organisations, “including the  EMI Music Sound Foundation — a charity set up by the label to improve music education,” says the story.

This particular travesty is happening in Britain, but it’s no more than part of an overall entertainment industry campaign to warp the minds of children everywhere by introducing copyright and intellectual property law into classrooms.

Much more recently, Hollywood sent “one of its biggest guns” to New Zealand in a “last-ditch attempt to persuade the Government to beef up its proposed approach to tackling internet piracy,” said stuff.co.nz.

“The corporate movie and music industries are spending millions of dollars in an international campaign to browbeat governments into instituting three strikes laws which would threaten alleged file sharers with two warnings, and then have them thrown off the Internet,” said p2pnet adding:

“With the governments acting as corporate copyright cop agencies, ISPs would be the enforcers.

However, as with Britain, the US, Australia and other countries where Big Music and Hollywood are struggling desperately to have their business plans adopted as local laws, the cartels are meeting with fierce  on- and offline resistance from civil rights groups and citizens.

“ ‘Washington-based executive vice-president and chief policy officer Greg Frazier held discussions with officials in an attempt to persuade the Government to rethink its plan to water down section 92a of the Copyright Act, which was put on hold in March following a storm of protests from internet advocates’,” said stuff.co.nz.

Not only but also, he, “launched a ‘comic book’ driving home the association’s anti-piracy message, which will be distributed to 17,000 children at cinemas throughout New Zealand during the school holidays”.

As I’ve said many times before, Thank  God we home-school our daughter.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

p2pnet.net – MPAA Boy Scout spies, July 18, 2006
TechCrunch – Microsoft Tortures Little Kids With Bing Jingle, October 30, 2009
p2pnet – Get ‘em while they’re young!, October 5, 2009
Daily Mail – Anger at record industry bosses over school anti-piracy lessons for children as young as five, October 3, 2009
stuff.co.nz – Copyright crusader flies in, October 5, 2006
p2pnet – Hollywood goes after New Zealand kids, October 13, 2006

The corporate movie and music industries are spending millions of dollars in an international campaign to browbeat governments into instituting three strikes laws which would threaten alleged file sharers with two warnings, and then have them thrown off the Internet.

With the governments acting as corporate copyright cop agencies, ISPs would be the enforcers.

However, as with Britain, the US, Australia and other countries where Big Music and Hollywood are struggling desperately to have their business plans adopted as local laws, the cartels are meeting with fierce  on- and off-line resistance from civil rights groups and citizens.

“Washington-based executive vice-president and chief policy officer Greg Frazier held discussions with officials in an attempt to persuade the Government to rethink its plan to water down section 92a of the Copyright Act, which was put on hold in March following a storm of protests from internet advocates,” says stuff.co.nz.

Not only but also, he, “launched a ‘comic book’ driving home the association’s anti-piracy message, which will be distributed to 17,000 children at cinemas throughout New Zealand during the school holidays,” says the story.

Spying on internet activity

Trying to mess with the minds of children around the world is standard entertainment cartel operating procedure.

A Kiddie Spy program was launched in Hong Kong in 2006. Under it, 200,000 members of local youth groups would “spy on internet activity” and, “report illegal file transfers”.

Hollywood, “traditionally one of the most corrupt places on earth, and the equally tainted music and software companies prating to our kids about right and wrong?” – said p2pnet in wonderment, continuing, “It’s like Jack the Ripper branching into cosmetic surgery.”

As a test bed, the studios introduced copyright law to Scouts in Hong Kong, then the MPAA proudly announced it’d scammed the Los Angeles Area Boy Scouts of America into a, “new education program”.

The Big Six studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, wanted to, “help raise awareness about the value of copyrights among the over 52,000 young people involved in Boy Scout programs in the greater Los Angeles area,” they said.

Troops would, “choose from a number of activities” to qualify for a “Respect Copyrights” patch.

Now over in New Zealand, “Interestingly, the comic doesn’t touch the subject of copyright,” says TorrentFreak. “Instead it uses false threats to scare children and parents about the dangers of file-sharing.”

Equally interestingly, you can download ‘Escape From Terror Byte City’ from P2P indexing site MiniNova.

The graphics are good, but the copy is the usual brain-dead corporate crap no one except the people who put together and will take seriously.

However, it won’t be totally wasted.

It’ll make great material for the spoofs which’ll inevitably follow.

[NOTE: p2pnet is the only online digital media news source to catalogue the continuing entertainment cartel campaign to corrupt the minds of our children. And even these reports barely scratch the surface. Click here for p2pnet Kids'n'Kartels.]

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

stuff.co.nz – Copyright crusader flies in, October 5, 2006
mess with the minds – They’re brainwashing YOUR child, July 4, 2005
Kiddie Spy program – Hong Kong’s kiddie Net spies, May 31, 2006
Jack the Ripper – MPAA corrupts US Scouts, October 21, 2006
TorrentFreak – Anti-Pirates Scare Kids with Propagandistic Comic Book, October 12, 2006

“Lessons teaching pupils about copyright law are already being piloted in six schools and could be rolled out across the country.

“Critics suggest the initiative is designed to protect commercial interests rather than provide a valuable educational experience.”

The get ‘em while they’re young child mind-rape scheme is organised by music industry ‘consultant’ Ruth Katz who, by an amazing coincidence, also works for Big 4 music gang member EMI.

But that’s okay because she’s, “funding the school scheme independently,” although by another amazing coincidence, it’s supported by music industry outfits, “including the  EMI Music Sound Foundation — a charity set up by the label to improve music education,” says the story.

Critics, however, “have questioned whether young primary schoolchildren would even know how to download music without assistance”.

But why not?

This particular travesty is happening in Britain, but it’s no more than part of an overall entertainment industry campaign to warp the minds of children by introducing copyright and intellectual property law into classrooms.

It looks fantastic — unbelievable — but it’s happening.

And it’s nothing new.

The, “most recent marketing triumph by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA, has been to, “scam Penn State University and the University of Rochester into becoming record industry cops and salesmen,” said p2pnet as far back as in 2004.

Unpaid, of course.

It went on a»»»

If students download ‘product’ from the Big Five record labels from ’services’ supported by the Big Five record labels instead of from online file sharing networks, they [the students] can avoid being dragged into court by the Big Five record labels, says the RIAA, with its oppo in the movie industry, the MPAA, right behind.

So that’s nicely in hand and in the meanwhile, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) – with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) right behind, of course – hasn’t dropped a frame in its campaign to win the hearts and minds of children in junior and mid-level schools.

It’s force-feeding high-toned moralistic ‘educational’ programs to the kids —– which is interesting given that Hollywood is home to some of the most immoral, greedy and dishonest people on the face of the earth.

And what makes it even more interesting is that teachers and school administrators are not only letting them do it, they’re actively helping them.

In October, last year, p2pnet reported that Hollywood was embarking on a project to pump anti-piracy messages to 900,000 students through a program being “integrated” into more than 36,000 classrooms across America.

Carrying the message to children in grades five to nine via volunteer teachers was (and still is, says a Boston Globe story here) Junior Achievement.

It’s offering students DVD players, DVD movies, theater tickets and all-expenses-paid trips to Hollywood for winning essays about the illegalities of file-sharing, it said when the program was launched, going on, “Teachers, too, can win prizes for effectively communicating the approved message in class.”

In the Globe story, “The industry is dominated by five studio-based conglomerates that also own major recording labels, television networks, radio stations, and other media subsidiaries,” writes Kathleen Sharp. “Its antifilm-piracy curriculum was developed to preempt problems suffered by the music industry, which for years has claimed that it loses as much as $4 billion a year from illegal copying.”

It has MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor saying 500,000 movies are being downloaded every day around the world, although he wasn’t sure how many of those are illegal: ”We know that one area we have to attack is on the educational front”.

Like the RIAA, Sharp continues, the MPAA has started to sue those who download content illegally. But unlike the recording industry, the studios are tapping a nonprofit business group to bring its antipiracy message to young people.

