p2pnet news view |  Kids & Kartels:- Bill and the Boyz have ripped a page from a book written originally by the entertainment cartels, and heartily endorsed by the Bush administration.

Microsoft has come up with a seedy “educational” campaign aimed at teaching teenagers, “respect for intellectual property rights,” says InformationWeek.

The move is based on a company ’survey’.

In a statement which might have been written by an RIAA or MPAA hack, Sherri Erickson, global manager of Microsoft’s genuine software ‘initiative,’ is quoted as saying the study, “provides more insight into the disparity between IP awareness and young people today and highlights the opportunity for schools to help prepare their students to be good online citizens”.

It’s not clear if Microsoft’s statement to teen respondents, “When you do not follow these rules you are open to significant fines and possibly jail time,” is, ” entirely accurate, particularly when teens under the age of 18 are involved,” observes InformationWeek.

However, “I think it’s being used as a scare tactic,” it has Emily Berger, an intellectual property fellow at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation),” saying.

“It’s a real stretch of the law to say it’s theoretically possible.”

Nevertheless, InformationWeek goes on, “Microsoft wants to correct teens’ woeful ignorance”. So it’s, “turned to Topics Education, a developer of custom curricula, to create a curriculum called ‘Intellectual Property Rights Education’ for middle school and high school teachers.”

This’ll include a web page, of course,

On MyBytes, “students can create custom ringtones, share content – ‘their own content,’ as Microsoft makes clear – and learn more about intellectual property rights,” says the story, going on:

“In 2004, Microsoft was among the companies backing ‘Play It Safe in Cyber Space,’ a national campaign backed by the Business Software Alliance and funded by the Department of Justice, to dissuade kids from downloading content from peer-to-peer networks.

“Needless to say, the campaign’s cartoon ferret mascot hasn’t exactly put an end to online copyright violations.”

Back then, “Taking an entire chapter out of Hollywood’s How to Brainwash Kids book, ‘Elementary school students heading back to school in September will be invited to name the ‘Play It Safe in Cyber Space’ mascot, a ‘copyright-crusading’ ferret who teaches tech-savvy kids about cyber ethics,’ says the BSA (Business Software Alliance),” p2pnet posted, continuing:

A copyright-crusading ferret? Jesus H. And the BSA is teaching people about cyber ethics? That’s a bit like Jack the Ripper offering to perform an appendectomy.

On the other hand, there’s not a lot of difference between a ferret and a weasel …

Anyway, it’s all part of the latest corporate attack on school children and this time, the BSA is leading the way – with nothing but profit in mind.

Four years on, “Indeed, while such educational efforts win funding from intellectual property stakeholders, they have yet to win the hearts and minds of the public,” says InformationWeek, adding:

“The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) maintains a Web site called CampusDownling.com to encourage legal downloading. And since 2003, it also has been known to sue people it believes to have downloaded music illegally.

“Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright enforcement group, in 2006 launched a ‘Captain Copyright’ Web site and backed a lesson plan to teach students respect for copyright law. The project was greeted with widespread ridicule online and accusations that the site itself was violating copyright law.

But Microsoft won’t leave it at teenagers. It’s next step will be to target young kids.

Get ‘em while they’re young

“Hi,” I wrote a couple of years ago. “This is an open letter from my wife, Liz, and I to other mothers and fathers who are becoming seriously worried by the influence vested corporate interests are able to exert – long distance and up-close-and-personal – on our children through school systems around the world.

“The major record labels and Hollywood movie studios are traditionally and infamously linked to organized crime, rampant drug use, the use of sex as currency and corruption at all levels and they’re the absolute last entities on earth to be instructing anyone, let alone children, on moral issues, on what’s right and what’s wrong and on truth and fairness.”

Bill and the Boyz may not be in the same league, but still, would you want them setting standards of behaviour for your kids?

I went on >>>

Yet that’s exactly what’s happening, and it’s happening everywhere with the collusion of local governments and school staffs and administrations.

Get ‘em while they’re young, at kindergarten and university, is the corporate buzz-phrase. And spare no expense.

The RIAA is, ‘taking the battle for hearts and minds directly to the auditorium of your kid’s school,’ reports thep2pweblog. The RIAA has teamed with i-Safe, ‘a nonprofit organization’ which, ‘teaches kids, teachers and parents how to be safe on the Internet,’ with topics such as, ‘awareness about predators, not to give out too much personal information,’ and, ‘the risks of getting on P2P networks’.

‘Sounds fine so far,’ the post goes on.

Sounds fine? With the Big Four’s RIAA involved? And it should read, ‘has taken’ rather than ‘is taking’.

Nor are Warner Music, Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony BMG all there is to worry about. Let’s not forget Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). Or organizations such as Microsoft, Apple Computer, Adobe and the other owners and operators of the BSA (Business Software Alliance).

So, ‘Sounds fine’ is most assuredly not the case, especially, ‘When you add in the idea of the RIAA feeding iSafe the propaganda and iSafe in turn showing up to your kids school under the guise of saving them from MySpace predators, only to tell them about how music wouldn’t be made if the RIAA didn’t get thier [sic] cut, it becomes something quite different,’ as thep2pweblog emphasises.

‘Obviously the information presented will be biased in favor of the industry, and I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that no one will talk about the crappy record deals your kid’s favorite artists are living with,’ it states.

But thep2pweblog isn’t going out on a limb. It’s an iron-clad, carved-in-rock, solid-gold certainty no one will talk about the ‘crappy record deals,’ or anything else even remotely connected to truth and reality.

I went on to briefly outline various schemes, adding our daughter, Emma, was almost nine at the time.

“She went to kindergarten but ever since, we’ve home-schooled her,” I finished.

“And we thank God we made that decision.”

Today, we’re more than ever glad our daughter, and a lot of other home-educated kids we know, are spared the tender mercies of the likes of Microsoft which are free to use our schools to pollute the minds of our children with cynical, self-serving corporate education programs.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

Slashdot it!

Also See:
InformationWeek – Threat Of Jail Time Increases Respect For Copyright, Microsoft Says February 13, 2008
p2pnet – BSA weasels into schools, August 13, 2004
‘Captain Copyright’ Web site – Captain Copyright: SuperHero, June 2, 2006
vested corporate interests – Open letter to parents, July 2, 2006

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under Kids and Kartels, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

HOME

Viewed 5926 times