p2pnet news view |  Kids & Kartels:- Hi all:

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.

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.

Cheers! And thanks ..

Good little cash cows - 102

Our daughter, Emma, who’ll be 10 this month, has never been to school. Liz and I are teaching her ourselves. This way, we know what she’s learning and perhaps more importantly, we know where the subject matter is coming from.

Because one of the things we don’t want is for her to be exposed to the empty and often moronic hogwash being force-fed to pupils at junior and senior schools around the world as a standard part of lessons, thanks to entertainment and software corporations who are are farming it out disguised as ‘educational’ material.

‘Reminiscent of the Hitler years’
i-Safe is just another in a long line of “nonprofit organizations” used by the entertainment and software cartels to brainwash kids and their parents through approaches powerfully and frighteningly reminiscent of those pioneered by Joseph Goebbels during the Hitler years, and now employed as modern-day sales and advertising tools.

It’s the dripping tap technique. Mass broadcast lies often enough and eventually, they’ll be accepted as truth. And to take the process further, want to change the future? Warp the minds of children in the present.

Hitler all but owned the mainstream media in Germany and occupied countries, using them to propagate his terrible doctrines. Today, in the 21st digital century, the US entertainment cartels all but own the mainstream media, using them to propagate their self-interest doctrines, aided and abetted by the current administration.

Left-wing alarmism that’d be more appropriate in an anarchist tract? Unfortunately, it’s hard reality. Using the mainstream media to hammer something over and over hasn’t changed since the war years and it’s now being used constantly, and to great effect, by the likes of the RIAA, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), BSA (Business Software Alliance) and all the other alphabet enforcement organizations owned and run by the various corporate cartels.

Eight or nine years ago, if you’d asked if ‘intellectual property‘ should be part of classroom instruction, the teacher would probably have laughed in your face.

In 2006, however, under relentless propaganda blitzes from the big music, movie and software industries, even very young children are being taught IP law is of vital importance to them and their families and in Hong Kong, there’s even a special children’s progam under which 200,000 kids are being taught to act as movie and music industry spies, reporting “illegal file transfers”.

The entertainment industry and software cartels have used the media to turn IP infringement into a major crime at the level of rape and murder, with similar jail and financial penalties for offenders. But what’s really at issue is whether or not someone has merely transgressed someone else’s copyright, a simple, commercial issue that’s a very long way from ‘criminal’ or ‘illegal’.

‘Help identify problems’
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) says it’s a, “nonprofit professional organization with a worldwide membership of leaders and potential leaders in educational technology. We are dedicated to providing leadership and service to improve teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in K–12 education and teacher education.”

The SIGTC is the ISTE’s, ” Special Interest Group for Technology Coordinators is a professional organization that helps technology coordinators meet the challenges of their rapidly changing field. SIGTC addresses current legislation and advancements in technology leadership. An active online forum provides a collegial venue to help identify problems and solutions and to share information on issues facing technology coordinators today.”

In September, 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America, owned by Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany) and EMI (Britain) with Warner Music as the only American company, started terrorizing men, women and children with subpoenas - pieces of paper requiring them to show up in a civil court to give testimony about something. And that’s all. But they’re being spun by the RIAA and other ‘trade’ organizations as actual prosecutions for the non-existent crime of file sharing.

‘Just the first wave’
Sony BMG continues to suffer fall-out from its disastrous campaign to sneak spyware into customers’ computers via poisoned music CDs. And with fellow Organized Music gang members Warner Music, Vivendi Universal and EMI, it tries to portray itself as an honest but hard-done-by organization with only the interests of consumers and contracted artists at heart.

All four labels are being investigated in America at the state and federal levels for offences including bribery and price fixing. But they, and their brothers in the movie and software industries, say they’re being ruined by file sharing “pirates” who include children in school. They accuse the kids and their parents, and their brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents, and anyone else who comes to hand, of being criminals and thieves, although no crime has been committed, nothing has been stolen and it’s never been shown that a file shared equals a sale lost.

The assertions have repeatedly been shown to be complete fabrication, but they’re nonetheless repeated in the mainstream media just as though they’re accurate statements from reliable sources.

