p2pnet.net News:- The MPAA has been awarded a prize for its school ‘education’ efforts.

And ironically, it’s from Wired Kids, a US organization which, says the MPAA, exists “to raise awareness about online threats such as predators and pornography, as well as the potential dangers of privacy and piracy”.

We couldn’t find any mention of “piracy”. But there you go.

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) proudly boasts it’s the first recipient of the Wired Kids “Doing It Right” award

“An executive with E! Entertainment Television (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,” wrote Kathleen Sharp in the Boston Globe.

“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’.”

Not only does the MPAA use teachers who are paid by tax payers and through school fees to carry its blackly cynical messages into schools, it also bribes them.

Also worth looking at, as a p2pnet reader points out below, is Wired Magazine’s take, which kicks off with

"The producer tells her sad story with her fists curled inside the sleeves of an oversize hooded sweatshirt: ‘I’m, like, losing my job, and maybe I, like, need that money for my family or something.’ The cause of her consternation: peer-to-peer file-sharing, which she says is devastating Hollywood."

So is this debatable? Could it be a Good Thing?

Not according to the EFF’s (Electronic Fronetier Foundation) Wendy Seltzer who’s quoted as saying the program presents a "tremendously one-sided view of copyright.

"There’s no balance; it’s entirely corporate driven. If anything, it’s an exercise in how efficiently you can brainwash students."

Classroom commercial agendas
At the end of the school year, students were asked to write an essay ”to get the word out that downloading copyrighted entertainment is illegal and unethical,” according to the teachers’ guide, says Sharp, going on:

“Prizes include an all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood, worth about $1,000; a Sony DVD player and library of 14 hit movies on DVDs, worth about $350 total; and a selection of 21 Hollywood classic DVDs, valued at $250. Teachers whose students win the contest will also be rewarded with prizes, such as a year’s worth of free movie theater tickets for the teacher and a guest.”

”It’s inappropriate to offer tips, gifts, and prizes in exchange for adults pushing a commercial agenda in the classroom,” Melinda Anderson, spokeswoman for the National Education Association, is quoted as saying.

‘It speaks to a new era of commercialism in classrooms.”

It does indeed and under it, anything the entertainment cartels and other vested interests say, goes, including brainwashing children.

And yet Wired Kids, which says it’s “very selective in choosing its sponsors and strategic partners,” chooses to honour an unethical, totally self-serving, organization such as the MPAA.

MPAA bosss Dan Glickman also used the opportunity to point to last week’s posting of “pirated copies” of Revenge of the Sith to web sites “as an example of how easily kids can be lured into activity that carries serious consequences”.

He didn’t mention that the first appearance came from a Hollywood insider, possibly acting for the MPAA itself, who posted a working print to the p2p networks.

In the meanwhile, there’s absolutely zero evidence to back movie industry claims that file sharing is costing them billions of dollars and in fact, Sith is breaking audience and revenue records, its online appearance notwithstanding.

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

See:-
Boston Globe - Laying down the copyright law — to children, April 25, 2004
Wired Magazine - File-Sharing Is, Like, Totally Uncool, May, 2004
commercialism in classrooms - Anti-p2p propaganda in schools, p2pnet, May 24, 2005
acting for the MPAA - Was the ‘Sith’ leak deliberate?, p2pnet, April 26, 2005

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