The group is Junior Achievement.

And Sharp’s story gets even more alarming.

“Earlier this year, Junior Achievement volunteers debuted the industry’s program in California classrooms,” she says.

“One volunteer, Steve Dolcemaschio, an executive with E! Entertainment Television Inc. (jointly owned by Comcast Corp., The Walt Disney Co., and Liberty Media Corp.) worked with Diedre Ndiaye, who teaches speech and drama to sixth- through eighth-grade students at Markham Middle School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Many children in the class indicated they had never downloaded anything before.

“The volunteer and the teacher worked from a 25-page classroom guide to explain the concept of using a computer to download files, which they called ”morally and ethically wrong.’ The students played roles such as ‘The Film Producer,’ ‘The Starving Artist,’ and were asked questions such as ‘Has anyone ever copied your homework? How did this make you feel?’

“By the end of one session, the teacher asked one boy: ‘Will you stop copying music online and download the right way?’- and ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I’ll go to the music store and buy more CDs.’

“Students learn to repeat the program’s motto: ‘If you don’t pay for it, you’ve stolen it’.”

A few days ago the FBI, in effect acting for the entertainment industry, raided schools in Arizona looking for ‘pirate’ contraband in the shape of music and movie files.

Sharp concludes with a quote from Alex Molnar, a professor who is director of commercialism in education at Arizona State University.

Commercialism has no place in the classroom, he said. ”This program is a time vampire. Is it more important for kids to hear the movie industry’s message or should they be learning to read and pass new test standards?”

And she winds up with a comment from Darrell Luzzo, senior vp of Junior Achievement who defends the industry’s antipiracy program by saying it’s not meant to cover all aspects of copyright law. Rather, the idea is to encourage student debate.

”We are learning ways to enhance classroom discussions.”

Junior achievement still exists.

And it’s still, “Educating Students Worldwide,” it declares proudly.

Meanwhile, the UK mind-rape project, “has tremendous support from music industry associations, notably the IFPI [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry] and UK Music [the organisation that supports artists’ interests], the EMI Music Sound Foundation and the Department for Children, Schools and Families along with other music-related industries,” Katz  says in the Daily Mail story.

That’s a surprise.

She also says she wants to, ” extend the project across the country with Government support by September 2010″.

After The Mail on Sunday contacted her about the project, “she changed her profile, removing all mention of the project’s anti-piracy aim and groups supporting it,” says the story, adding:

“It then read: ‘I have initiated an education programme for primary schoolchildren to teach them about the broader aspects of creativity and making music’.”

__________________________

p2pnet is the only online digital media news source to chronicle corporate efforts to corrupt our children since the Big 4 launched their sue ‘em all campaign in 2003, which soon after spread to Europe and other parts of the world.

If you want to read more about continuing corporate efforts to turn our children into mindless consumer drones, check out our Kids ‘n Kartels section.

(Cheers, Basher)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Daily Mail – Anger at record industry bosses over school anti-piracy lessons for children as young as five, October 3, 2009
p2pnet – MPAA: brainwashing children, April 27, 2004

The League of Arab States, Microsoft and Khasawneh & Associates (?) say their new Arab Intellectual Property Centre will, “provide a central hub for best practice sharing and legal resources on intellectual property in the Arab region”.

“The site aims to provide the Arab region with assistance in its efforts to promote the protection of intellectual property by providing a central database on intellectual property and internet crime issues within the region, including an extensive collection of regional laws and regulations, international treaties and agreements and intellectual property case law from around the Middle East region,” says a joint statement.

The ‘Centre’ is, “part of a broader initiative launched by the Arab LeagueArab League and Khasawneh & Associates to reach beyond industry and law enforcement audiences, to educate schools and students on the value of intellectual property,” says the group  statement, quoting Microsoft lawyer Dale Waterman as saying:

“Software piracy and counterfeiting are damaging the prospects for consumers, businesses and economies across the region. Microsoft is committed to working towards a regional reset on intellectual property. The partnership with the Arab LeagueArab League and Khasawneh & Associates is an important step forward.”

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statement – League of Arab States and Microsoft Announce Launch of Arab Intellectual Property Centre, September 27, 2009

“The RIAA and its owners, the Big 4 labels, have for years been demonising children and their families across America as file sharing criminals and thieves.

“And now the RIAA is actually running back-to-school ‘advice‘ for teachers from well-known educationalist and RIAA spinster Liz Kennedy, who kicks off with, ‘And although heading “back” means a little more work (and a little less play) for most of us, there’s something refreshing about it that I look forward to every year –- the reminder that we all have something to learn.’

“There’s no point in quoting her any further.”

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) picked up on the travesty, saying, “after spending countless dollars on failed advertising campaigns against peer-to-peer file-sharing, the RIAA has created a classroom activity to outsource the campaign to schoolchildren.

“Next up: A classroom activity where kids police peer-to-peer networks in search of potential infringers!

“Fortunately, teachers looking to educate their students about copyright have an alternative: Teaching Copyright, EFF’s unbiased, informative and fact-centered copyright curriculum. Rather than bombarding kids with the message that using new technology is illegal, Teaching Copyright helps kids to understand their digital rights, giving them the information they need to responsibly create, critique and participate in the Internet’s participatory mash-up culture.”

But as I said in a post also mentioning the release of Teaching Copyright, in my view, suggesting copyright or intellectual property law have a place in any school curriculum other than a law school’s is a Very Bad Idea because it lends credibility to the entirely incorrect contention they should be there in the first place.

Meanwhile, below is a video of  RIAA horse-source material.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

(Cheers, Marc)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

steaming pile of poo – RIAA back-to-school steaming pile of poo, September 14, 2009
EFF – RIAA Asks Schoolkids To Assist With Propaganda, September 17, 2009

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RIAA back-to-school steaming pile of poo

The RIAA and its owners, the Big 4 labels, have for years been demonising children and their families across America as file sharing criminals and thieves.

And now the RIAA is actually running back-to-school ‘advice‘ for teachers from well-known educationalist and RIAA spinster Liz Kennedy, who kicks off with, “And although heading ‘back’ means a little more work (and a little less play) for most of us, there’s something refreshing about it that I look forward to every year –- the reminder that we all have something to learn.”

There’s no point in quoting her any further.

Over at TechDirt, Mike Masnick cites the RIAA’s special “curriculum” for teachers, wondering, “Do schools use science curricula provided by Exxon or Monsanto?”

He goes on »»»

As for the actual content included in the curriculum (which, by the way, the RIAA links to incorrectly twice), it’s almost a joke. Check out the RIAA propaganda. Fair use doesn’t exist — at all. Reading through the main document, I find not a single mention of it. But what does exist is all sorts of bogeymen about how evil file sharing is, how it exposes your hard drive to viruses and reveals your tax return info.

Oh, but the best part, is that the RIAA is pushing for a new totally made up term called “songlifting” which is the central theme of every single lesson.

Sounds like “shoplifting,” right? That’s the idea — though the RIAA cleverly tries to pretend that it didn’t make up the word. In fact, it presents it as if it’s a common term.

Of course, the curriculum doesn’t happen to mention the Supreme Court’s Dowling decision, where the court specifically talked about how very different infringement is from “stealing.” Of course, the RIAA also mentions the Grokster ruling — but is misleading there as well, claiming that the law is clear that parents could be found liable for their kids sharing unauthorized files.

The actual exercises are ridiculous propaganda. The first one is supposed to be about “math” skills for the lower grades and “spreadsheet” skills for higher level students. Guess what the “math” is?

This part of the activity should help students recognize how songlifting, though it might seem harmless at first, can quickly become a largescale problem. Have students complete the calculations on the worksheet using spreadsheet software or a calculator. If time permits, repeat the first calculation by having students choose a realistic number of songs they would take if they could get them all for free. Adding desire to the equation in this way can further dramatize why songlifting can have an enormous economic impact.