“Piracy is an idiotic word for what’s happening,” said Sony BMG’s Andy Lack, famously, going on, “it is stealing. This is about criminals and thieves in the night.”

Good word, “devastated”. It means layed to waste. Destoyed. Obviosly, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the entertainment industries, which are raking in profits in the billions like there’s no tomorrow.

The music industry has been “devastated” by p2p file sharing, said then CRIA (Canadian Record Industry Association of America) boss Michael Robertson in 2003. Music downloading has “devastated” the industry, screamed his successor, Graham Hendeson, 12 months later.

“Piracy, it can’t be said enough, has been devastating for us,” declared Lack, going on, “The young - it is not their fault. Now we have an obligation on trying to educate them.”

‘Low-level civil matter’
Subpoena recipients may, or may not, have infringed a copyright, a low-level civil matter with purely commercial applications.

But that’s all.

A month after Lack’s statements, this appeared in the i-Safe Times news letter under, Illegal Music Files May Cost You Thousands:

On Monday September 8th, RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) filed 261 lawsuits against computer users, adults and minors alike, for file swapping (sharing) copyrighted music files over the Internet. i-SAFE asked Cary Sherman, President of RIAA if he could comment on this situation.

i-SAFE: Are more lawsuits to follow?

Sherman: First, it’s important to note that the individuals we filed lawsuits against were egregious offenders - those, on, average who were illegally distributing 1,000 copyrighted music tracks to millions of strangers to copy for free. Our goal is not to be vindictive or punitive. The goal of this campaign is to deter illegal behavior. The lawsuits we have filed are just the first wave, and there will be more to come. We are committed to this for as long as it takes - until the message takes hold that downloading and distributing copyrighted music is illegal and can have consequences. That message is clearly beginning to take hold in the consciousness of families across the country. Our efforts have triggered a national conversation - especially between parents and kids - about what’s legal and illegal when it comes to music on the Internet.

There were indeed more subpoenas to come and so far, around 19,000 men, women and children have been victimized.

But not one of them has so far appeared in a court before a judge or been found guilty of anything, let alone copyright infringement.

The rest of the i-Safe newsletter is an egregious, bald-faced propaganda document produced, no doubt, with a little help from the RIAA.

‘FREE is VERY GOOD!’
In September, 2005, On SIGTC ISTE staged (phrase used advisedly) an ‘education’ session‘. The ‘guest’ speaker was ex-teacher Carolyn Walpole, the i-Safe director of education with Karen Connaghan (KarenConna) moderating.

Below are is excerpt.

CarolynEW: i-SAFE offers a curriculum for grades K-12 that addresses Internet safety and responsible use issues. And it’s free for educators!

CarolynEW: The only requirement is that you attend the professional development workshop – which is also free. This can be done online as well as live.

CarolynEW: This is your tax dollars at work - as well as some funding from private sources

MelissaG1: Jeff tells me I should introduce myself…I’m the “Technology Development Coordinator” for a large k12 school district in Oregon.

KarenConna: Carolyn, can you take the online workshop at any time, or must you schedule it in advance?

CarolynEW: Hi Melissa! i-SAFE is just now getting started in Oregon!

KarenConna: Welcome MellisaG1

CarolynEW: online - anytime….

CarolynEW: The online version - called iLearnOnline - will be unveiled within the next couple of weeks – the format is topic modules.

CarolynEW: The modules take 15-20 minutes each to complete on the topics of cyber citizenship, cyber security, online personal safety, cyber predator id, intellectual property, and effective outreach.

HelenK: Also, it is restricted to teachers from the US (I am in Canada)?

KarenConna: The live workshop…..will you travel anywhere? is there a fee involved if you must travel?

CarolynEW: We have trainers who travel (it’s free)

CarolynEW: But we try to get people in the area who are already trained to do the workshop - It’s train the trainer

CarolynEW: i-SAFE people usually do high-level (state or district trainings)

CarolynEW: As for Canada - lots of interest from there…

KarenConna ( I need to talk to Carol about this…might have some interested schools who want the training and an IU for the train the trainers )

LoriBu: So we could just go online and get the training that way?

