MPAA to ‘educate’ US students
p2pnet.net News:- With Big Music’s RIAA (Recording Industry Associaton of America) firmly established in US university campuses, it’s now the turn of the movie studios.
The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has been in lock step with the RIAA as the two Hollywood enforcers worked together to get senior administrators involved in its Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, lending it credibility. Their involvement also gives credence to the idea that the ‘committee’ is a genuine public-spirited effort, helping to save students from being sued.
That the Entertainment Communities are the ones suing the students is somehow acceptable.
The so-called JCHEEC is the key component in a truly brilliant marketing ploy through which said Entertainment Communities have turned US universities into un-paid police enforcers and direct sales divisions, using Roxio’s troubled Napster II as the spear-head.
Now, the MPAA is, “taking its campaign against movie piracy to college campuses in a ramped-up effort to educate students and parents about illegal movie downloading and its negative impact on the film industry,” says a Los Angeles Daily News story here.
The MPAA has, of course, been ‘educating’ children for some time:
“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?’ “
The MPAA is “working” with more than 120 colleges and universities to “create and self-enforce codes of conduct for student computer use on campus and has also developed a partnership with Junior Achievement in which more than 1 million students in grades 5-9 learn about copyright and the protection of intellectual property,” says the story.
“They’ve been able to learn from some of what the RIAA has done and put more emphasis on the educational side of things before they do anything heavy like litigation,” intellectual property attorney Evan R. Cox is quoted as saying.
“If we don’t react promptly to an ascending curve of illegal uploading and downloading soon to be reinforced with dazzling speeds rising from file-trafficking networks, we will live with an intense regret,” says MPAA boss Jack Valenti. “We have to do more to convince that minority of people who are engaged in this unlawful and infringing activity of the wrongness of their conduct.
“We have to stem the tide of film theft online before it is too late, before it puts to peril the creative energy of the industry and the jobs of the nearly one million Americans who work within the movie industry.”
The MPAA said 2003 was its second biggest year ever with official box office figures at $9.5 billion. At the same time, Hollywood was pleading poverty in talks with movie and TV writers who want a bigger cut from the DVD market and help with health care costs.
June 16th, 2004 at 10:05 pm
What we need is a plan to educate the educators
June 19th, 2004 at 2:35 am
Eerily like the D.A.R.E. program, where they send cops into schools and teach kids how all drugs are bad and evil and how one joint will make you a heroin addict, one X pill will melt your spinal fluid.
Of course, the kids know this is a load of bull, so they smoke pot and take X and eventually go on to try something they shouldn’t, because it really is dangerous, because they new the D.A.R.E. cops were lying about pot so they must be lying about heroin and crack too right???
So let them “educate” the kids by demonstrating the concept of P2P filesharing and invoking the “evil” . It will increase its use at an accellerated pace, just like D.A.R.E. has done for the drug problem.
Alcohol prohibition didn’t work in the 30’s, marijuana prohibition (still) isn’t working in the 00’s and P2P prohibition will only lead to improved criminal financing opportunities. Doesn’t anyone read history anymore?
It will become the “Drug War” for the new Millennium (since the war on terror is almost wrapped up….).
Neo, are you out there?
June 20th, 2004 at 7:03 am
“You will eat lima beans and clean your rooms.”
“You will buy Coca Cola.”
“You will spend $20 at the movie theatre.”
“You will buy, buy, buy, or we will sue, sue, sue!”
January 29th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Neo is out there.
http://www.truthofthespoon.net
You will find him here, that is the truth.
Zeal