Answers
Total number of songs lifted = 7,800,000;
Total cost of songs lifted = $7,722,000.
$926,640,000 (i.e., nearly a billion dollars).

Hmm. If we’re simply making stuff up for propaganda purposes, how about “total number of new listeners a musician gets thanks to such sharing?” And then “total amount those musicians make when those new fans go to concerts or purchase merchandise thanks to hearing the songs for free.” Might change the math a bit, but what do I know? I’m not an industry lobbyist, so my “industry” math isn’t up to par.

Then there’s propaganda about job losses:

Ask students to name some people who might work in this part of the music business (e.g., machine operator, printer, packager, truck driver, store manager, cashier, online order handler, etc.). Talk about how these people might be affected by songlifting, then have students work individually or in small groups to list other music makers unnamed in the story.

Ok. Why don’t we talk about the jobs on the other side of the equation? How about all of the people employed by technology companies that the RIAA has helped put out of business through lawsuits? Or students that the RIAA has bankrupted via lawsuits? Have students put together a list of just how many lives and jobs the RIAA has destroyed. Point them to the story of MP3.com. And Napster. And Launchcast. And Grokster. Tell them how the RIAA tried to have the iPod (or, more accurately, its predecessor) banned, and have them think about how different life would be without it. Tell them how the RIAA is fighting hard to tax radio stations, putting so many radio people out of business. Tell them the story of the MIT student who the RIAA suggested drop out of school to pay a fine. Talk about how all of these people might be affected by the RIAA’s overreaction to innovation and new technologies, and its own inability to embrace new business models. Then have students work individually or in small groups to list other tech companies making lives better that the RIAA has threatened, sued or put out of business.

Highlight the variety of career opportunities available in the music industry by having students research one behind-the-scenes music maker and write a brief description of that job.

Highlight the variety of career opportunities available in the tech industry thanks to new innovations that the RIAA has tried to kill. Then highlight the career opportunities in the music industry itself that have finally opened up now that the major labels are scrambling to learn technology.

Next, draw the copyright symbol (©) on the chalkboard. Ask if students know what this symbol means and where they might have seen it (books, posters, CDs, etc.). Explain that the copyright symbol is used to identify the owner of a piece of intellectual property and serves as a reminder that it is illegal for anyone to copy or distribute that property without the owner’s permission.

Next, explain fair use, and how the above statement claiming that it’s illegal for anyone to copy or distribute without the owner’s permission is not necessarily true at all. Oh wait… that sentence isn’t in there.

You might also inform them that our nation’s Founders included copyright protection in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), believing that it would encourage creativity by giving the creators of intellectual property an exclusive right to profit from their artistic talents.

You might also inform them that those Founders were highly cautious about this issue, and had stated their worries that these monopolies would do more harm than good, and that they should be greatly limited and monitored to avoid such harm. You might also want to point out that the RIAA seems to have forgotten the “limited time” part of this, but I guess you can be forgiven, since they (and their friends in the movie industry) have pretty much convinced Congress to ignore that part.

Then there’s this fun list of “brainstorming ideas” with some responses/corrections/clarifications after each one:

• Songlifters take millions of dollars of music each year.
  Actually, file sharers don’t “take” any money. This is a flat out lie.
• Songlifters hurt all kinds of music makers, not just the stars.
  Those who have embraced file sharing in combination with smart business models have found it works for all kinds of music makers, not just the stars.
  
• Songlifters keep new artists from getting their chance at stardom.
  Many up-and-coming artists are finding that giving away their music is a large part of how they build their fanbase and become stars.
• Songlifters are breaking the law.
  In many cases, those who share unauthorized files may have violated copyright law, though it’s a civil issue, not a criminal one.
• Songlifters can get other people in trouble by sharing illegal music.
  Because the RIAA isn’t very good with data, it’s been known to sue the wrong people
• Songlifters can get computer viruses when they illegally download online.
  Doing things online when not careful can result in getting viruses. That has nothing to do with file sharing. Careful users can avoid viruses.
  
• Songlifters don’t respect other people’s intellectual property.
  The RIAA doesn’t respect fair use rights, the need for a lively and dynamic public domain or the right of technology companies to innovate.

“The whole thing is pretty ridiculous frankly,” says Masnick on TechDirt, adding, “It doesn’t even make a half-hearted attempt at talking about the rights of everyone else or the actual purpose of copyright law. The whole thing is basically about brainwashing kids into accepting that the record labels’ old business model must stay in place forever. Luckily, most kids are smarter than that and can see through such propaganda pretty quickly.

“However, if schools really are interested in educating kids about copyright, why not use a non-industry curriculum, like the one put together by the EFF, called Teaching Copyright.”

Suggesting copyright or intellectual property law have a place in any school curriculum other than a law school’s is the wrong way to go, IMO, because it lends credibility to the entirely incorrect contention they should be there in the first place.

But it’s far too late. The labels (and movie studios) have now been accepted by federal administrations around the world  as  suppliers of ‘educational’ materials.

Kiddie mind-rape

In February, under the heading RIAA Music Rules – ’steaming pile of poo’, “You’ve heard of kiddie porn?” – I asked, going on »»»

It’s something Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA regularly dredges up so its bought-and-paid for politicians can raise it as an excuse to introduce corporate-friendly legislation.

But kiddie mind-rape is another favourite tool.

The RIAA and RIAA adherents scam teachers into believing intellectual property law is something every child needs to know. Then they use the teachers to plant ‘educational’ materials in schools.

The latest piece of RIAA bilge is called Music Rules with “Lessons respect intellectual property and responsible use of the Internet”.

The idea of the RIAA, of all corporate bodies, promoting ideas of respect and responsibility, and especially to schoolchildren, is somewhat like a paedophile being let loose in classrooms to promote safe sex.

And yet you can be sure you’ll see this promoted in the mainstream media and actually used by teachers.

Thank God we homeschool our daughter.

Asks Biff ‘Death of a Salesman’ Loman in a Reader’s Write, “is there any evidence that /any/ teachers have ever used this in their classroom? If so they should be exposed and thrown out of the profession.”

Then he comes up with an idea for a research tool, to wit »»»

• Lesson plan: read ‘Music Rules’ with students. Discuss.
• Have students pick out areas of bias and misinformation.
  
• Allow students to use the web to research and create a short report opinions opposed to those of ‘Music Rules.’
• … many humanities classes have something about detecting bias. This could be used as an introduction activity since it is so transparent.

“Personally,” Biff adds, “I would never use this steaming pile of poo in my classroom.”

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

September, 2009

But he wasn’t following Obama’s example.

Instead, he went for an ‘education’ conference at the [wait for it] Paramount Pictures lot.

Paramount owner Viacom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with “initiative partners” AT&T, Capital One Financial Corporation and NYSE Euronext, launched Get Schooled with a national broadcast, says a fluff release, going on:

“The five-year initiative aims to generate greater awareness and engagement in addressing the nation’s education crisis and to offer practical resources and support to students.”

Practical resources and support to students?

Corporations have only one concern: to look after the interests of their shareholders and everything — everything — they do rotates around that most fundamental of all business principles.

According to the Associated Press, “We don’t know much about substance, we’re about fluff at Viacom,” Viacom boss Philippe Dauman says, “with a laugh”.

Truer words …

But that’s hard, cold reality.

The Über Glitz GetSchooled site features Barack Obama on its index page.

One wonders if he’s actively endsoring the project, as the pic implies?

^^ Say no more.

And no need to stay tuned.

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pep talk – Barack Obama talks to US kids, September 8, 2009
fluff release – Get Schooled Initiative, September 8, 2009
Associated Press – Gates brings education message to MTV, Nickelodeon

“Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered,” says AP, going on:

“Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games.”

Great!

But not so great because, “The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids,” it says, quoting Parry Aftab (right), “a child-safety advocate,” as saying, “This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology.

“You don’t put children’s personal information at risk.”