CarolynEW: Canadians will be able to do the online version

KarenConna: Another question - is it free to all schools , even non-public schools?

CarolynEW: YES! All schools!

KarenConna jumps up and down!

CarolynEW: I am even working with several Universities to do special pre-service teacher programs

LoriBu smiles - free is good!

KarenConna: FREE is VERY GOOD!

CarolynEW: At conferences - people have a hard time believing when I tell them it’s free!

KarenConna understands — it sounds too good to be true!

CarolynEW: Right now there is an online version - but it is just a video of a workshop. I would wait for the new modules

BillCon: How far out is this funded for?

KarenConna smiles

CarolynEW: We go year to year with Congress - although we have some new avenues there. We have several corporate partners as well.

LoriBu: So this is federally funded?

CarolynEW: yes - with others - Microsoft, RIAA…

CarolynEW: verizon, I don’t know them all!

CarolynEW: Micorosoft is helping us do an international version that can be customized/localized

BillCon: Is Digital Rights Management covered?

LoriBu: cool

CarolynEW: yes -

BillCon: I ask because of RIAA involvement

BillCon: Very good.

CarolynEW: Well - we provide an open view for the kids on IP rights

CarolynEW: I think RIA is getting the idea finally that their tactics are not exactly changing behaviors!

CarolynEW: We have a great webcast video for HS kids on IP issues

CarolynEW: We try to get them to think of all the consequences and problems involved and then ask them to come up with equitable solutions…

LoriBu: Great! I think I have some teachers that might need to see that too!

BillCon: How about language delivery? English only or other options.

CarolynEW: We now have the student activity pages and resources in Spanish

CarolynEW: And the webcasts are coming out with subtitles for hearing impaired

Speaking of Canada, and back to the present, Access Canada has been attacked for its spurious Captain Copyright, a blackly cynical cartoon character created specifically to scam teachers into pushing IP and copyright at young children.

Captain C is useless for any purpose other than as a propaganda tool, and yet it was presented by the media not only in Canada but around the world as a laudable teaching tool.

Corporations use schools everywhere as sales units and as a way to train kids to become good little cash-cow consumers who’ll blindly swallow whatever ‘product’ is dished up to them, not matter how cheap, worthless or even dangerous.

And they’re brainwashed to ask for more.

Below is a post on Captain Canada, followed by another on corporate attempts to indoctrinate our children.

To me, they represent the most invidious of all the perversions being practiced by the cartels to bring us into line as mindless consumers rather than customers exercising free choice.

And yet, no one is trying to stop them. Instead, the various authorities and administrations elected by us to protect us are working hand-in-glove with the corporations, and with the politicians we chose to represent us.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Canada’s Captain Copyright

Specious ‘education’ programs are now de rigueur around the world for the entertainment and software cartels, and the Captain Copyright figure would be totally ridiculous were it not so alarming.

Because the chances are, it’ll be touted enthusiastically by the mainstream media and picked up by gullible teachers and educational authorities, as have other ‘educational’ efforts in the past.

“Keep checking back here for more activities for you to do, stuff that can help you with homework your teacher might give you, games you can play, and much, much more,” says the site.

IP homework? Entirely possible.

In Hong Kong, where scouts now have ‘earn’ Intellectual Property Merit Badges, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has managed to dragoon the government into using 200,000 children as Hollywood copyright spies.

And, “In order to promote respect of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the World Intellectual Property Day, set on April 26 annually, the Intellectual Property Department and the Hong Kong Scout Association (HKSA) today (April 23) held the ‘Respect for Intellectual Property Rights Fun Fair’ at Kowloon Park Piazza,” says a Hong Kong government press statement.

“But lately, it has also been trying to send a different message: we care about families, too.”

The BSA, owned by the likes of Microsoft and Apple, is trying to spam surfers with a bizarre online version of Cluedo as, “part of its campaign to stamp out software piracy”.

In the US, the Hollywood owned the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is promoting Copyright Awareness Week and it’s, “partnering” with “other groups” to, “promote education of students about the history and importance of copyright laws”.

