However heres the good news : Being a member of a European Scout association and having traveled to numerous international events all over the world, i have seen organisations such as the MPAA try and run seminars and workshops on IP.
Guess what?

We arent listening.

We’re average young people from all over the globe. Scouts in the developed nations are just like their peers – they have huge mp3 collections all downloaded from p2p and doubtless many have various pirated pieces of software. In developing nations, i somehow doubt that scouts with web acess are running genuine copies of windows, or in developed nations for that matter!
These stands are pretty much empty and having talked to some friends of mine from Hong Kong i have a feeling that this isnt going to be one of the more popular elements in their badge scheme.

in other words, it’s not even a badge that’s worthy of being displayed on a uniform.

i can understand that. being a rat is one thing. proclaiming it to the world is another. are scouts now supposed to notify authorities if they even suspect someone of filesharing/copying so-called copyright-protected materials?

is the badge sponsored by MPAA and RIAA? do the RIAA MPAA set down ground rules and an instruction booklet on how to earn the rat badge?

is there a picture of it somewhere? i’d like to get a look at it if possible.

I’m the Hong Kong reporter who got the following quote for this story:

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Metro/GE04Ak06.html

“It is really what they call a proficiency badge – the badge cannot be put on the shirt,” said a IPD spokeswoman.