Indeed not.

Aftab is, as far as we know, still executive director of Wired Kids, “an organization devoted to educating children about online legal and safety issues.”

Wired Kids once awarded the MPAA a prize for its school ‘education’ efforts.

And Aftab’s name came up in a post featuring an early MPAA triumph.

The Hollywood front outfit had, “dragooned a 13-year-old Wisconsin child into publicly apologizing for downloading four movies,” we said, “And if that were not bad enough, the boy, Ben Rangel, also has to ‘warn’ others, ‘not to swap movies and music illegally’,” said p2pnet, quoting the Racine Report [no longer online].

He’d appeared, “before more than 100 seventh- and eight-grade students at Maple Dale School in this northern Milwaukee suburb,” said p2pnet, going on »»»

What did he say to them?

“Sooner or later, my grandpa got in a lot of trouble, and it was because of me … I am here to say it wasn’t worth it.”

The MPAA had filed against grandfather Fred Lawrence, 67, who, “initially ignored a letter offering to settle the matter out of court”.

Offering to settle the matter out of court. It all seems gentlemanly, almost helpful, doesn’t it? But these cynical MPAA ’settlement’ offers are exactly the same as the RIAA’s — totally self-serving and extortionate.

“Rangel, who was then 12, admitted downloading ‘The Incredibles,’ ‘I, Robot,’ ‘The Grudge’ and ‘The Forgotten’ over a peer-to-peer electronic file-sharing network in December 2004, not knowing it was illegal,” says the Racine Report, adding:

“His appearance at the school was part of an out-of-court settlement Lawrence reached with the film studios last month that included paying them an undisclosed amount.

“Rangel was joined at the school by MPAA representatives —-”

—- and Parry Aftab.

Meanwhile, “The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids’ information at risk, since the program does not record children’s names or addresses,” says AP, “But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.”

Sentry and FamilySafe brands, “include parental-control software such as Sentry Total Family Protection, Sentry Basic, Sentry Lite and FamilySafe (SentryPC is made by a different company and has no ties with EchoMetrix),” says AP, continuing:

“The Lite version is free. Others range from $20 to download and $10 a year for monitoring, to about $48 a year, divided into monthly payments. The same company also offers software under the brands of partner entities, such as AmberWatch Lookout.

“AmberWatch Foundation, a child-protection nonprofit group that licenses its brand to EchoMetrix, said information gathered through the AmberWatch-branded software is not shared with advertisers.”

It also has Aftan pointing out few parents reading fine print before they click to agree, “Unless it’s upfront in neon letters …”

(Cheers, Marc)

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

Associated Press – Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats, September 5, 2009
p2pnet – MPAA pillories 13-year-old, January 27, 2006
education’ efforts – MPAA wins Wired Kids award, May 26, 2005

Today, I had 17 waiting for me — well, 15, to be exact.

Two of them were outright invitations to porn pages, but, bouncing via http://www.my-live-cam.info/, and starting with ‘Lidia Witt’ (right), the remainder pointed to Spark Networks’ date.ca, a “wholly-owned subsidiary of Spark Networks, Inc., a NYSE Amex Company.”

And just so you know, “Spark Networks Limited does not conduct background checks on the members or subscribers of this website,” it emphasises in big black letters.

How long  before Twitter starts experiencing the same kind of problems which have beset Craigslist?

Twitterers responding to these tweets would have to be right twits.

But there is a genuine concern.

There’s no way the people using Twitter for free (presumably) advertising can tell the age of people they’re spamming.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

via Twitter – Is Twitter the new porn launch pad?, August 20, 2009
see them naked – Is there no end to Twitter girlie porn?, August 21, 2009
beset Craigslist – Craigslist: ’sexy, open-minded hottie’, August 12, 2009

It’s particularly relevant to Emma and her friends because they’re homeschooled and they use the Internet to keep in touch with what’s happening, and to scoop up knowledge about whatever’s interesting them.

Were it not for the fact Fa$ebook siphons up private user data like an alcoholic in a brewery, that she spends time on Fa$ebook probably wouldn’t be a problem. Nor would there be a problem that it’s an advertising, not social, network.

The problem is what it does with all the information it gathers and because I’m not overjoyed with the fact Emma is a Fa$ebook regular, I try to keep her informed about what’s happening.

For example, she used to be among the hundreds of thousands of kids who indulge in the inane Fa$ebook quizes —-

—- until she read my recent story on Fa$ebook quizes in which the ACLU asks, “Ever whiled away five minutes on a Facebook quiz, finding out what cartoon character is your look-alike or how your IQ stacks up? These quizzes may seem like a perfectly harmless way to spend a few spare minutes. But have you stopped to think about what these quizzes are learning about you and how that info could be used?”

Scary.  And so it goes …

Then yesterday, Emma pointed out Fa$ebook seems to have some kind of weird speed censorship programme running.

She’s fast on the keyboard and when she was chatting with one of her friends yesterday, the notice in the pic on the right popped up, and kept on popping up.

It said »»»

Warning! You are engaging in behavior that may be considered annoying or abusive by other users.

Facebook’s  systems determined that you were going too fast when sending web addresses (URLs) though [sic]  chat messages. You must significantly slow down. Further misuse of site features may result in a temporary block or your account being permanently disabled.  For further information, please visit our FAQ page.

And No. I promise this is NOT a spoof or a joke.

Nor is Emma the only one to have received a Fa$ebook ’slow-down’ warning.

So what’s it really all about, Fa$ebook?

And there’s more.

Are some Fa$ebook ‘friend’ requests fake?

Emma, “recently became friends with XXX and thinks you may know XXX too,” said an email to me from ‘The Facebook Team”.

It went on »»»

To view this friend suggestion and request XXX as a friend, follow the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/n/xxxxxxxx

The trouble is: Emma doesn’t remember suggesting anything of the kind.

So was this was purely and solely a Fa$ebook ‘initiative’?

And has anyone else had ‘friend requests’ from people who didn’t send them?

Said a post on Security Management last year »»»

Shawn Moyer, chief information security officer for Agura Digital Security, and Nathan Hamiel, senior consultant for Idea Information Security, created fake profiles of prominent computer security professionals, posted them to various social networking sites, and then sent out plenty of friend requests to other security experts.

They were so astounded by the results they presented to the Black Hat hacking conference yesterday in Las Vegas, according to the Associated Press:

Moyer and Hamiel said they did it three times, each time impersonating a different person. Each time they lured in more than 50 new friends within 24 hours. Some of those people were chief security officers for major corporations and defense industry workers, they said. They declined to identify any of those people.

According to the AP, security professionals are known for their skepticism, some say paranoia, but even these knowledgeable denizens of the net fell for the same scams they warn the average Web surfer to avoid, especially on social networking sites.

Accepting friends on social networking sites you haven’t authenticated as real is dangerous, says the AP. Cybercriminals and hackers masquerading as friends can then post malicious code on a person’s profile page or simply post links to malicious Web sites.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Fa$ebook quizes – Facebook Quiz quiz, August 28, 2009
the information it gathers – Facebook privacy promises: what are they worth?, August 28, 2009

With that in mind, there’s and interesting request in Slashdot from someone who says s/he provides IT services for medium-sized medical and law practices.

“Lately I have been getting a lot of feedback from doctors and lawyers who use gmail at home and believe that they can run a significant portion of their practice IT on Google Apps,” says an anonymous poster, going on »»»

From a support standpoint, I’d be happy to chuck mail/calendar service management into the bin and let them run with gmail, but for these businesses, there is significant legal liability associated with the confidentiality of their communications and records (e.g., HIPAA). For those with high-profile celebrity clients, simply telling them ‘Google employees can read your stuff’ will usually end the conversation right there.

But for smaller practices, I often get a lot of push-back in the form of ‘What’s wrong with trusting Google?’ and ‘Google’s not interested in our email/calendar.’