And Alberto Gonzales, America’s self-described Top Cop, was recently part of a deeply cynical dog-and-pony show set up by the Big Four record labels and Big Six movie studios.

These propaganda blitzes go on. And on. And on. Like a dripping tap. Until eventually, they’re accepted as reality.

“While my first reaction to the [Captain Copyright] site was that it is just silly, as I dug deeper, I now find it shameful,” says professor Michael Geist. “These materials, targeting kids as young as six years old, misrepresents many issues and proposes classroom activities that are offensive.”

But they’re nothing new. Rather, they’re yet another manifestation of a horror p2pnet has been highlighting ever since it went online, and they’re among the reasons why my wife, Liz, and I home-school our daughter, Emma, who’s now almost 10.

If you’d like to contact Captain Copyright, you can email him here.

Meanwhile, below is an item we ran almost a year ago. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

They’re brainwashing YOUR child

A very dark, very frightening corporate scheme is being carefully orchestrated around the world with the full and active support and cooperation of governments and public administrations.

The inter-linked, multi-national corporations are slowly and surely brainwashing our children. And many of you - especially if you’re teachers or are involved in institutions administering to children - are helping.

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As a parent, do you really think copyright law should be an integral part of your child’s education, or the subject for a scouting merit badge? Should it be the focus of ‘educational’ pamphlets distributed by Childnet? And should your son or daughter be thinking up names for a ridiculous “copyright crusading ferret”?The answer is, of course, that IP law has a legitimate place only in a law school or special interest classes. But the software, movie studio and recording industries are using publicly funded schools and teaching staffs and institutions around the world to try to make you believe that protecting industry product is of primary importance to you and your children.

And carrying the corporate message that young children need to be subjected to intensive indoctrination on copyright laws are the same on- and offline newspapers, magazine and radio and tv stations that depend almost wholly on corporate advertising cash and goodwill to survive.

They’re brainwashing our children
New technologies always threaten the old and their owners inevitably do everything they can to maintain the status quo, up to and including using the media of the day to hammer their messages home. And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

The entertainment and software cartels, principally, are trying desperately to stay afloat, using outdated business models from the 1970s in the digital 21st century. They’ve lost control of their consumer bases and to regain it, they’re painting everyone who uses non-corporate p2p applications to download digital files, and the companies which make them, as hard-core criminals.

As the Live8 shows proved, the labels could easily and effectively harness p2p power, using it to rope in hundreds of millions of paying file-sharers and their discretionary dollars.

Instead, to achieve the same end, our children are being force-fed warped values through schools and organizations such as the scouting movement and Childnet International under the pretext of ‘education’.

The BSA (Business Software Alliance) is a major trade group owned by such heavyweights as Microsoft and Adobe and they’re using it to weasel their way into your child’s head with a “copyright-crusading ferret” which “teaches tech-savvy kids about cyber ethics”.

For cyber-ethics read copyright law.

Even the FCC is in on it. And the aim of all of these apparently separate, but in reality closely interlinked, entities is to firmly implant industry compliant behaviour patterns and attitudes into kids’ brains while they’re still young and highly impressionable.

Pliable ‘consumers’
Over time, say industry strategists, using schools as pre-marketing units will become accepted practice and properly obedient cash-cows will replace the people who, thanks to the emergence of the Net and blogs, are for the moment showing alarming tendencies to think for themselves and to make their own decisions about what they want and don’t want, and to use online outlets which aren’t corporate-owned or controlled.

Clearly, this must stop, say the corporate leaders. How better than to indoctrinate ‘consumers’ while they’re still at school and while they’re still relatively uninformed and, therefore, pliable?

No need to worry about in-depth media cooperation because the landscape is “very, very heavily dominated” by a tiny handful of “gigantic media transnational media corporations,” says Mark Crispin Miller, the most important being Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, the News Corporation and Universal-Vivendi.

Viacom owns, among other important media entities, MTV. And MTV, in turn, now owns NeoPets.

Advertisers spend about $15 billion a year, targeting kids through sites like NeoPets which has product advertising cleverly hidden in games and links to websites run by McDonald’s, General Mills and Procter & Gamble. Other NeoPets ‘consumer’ clients include Carl’s Jr, Hasbro, Hershey, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods / Nabisco, LEGO, Mattel, Nestlé, Pepperidge Farm, Thinkway Toys and Wrigley.