Weighing what they see as a tiny legal risk against the promise of Free IT Stuff(TM) becomes increasingly lopsided given the clear functionality / usability / ubiquity that they experience when using Google at home. So my question to the Slashdot community is:

Are they right? Is it time for me to remove the Tin Foil Hat on the subject of confidentiality and stop resisting the juggernaut that is Google? If not, what is the best way to clarify the confidentiality issues for these clients?”

Coincidentally, we home-school our daughter, Emma, and she and a lot of her friends hang out on a purpose-built  site carefully monitored to make sure nothing nasty gets in, and that user privacy is protected.

The people who run the site believe Google is God’s gift to us all and are currently seriously thinking about using Google apps to reconfigure it, basing the entire site on Google ‘technology’.

So, should the folks who run the home-school site similarly stop resisting the juggernaut that’s Google? Should they trust it and let it loose in this small online community where kids to some extent develop standards they’ll take with them into adulthood?

Or should they avoid it like the plague?

JN

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Slashdot – Can We Abandon Confidentiality For Google Apps?, August 4, 2009

And worse.

And worse.

The non-stop assault by the entertainment and software kartells on the minds of our children.

The latest effort is a dumb-beyond-dumb sequel to 1992’s “Don’t Copy That Floppy!”

It features moronic “anti-piracy hero MC Double Def DP,” jail tattoos, a pimp, a woman being attacked in her kitchen by what looks like a police SWAT team,  and a pair of Klingons.

Who TF is MC Double Def DP?

Anyhow, this really, really bad (in a bad way) example of kiddie mind-rape is the creation of the Software & Information Industry Association.

And are MC Double Def DP & Co in some way linked to Nexicon, the purveyor of the phony GetAmnesty program?

“Ten years ago, Nexicon was known as Cyco, and, according to SEC filings, was primarily involved with selling cigarettes,” posted p2pnet contributor Fred Wilhelms in 2007, going on:

“They subsequently acquired two network security firms, Orion and Pluto. Their current client list includes the SIIA (Software Information Industry Association), and I suspect their amnesty program is being conducted for them.”

We’ve seen some chronically warped, seriously demented productions, but this really should get five gold stars for being the most ridiculous corporate effort to date.

And someone was paid for this !!

No wonder the kartells are in such deep shit.

(Cheers, surfer)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

In May, as Psytar points out in a letter to customers, it filed for Chapter 11 protection but, “we are now ready to emerge and it again battle Goliath,” it says. “More information will be available in the coming days when will be formally discharged by the Bankruptcy court.

“When life gives you apples, make applesauce.”

In a Reader’s Write to the p2pnet post saying Psystar was back, “Apple has a niche selling premium products to people who are willing to pay for that premium,” said Lachlan, but, “I think the word ‘premium’ here is a farcical perception perpetuated by that ‘niche’ market,” said Devil’s Advocate.

I responded, posting, “Way back in the dark reaches of time when I wrote for a friend who had one of the first ‘computer’ newspapers, Apple actually gave me a Mac and a printer. It was a relatively new company and the idea was I’d write about its product(s). But because a) unlike a PC, you couldn’t fool with it unless you were an expert; and, b) most people couldn’t afford it, or the software needed to run it, I couldn’t see how it’d be of much use to the general population. So I gave it back. With apologies to surfer, a keen Macolyte, I used to believe those who bought Macs (and were subsequently afflicted with the manic religious fever which seems to hit most people who own an Apple product) had secret brain implants. Now, I realise they’re just too embarrassed to admit they were had. ”

However, “Basing your current opinion on preconceptions garnered a long time ago is not a wise course of action,” reckoned Dan, and I replied:

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s not much to choose between Apple stuff of yester-year and Apple stuff of today. But it isn’t just that, or the fact Apple and Jobs were among the early, and most enthusiastic, long-term adopters of DRM, or that Jobs closed down an excellent Apple-centric site for promoting ‘product’ before he wanted it promoted. Etc and so on. What really bothers me, and it’s something I won’t forget or drop, is how he [Jobs] blatantly used 16 innocent teenagers identified by the RIAA as alleged ‘copyright violators’ — ‘alleged’ because they never appeared before a judge — in his infamous 2004 SuperBowl iTunes / iPod ad. http://www.p2pnet.net/story/677

“I didn’t like Apple back when, and I don’t like it now.”

I’ve alluded to the disgraceful RIAA / Apple /iTunes / Pepsi SuperBowl ad before, but this time around, I’m going to re-run the whole item, together with another which sets it up.

I wonder where Annie Leith (right) is today and what she thinks of her appearance? Does she believe it was right for Apple and Pepsi to hold her and her friends up to be falsely accused by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA as criminals in front of hundreds of millions of people in a warped iPod commercial?

The Apple / Pepsi iTunes / RIAA advertising connection has been forgotten by most people. But the RIAA is still trotting out kids and their parents as thieves.

And it’s still getting away with it.

Meanwhile Item Number One »»»

Pepsi ads wink at music downloading

‘Wink’ at downloading? That’s the headline in a USA TODAY story pumping up Pepsi’s coming iTunes music store promo.

“Some 20 teens sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, which accuses them of unauthorized downloads, will appear in a Pepsi-Cola (PEP) ad that kicks off a two-month offer of up to 100 million free – and legal -downloads from Apple’s iTunes, the leading online music seller,” says the story here.

The “sassy ad” [no kidding - it's a direct quote] due out on February 1 during Superbowl, “is a wink at the download hot button,” says Theresa Howard in a piece which might have come straight from Pepsi’s promo department.

“Pepsi hopes the promotion will connect its flagship cola, as well as Sierra Mist and Diet Pepsi, with teens who’ve shown more affinity for bottled water, energy drinks and the Internet,” she says.

The ‘wink’ comes in because Annie Leith, 14, has been suckered into appearing in the ad with other downloaders and apparently says she no longer makes “unauthorized downloads” and, “can say I was on TV for something so ridiculous”. With her older sister and younger brother, she downloaded 950 songs over three years, says the story, going on:

“They settled the lawsuit for $3,000, the average according to RIAA. She’ll use some of her undisclosed ad fee to help pay for the settlement.”

‘Settled’ means they paid the RIAA $3,000 rather than getting hauled into a court hearing which might have cost them thousands of dollars more.

In the meanwhile, Green Day “cut a special version of the 1966 Bobby Fuller Four hit I Fought the Law for the ad, by BBDO, New York,” says USA TODAY. “In the ad, Leith holds a Pepsi and proclaims: ‘We are still going to download music for free off the Internet.’ Then the announcer says how: ‘Announcing the Pepsi iTunes Giveaway’.”

“It’s all in good spirit,” Dave Burwick, chief marketer, Pepsi, North America, is quoted as saying.

Pepsi even managed to wheel out the RIAA’s seldom-seen boss Mitch Bainwol.

“This ad shows how everything has changed,” Bainwol says. “Legal downloading is great because fans are supporting the future of creative work in America.”

How low can you go?

Ask Pepsi.

I should have added a line to this story: “The only people laughing are the people who run the RIAA.”

Item Number Two »»»

“Hi, I’m one of the kids who was prosecuted for downloading music free off of the Internet,” says a teenager in an ad slated to be aired during the Super Bowl tomorrow.

“And I’m here to announce in front of 100 million people that we’re still going to download music free off the Internet.”

She’s one of 16 naive US teenagers ‘persuaded’ to appear in the 45-second spot which was to have reprised Apple’s triumph of 1984 when, in the first Super Bowl ‘event’ ad, it launched the Mac.

However, the 2004 production will be remembered with shame.

The 16 teenagers were identified by the RIAA as alleged ‘copyright violators’ – ‘alleged’ because they never appeared before a judge. They, or their parents, settled out of court rather than risk much larger financial penalties had they gone head-to-head with the RIAA’s heavyweight legal team, and lost.

The ad has Pepsi ‘giving’ away 100 million iTunes songs as a promotion. Waving bottles of soda, the kids let everyone know that’s the kind of ‘legitimate’ music they’ll be downloading in the future.

“”I would like to see more of this,” Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, part of Universal Music Group, is quoted as saying in a National Post story here. “We’re starting to see technology companies come on our side, now soft drink companies are coming on our side.”

Iovine’s reference to technology companies comes from his love-in with Hewlett-Packard when he appeared onstage at an HP dog-and-pony show to support the latter’s introduction of DRM systems.

In the meanwhile, Annie Leith, 14, whose parents gave the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) $3,000 to avoid a civil lawsuit, is featured and she says she’ll use some of her undisclosed ad fee to help pay for that.

Michelle Maalouf is another teenager caught up in the RIAA’s stop-at-nothing sue ‘em all campaign.

“It was fun being in the commercial, but being sued wasn’t so great,” Michelle, 13, says in this SFGate story here. “We didn’t know it was illegal. We really like music.”

All of the teenagers in the spot were “sued by the recording industry’s powerful trade group [the RIAA],” says the report.

What’s interesting is that the SFGate story uses the word ’sued’.

More on that later.

“Falsely attributing criminal conduct”
“It’s all in good spirit,” says Dave Burwick, chief marketer, Pepsi, North America.

Josh Wattles, however, doesn’t think that adequately describes the commericial. In fact, “Falsely attributing criminal conduct to someone is a slam-dunk libel in just about every state,” he says.

“There’s no calculus of relative harm to justify this kind of abusive, untruthful and cynical behavior towards minors no matter how complicit their misguided parents may have been in this deception.”

He’s the former acting general counsel of Paramount Pictures, a key architect of the MPAA’s (Motion Picture Association of America) anti-piracy programs in the transition to videocassette distribution, and the former senior executive in charge of Viacom’s music subsidiaries, The Famous Music Publishing Companies.

It started last year when Big Music instructed the RIAA, its principal enforcer, to sue any file swapper it could identify for copyright violations. Its lawyers used ‘instant subpoenas’ obtained under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to pressure ISPs into handing over subscriber names and addresses – until the Verizon decision put a stop to it.

However, before being ordered to use due process like everyone else, the RIAA had been able to track down and identify close to 1,000 p2p file swappers, mostly teenagers and students, whom they threaten with civil, not criminal, court actions. Unless they settle.

The 16 teenaged Pepsi stars were among those swept up in the RIAA’s ‘investigations’.

By the sheer volume of ink the RIAA has been able to generate in the media, it’s succeeded in making people believe anyone who downloads music, shares files, swaps music, or whatever you want to call it, is a criminal and thief.

That’s not true.

But the RIAA’s relentless, mind-numbing assertions have been sufficient to paint the picture and hence, the Pepsi/iTunes campaign could be catchily entitled “I Fought the Law”.

And, “I was one of the kids prosecuted for downloading music,” says a teenager. She was not, though, ‘prosecuted’ for anything. She’d never been in a court. She was, rather, mouthing words from a script contrived by BBDO and approved by Pepsi and Apple.

However, to make the theme stand up, the message that these kids were ex-criminals who’d been rightfully ‘prosecuted’ had to be driven home hard and therefore, Busted, Charged, Incriminated, and Accused appears over their images, and the carefully arranged lighting and their sullen looks purposefully suggest a gritty, urban, isolated feel – the kind of thing associated on TV with ‘lawbreakers’ and criminality.”

To make the point even more strongly, Convicted file swappers star in Pepsi Super Bowl ad, reads a ZDNet teaser headline leading to another site.

Convicted? When? By whom? And on what criminal charge?

And in During Breaks in Game, Satire and Silliness, New York Times business writer Stuart Elliott thinkse the stand-out (his words) Super Bowl commercial was a, “cheeky spot, introducing a promotion co-sponsored by the iTunes division of Apple Computer, that smartly teased the recording industry for suing teenagers for illegal file sharing.

“Sixteen of the miscreants appeared in the commercial, identified with tongue-in-cheek labels like ‘Incriminated,’ ‘Accused” and ‘Busted,’ as the soundtrack played ‘I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).’ The jest was topped at the end as these words appeared on screen: ‘Drink down Pepsi and download music at iTunes. Legally’.”

Smartly teased the recording industry for suing teenagers?

Questions
A number of questions go begging, however.

• Did the kids appearing in the commercials know exactly what the script would have them saying – specifically, that the word ‘prosecuted’ would be used? And did they know there’d be suggestive overlays superimposed while their images flashed up?
• Did the ‘actors’ or their parents or their guardians or lawyers see and OK the ads – and the various elements such as the overlays – in writing after they’d been edited and approved for airing by Pepsi and Apple?
• Were they given the option of backing out if they didn’t like the look of the final cut, if they indeed saw it?
• Was the agreement between BBDO and the teenagers carefully crafted and honestly written to protect them?
• Or was it a standard ‘name and likeness for a fee’ boilerplate or worse, a cold and cynical contract made by a calculating team of highly paid lawyers and account executives with 16 naive and easily impressed youngsters to insulate Pepsi, iTunes and CBS from possible libel suits filed by the teenagers after the ad was cut?

“I still can’t get over the fact that these fresh faced teenagers are being attacked by companies just to preserve a business model in need of freshening up itself,” says Wattles. “I don’t want my kids treated that way by business and I don’t want other people’s kids treated that way.”

And on the choice of language, “Prosecutions are usually understood to be actions by the state to enforce criminal laws,” he says. “Prosecutions aren’t generally understood to mean civil lawsuits. The word ’sued’ would be appropriate and accurate in this context.

“The ad falsely pumps up the music industry’s enforcement effort, and its suggestive criminalization of the kids’ behavior building up to the tag line ‘we’re still gonna download music for free off the Internet – and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it,’ reinforces the ad’s presumption that their behavior had been criminal.”

What’s the problem?
But, “What’s the problem?” – asks a nameless, faceless RIAA spokesperson. “We’re only involved as good corporate citizens. We gave Pepsi and Apple and BBDO the kids’ names to help them. The kids, that is. This is our way of working with wholesome American institutions to save the Children of America from having us prosecute them for stealing music. What can be wrong with that?”

“And Gosh! Pepsi is giving the music away anyhow. But this time, the kids won’t end up in a court for downloading!”

‘Giving’ is probably the wrong word, though.

Actually, Pepsi is marketing the tunes on behalf of the RIAA’s owners, the major record labels, who sold the songs to Apple in the first place. People get the songs by buying Pepsi and looking under the bottle tops, some of which have a code which can be redeemed to ‘buy’ a song from iTunes.

Rich Menta, editor of MP3newswire, says here, “The RIAA will earn $0.75 from Pepsi for each of the 100 million downloads.” And that’s $75 million, “in pure profit for the record industry, which is why RIAA president Mitch Bainwol is happy to go along with the joke,” suggests Menta.

“Apple wins, of course, because now they have more than quadrupled their total sales of downloads from 30 million to 130 million tunes – all using the AAC format that only the iPod will play, thus pushing iPod sales.”

Is ‘get sued by the RIAA and star in a TV commercial’ the message? – Menta asks.

“It’s bad enough that the RIAA targeted kids for their lawsuits but, it’s worse to criminalize their behavior on national television just for the sake of a provocation, or to sell soft drinks and iTunes downloads,” Wattles told p2pnet.

Moreover, he goes on, “Congress, in making the copyright laws, never, to my knowledge, considered the circumstance that kids would be engaged in mass infringements, however technical. Certainly, imposing extraordinarily high statutory civil damages on an ill-behaved and/or ill-informed teenager seems out of step with the result a legislature would have openly picked.

“And there’s a big legal question mark over whether or not they can be tried as juveniles for criminal copyright infringement.”

Wattles – who was at Berkeley in 1969 – points out that he’s speaking as an individual concerned over the excessive and intrusive behavior of an industry to which he’s contributed, and in which he still has a stake.