More than 40% of the NeoPets “audience” is under the age of 13.

America’s Children Now says it’s a “national organization for people who care about children and want to ensure that they are the top public policy priority”. But its chairwoman, Jane Gardner, is a marketing consultant, and its vice chairman, Peter D. Bewley, is the Clorox Company’s senior vp, general counsel and secretary. On the board are the likes of Neal Baer, Wolf Films/Universal Television’s ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ executive producer and Suzanne Nora Johnson, vice chairwoman, Goldman, Sachs & Co.

‘Breaking the law for years’
“Gina Harkell was, putting the final touches to her third CD when the full weight of the music industry came crashing through her letter box,” said Britain’s prestigious The Times recently.

“ ‘It was a legal document,’ she recalls. ‘There were all these huge names - 14 of them - Universal, Polydor, EMI, Capitol, Virgin, Mercury, Sony … versus, well, me, my partner, but principally my son.’

“A hundred miles away, at about the same time, Richard French, a respectable financial adviser, was calling his wife, Louise, with the news that he and his two young children had apparently been breaking the law for years, and they hadn’t even known it. If they wanted to keep out of the courts, he told her, they would have to pay £2,500.

“In fact, all over the country on that day in mid-April, the opening of dull white envelopes elicited gasps of astonishment and despair among parents as they found out that they - usually because of their children - had become the first in Britain to be hit by a clampdown on internet music piracy. After losing sales amounting to some £300 million because of music-sharing software, the industry had decided it could take no more; there was no option but to use the courts.”

The industry could “take no more”. And the article goes on and on in this vein, treating the £300 million claim as though it’s based on reality and as though it comes from credible sources.

And behind this victimization of children and their parents in the UK is the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), owned by the members of the Big Four record label cartel with their direct and indirect associations with the major print and electronic media outlets.

The BPI is also a leader in the UK government backed move to ‘educate’ British school children during class time and at tax-payer expense. And the many other cartel owned and funded organizations such as the RIAA, CRIA, JRIA, ARIA, IFPI, and etcetera, also feature the creation and implementation of ‘child education’ programs in their mandates.

‘Consumer’ of tomorrow
Our daughter, Emma, is now almost nine. She went to kindergarten but ever since, we’ve home-schooled her.

And we thank God we made that decision.

To some extent, we’ve been able to filter the outside world for her, which isn’t to say she’s cloistered. She has, for example, a room almost filled with Barbies and she’s exposed to TV advertising aimed at kids every time she tunes into one of her favourite TV programs during the two-hours-a-day she’s allowed to watch.

But thankfully, the kind of materialistic, pernicious garbage now being fed to kids in schools (which these days can be counted as media outlets of the third kind) doesn’t reach her.

We hope she’ll grow up having a value system garnered not only from us, but also from other people with independent mindsets, as well as from the books she chooses to read, from the music she chooses to listen to and from the movies she chooses to watch, none of them suggested by the cartels.

Although Emma will make make up her own mind about what’s good for her, and what’s bad, where she’ll spend her money, and when, sadly, she’s part of a small minority.

But it needn’t be that way if you and your teachers love and care about our children enough to take back control of what happens to them, what they’re taught and by whom.

If you don’t, the corporations, of which Hollywood is only the most visible, will.

[NOTE: The ‘cash-cow’ at the top right is with apologies to Dean MacAdam.]

Digg this story.

Also See:
thep2pweblog - RIAA Sells Anti-Piracy Propaganda To Your Children, June 29, 2006
frighteningly reminiscent - Big Music’s Goebbelogue, April 6, 2004
industry spies - Hong Kong’s kiddie Net spies, May 31, 2006
intellectual property - Intellectual Property Secret Police, July 1, 106
i-Safe Times - Know the facts before you surf, October 10, 2003
education’ session - ISTE SIGTC - iSAFE: Internet Safety Awareness, September 26, 2005
blackly cynical - Canada’s Captain Copyright, June 1, 2006

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Kids and Kartels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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