“I don’t want to see it [the entertainment industry] behave in this way and I believe I’m speaking out responsibly to help it correct itself,” he says.

“No matter how old they are and even if their parents or a court signed off for them, they could possibly sustain an action for libel if they weren’t completely aware of what this ad was going to look like and suggest about them.

“These kids weren’t criminally prosecuted, but they’ll get to live with this characterization for the rest of their lives – even after they grow up and move away from their childish false bravura performances.”

Stay iTuned?

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

But it took six years for SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the US, to rule the school was, in effect, guilty of serious misbehaviour.

This month, in an 8-1 decision, the court decided Safford Middle School officials had, “violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches with their treatment of Savana Redding,” says CTV.

“Let’s hope there were only females present,” said Robert in a p2pnet comment post.

Said R. O’Quinn in another comment post »»»

There *was* an uproar in ‘03 when it happened, and yes, there was at least one male present for the search (see aclu video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9QQCiT1e_w ).

The school had a “zero tolerance” policy on all medications – in order to get meds for a headache, a student would have had to have a parent bring the med to the school, leave it with the nurse with detailed instructions on when/how it would be distributed to their child, then go to the nurse’s office if needed.

Another student was caught with advil, and said she got them from Savana. They found nothing on Savana, despite the strip search.

The reason it’s news *now* is that it just passed SCOTUS, who made (the right) decision on it. It took it this long to get there, through lower courts, etc.

I’m appalled by this: “While children’s advocates and civil liberties groups cheered the decision, others suggested the high court may have created further problems for school systems by failing to make clear exactly when school administrators can strip search students and when they can’t,”

Um…how about NEVER. It’s NEVER okay for a school official to strip search a child. N-E-V-E-R. If there is really a situation that bad, then the police AND the parents need to be called in, before strip searching is even considered. WTH?

World news compiler Marc, himself the father of two young daughters, told us about this.

“Today it’s aspirin, tomorrow it’s an mp3,” he said. “This one struck a chord with me. If ever this happened to our girls …

“And the press! they call it ‘painkillers’ like it was some sort of  illegal drug! It was ibuprofen. Many young girls her age will have this  in case they get ‘cramps’.”

Homeschooling, “seems better and better to me as I get older in this nutty world,” he added.

What of the school?

Officials can’t be held financially liable, ruled SCOTUS, leaving it to lower courts to decide if the school district could, says CTV.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

June, 2009

And speaking of corporate efforts to corrupt the minds of our children, under “Everything you ever wanted to know about how to make money with multi-platform digital media,” Bell Canada is promoting, “How Casual and Interactive Games for Kids Can Make Money”.

Bell Canada, you say?

Yup. It’s all on the company’s Bell Fund Bliki.

Bliki. Bell Wiki.

Cute, huh?

“Game Projects financed by the Bell Fund are very likely to benefit from substantial traffic from the broadcaster,” it says. “With substantial traffic, it is relatively easy to interest a game portal to add the game to its site network or use the broadcaster’s sales force. This means the game can generate revenue relatively quickly.”

It’s all so, well, bland — so harmless-looking as it, “describes the most common revenue models for marketing children’s online games. It identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each model, the kind of games that works best and the type of partners required.”

And it includes this lovely piece of corporate crap under Disadvantages to Subscriptions  »»»

Children don’t have credit cards, so either we have to convince the parents or we have to encourage the children to nag them.

We have to “encourage the children to nag them”?

That’s what it says.

And under Advantages to Micro-Transactions »»»

This model provides a better balance between variable costs and revenues, because the most active players who use the most resources (bandwidth..)

This model works well for children who have an allowance

Thanks, Bell Canada. It’s just what parents need.

But as the country’s premier rip-off telecom, we expect nothing less.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

(Thanks, Marc)

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useless Webzhit – Curse of the Webkinz, July 13, 2007
minds of our children – Hollywood goes after Australian kids, June 4, 2009

Fronted by Maureen Barron, Southern Star producer and former chairwoman of the Australian Film Commission, it’s called the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF).

In the driving seat is Hollywood’s AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft).

“One of the favourite tactics of Hollywood and the Big 4 record labels is to raise the spectre of kiddy porn every time they’re trying to ram new legislation home,” said p2pnet recently, going on »»»

But something far more disgusting is happening —-

—- the mind -rape of  children by the major record labels, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and the Hollywood studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney.

They’re twisting and bending the minds of America’s children, warping and them to the false standards of the corporate movie and music industries, all the while accusing parents of being criminals and thieves.

Now, part of the IPAF ‘charter’ is, “motivating a change in attitudes and behaviour to reduce public demand for illegal copies of film and television programmes,” it says, according to TV Tonight.

And where Hollywood goes, the Big 4 are sure to follow.

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

TV Tonight – Anti-Piracy group targets schools, June 3, 2009
p2pnet – Copyright Alliance: mind-raping our children, April 23, 2009

“Anyone who believes things are as bad as they can get with self-interest corporate groups undermining freedom of choice, freedom of expression and freedom of speech should prepare themselves,” I said in 2007.

“There’s a new anti-consumer gang in town, and it’ll be more actively poisonous than anything you’ve ever seen before.”

I was wrong, I went on. “It’s even worse.”

I was referring to the cartels’ Copyright Alliance plan to mind-rape our children.

Our own daughter isn’t in danger of corporate pollution: we educate her ourselves at home.

But for those less fortunate, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has introduced a Teaching Copyright” curriculum and website, “to help educators give students the real story about their digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond”.

The idea that intellectual property laws should be taught to children for any reason or at any level is of course totally ridiculous.

But thanks to ceaseless efforts by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, it’s now necessary, and the EFF is to be congratulated for taking the lead in countering industry efforts to indoctrinate our children with specious ’standards’.

Says the EFF »»»

The Copyright Alliance — backed by the recording, broadcast, and software industries — has given its curriculum the ominous title “Think First, Copy Later.” This is just the latest example of copyright-focused educational materials portraying the use of new technology as a high-risk behavior.

For example, industry materials have routinely compared downloading music to stealing a bicycle, even though many downloads are lawful, and making videos using short clips from other sources is treated as probably illegal even though many such videos are also lawful.

EFF created Teaching Copyright as a balanced curriculum encouraging students to make full and fair use of technology that is revolutionizing learning and the exchange of information.

“Kids are bombarded with messages that using new technology is illegal,” says EFF activist Richard Esguerra.

“Instead of approaching the issues from a position of fear, Teaching Copyright encourages inquiry and greater understanding. This is a balanced curriculum, asking students to think about their role in the online world and to make informed choices about their behavior.”

The Teaching Copyright curriculum was developed with the input of educators from across the U.S. and has been designed to satisfy a tale at what layersthe International Society for Technology in Education and the California State Board of Education, says the EFF.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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May, 2009

I’ve been writing about the cruelty inflicted by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music on the same people they expect to keep them fat and happy and although the pen is mightier than the sword, goes the saying, money makes the legal wheels go around, to paraphrase another maxim.

And now it’s time to help Brittany Kruger.

I’m going to contribute to a fund I hope can be put together for Brittany in the same way Fight Goliath helped Patti Santangelo, someone else the RIAA did its best to hang, draw and quarter, but failed.

A wicked crew

Brittany is second from the end on the right and with her, from left to right, are Callia, Theresa, Alison, Jodi, Julie, and Hannah —- a scary, evil-looking crew, if ever I saw one!

Is that an mp3 player in Brittany’s hand? If it is, she’s obviously as crook. Because as everyone also knows (Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music and their RIAA have told them so), anyone who doesn’t buy their mp3 downloads from ’services’ supplied by the Big 4 is a SCURVY FILE SHARING CRIMINAL !!!

That’s why they’ve sicced their legal attack dogs on Brittany and others like her who, they say, are guilty of depriving the multi-billion-dollar labels of their rightful profits by eating into legitimate sales.

How do these criminals achieve that? By sharing music with each other. And every time they do that, the Big 4 claim, a sale is lost.

Think about that for more than 10 seconds and you can see it’s a ludicrous assertion, as even chief United States judge James P. Jones has agreed. But the Big 4 have been able to promote that idea for six long years, using it to inflict domestic violence on Americans, including children, who haven’t done anything wrong.

Young children.

In RIAA punishes Brittany for resisting, “They’re nasty,” I say. “They’re vicious. They’re hookers working for the RIAA,” going on:

“And they’ll (try to) justify the evil they do to people such as Michigan student Brittany Kruger by saying they’re lawyers so it’s OK: that it’s their duty to do whatever they can to help their clients, the unprincipled representatives of a corporate street gang called the Big 4.

“Why do I mention Brittany in particular out of the 40,000 innocent people, including very young children, across America who are being harried and harassed by RIAA hit lawyers, such as those working for Holme Roberts & Owen or, on this occasion, by Matthew E. Krichbaum (right)?

“Because she and her father, Randy, have been standing alone against false accusations levelled at her – that she’s an illegal distributor of copyrighted ‘product’ owned by Sony Music, UMG (Vivendi Universal), Elektra, Atlantic, and Warner Bros Records.”

So let’s make sure they don’t have to stand alone any longer by contributing to a fund which’ll not only help Brittany and her Dad meet the RIAA on an equal footing, but be the beginning of a collection which help other people who are being similarly victimised in the name of corporate profits.

This isn’t just for me …

I’ll make a commitment to contribute the first $100. If you’ll follow suit with whatever you can afford —- $1, $2, $10, it’ll all count —- we can make this happen, as we did with, and for, Patti Santangelo.

“If you’re a Christian, December 22 is a mere three days before Christmas, the season of good will and good cheer,” I wrote in 2005, continuing »»»

And even if you’re not, it heralds a holiday, a time to kick back and give and receive presents and generally relax and have fun.

Unless you’re Organized Music, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, EMI or Warner Music, the Hard-Core Big Four corporate record labels, that is. Because there’s certainly no goodwill or good cheer there.

And unless you’re Patricia Santangelo, the New York mother who epitomizes the 17,000 or so Americans who have so far been victimized by the Big Four, and all in the name of the bottom line.

On December 22, she’ll be stand alone and unrepresented in a New York court for an “In Person” conference with judge Mark D. Fox in Elektra v Santangelo — or, more properly, Patti Santangelo versus the Elektra Entertainment Group, Virgin Record America, UMG Recordings, BMG Music and the disgraced Sony BMG Music Entertainment company.

This morning , “Patti is resolved, is she?” – my wife asked. “Yes,” I said. “She knows exactly what she’s letting herself in for. She knows about Cecilia Gonzalez.” And she also knew about Brittany Chan, a 14-year-old scgoolgirl, and Tanya Andersen, a disabled mother living on a disability pension who’ve also been singled out by the cartel for special treatment.

“It’s terrible, really, having to think of this just before Christmas,” says Patti. “It’s exhausting to have to be thinking and worry about this at any time of the year, but just before Christmas?”

But as she also told p2pnet today, “This isn’t just for me. It’s for all those other people as well.”

p2pnet readers donated more than $15,000 so Patti could pay for legal expenses and disbursements.

Another RIAA victim, Joel Tenenbaum, has famous Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and his team of his students representing him.

Brittany and her father, Randy, have no one.

So let’s help them and at the same time, set the ball rolling for the creation of a fund which will also help others like them.

Patti’s case is now over and her lawyer, Jordan Glass, who also acted for her children, Michelle and Bobby, gave his legal services for free.

At the moment, Brittany and her father, Randy, are standing completely by themselves against Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by a Canadian), who together are the virtual owners of the (Recording Industry Association of America), as they like to call it.

If readers contribute towards legal costs, hopefully, a lawyer will volunteer her or his time to make sure the Big 4 and their RIAA fronts, Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman, with Cara Duckworth in the wings, and  aren’t allowed to continue

And there are a few other things we can do.

For now, please just think about it.

I’ll get into specifics over the new few days.

But if you’d like to make a commitment right now, or want to help in any way, please let me know — p2pnet @ shaw dot ca.

Cheers! And thanks. And all the best …

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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May, 2009

“There’s a new anti-consumer gang in town, and it’ll be more actively poisonous than anything you’ve ever seen before.”

I was wrong.

It’s even worse.

One of the favourite tactics of Hollywood and the Big 4 record labels is to raise the spectre of kiddy porn every time they’re trying to ram new legislation home.

But something far more disgusting is happening —-

—- the mind -rape of  children by the major record labels, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and the Hollywood studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney.

They’re twisting and bending the minds of America’s children, warping and them to the false standards of the corporate movie and music industries, all the while accusing parents of being criminals and thieves.

The  organisation I was referring to in the story mentioned in the intro was the Copyright Alliance spawned to, “convince increasingly skeptical members of the general public and policymakers that copyrights are something special that deserve protection,” says the Hollywood Reporter.

And praising it were such infamous entertainment industry supporters as Hollywood Howard Berman, Howard Coble and John Conyers.

Now the alliance is in full swing, it’s targetting our kids in their classrooms with the active co-operation of teachers, school boards and federal and state administrations.

They’re  promoting the sick (even for Hollywood and the labels) message that it’s vital intellectual property and copyright law are taught to young kids along with readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic.

“The Copyright Alliance and YMI have developed a free online video, Copyright in the Classroom, to provide a quick explanation of copyright, identify “teachable moments” in the classroom, and review all the free teaching resources available at the Alliance web site.”

Are Barack Obama’s children subjected to this kind of obscene indoctrination? – one wonders.

Check out the video below for the kind of garbage the ‘alliance’ is pumping out to turn our children into good little corporate consumers.

I can’t even begin to tell you how glad I am we decided to teach our daughter, Emma, at home, from the beginning.

Jon Newton – Dad

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April, 2009

p2pnet news view

So with the studios behind him, MPAA scareman Dan ‘The Joker’ Glickman created a Hollywood Education Department to more effectively develop and disseminate lies, bolstered by mis- and disinformation, and dull the awareness of people who should be paying sharp attention.

Now, “Our efforts are focused on educating consumers who receive infringement notifications for illegal downloading about where to find high-quality, legitimate content on the internet and on effective ways to deal with repeat infringers,” the MPAA claims in a statement, says Wired.

It’s following in the footsteps of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA which is trying, and failing, to get ISPs to act as corporate copyright cops.

“Our efforts are focused on educating consumers who receive infringement notifications for illegal downloading about where to find high-quality, legitimate content on the internet and on effective ways to deal with repeat infringers,” the MPAA said in a statement, says Wired.

“The association, which is the lobbying agency for the Hollywood studios, declined to elaborate.”

ISPs will no doubt react to the MPAA in much the same way they’re reacting to the RIAA, ie:

‘You want us to do WHAT!? Identify our own customers and then rat them out to you?’ – but expressed in far more diplomatic terms

Listed below are five MPAA projects anyone in the least concerned about the welfare of the younger generations should avoid like the plague:

On Campus
In the Classroom
Copyright Awareness Week
Legal Alternatives to Piracy
Internet Entertainment Workshop (Best Practices Briefing Book)

The MPAA is wholly and solely funded by Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, who this January revealed they’d broken the billion-dollar-barrier — and in the worst recession America has seen.

Hollywood, itself responsible for the screeners which regularly and routinely show up on the p2p networks, claims it’s being “devastated” by file sharers and thousands of support workers are being thrown out to fend for themselves on the streets of America.

Therefore, kids of all ages and at all levels must be indoctrinated with corporate industry developed dogma and standards, Hollywood says.

Stay tuned.

corporate copyright cops – Comcast, AT&T say No! to RIAA 3-strikes plan, March 26, 2009
Wired – MPAA Negotiates With ISPs to Disconnect or Penalize Copyright Offenders, March 27, 2009