[Ninja Duck]

'Pirates of the Internet' is new class lesson
by Rebecca Dana

Iris Beckwith uses a 5-foot-tall robot to help teach elementary school students why it is illegal to download movies and music from the Internet.

advertisement
Children generally don't see why downloading is a problem, she said.

"These kids are in la la land," Beckwith said after the presentation to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at St. Bernadette's School in Springfield, in which "Safety Bot" gave advice on how to be safe online and Internet etiquette. "They've grown up thinking that because they can download whatever they want on the Internet, that they should and no one will be the wiser," said Beckwith, a consultant.

What is just as troubling, said Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, is that kids at a computer still think they are impossible to catch.

So the industry's effort to educate children too young to appreciate the potential consequences of downloading music, video games or a Hollywood blockbuster comes with this message:

"You may think you're anonymous, but you're not. You may think it's legal, but it's not. And you may think you're not hurting anyone, but you are."

The industry's approach is two-pronged: to terrify and to teach.

"It's a very thick topic, one that's difficult for kids to understand," Taylor said. "What we're trying to do is get it back to 'Stealing is wrong.' "

Scaring file-sharers
Last month, the Motion Picture Association announced that it would begin suing those who download, one by one, to scare file-sharers away from the practice many believe has taken a chunk out of industry revenue in recent years. With this, the movie industry followed the lead of the Recording Industry Association of America, which started its first lawsuits in fall 2003.

Hollywood estimates that it loses $3.5 billion a year to piracy, and, although statistics for unregulated, rampant, online file-sharing are difficult to gather, a 2003 analysis by the media consulting firm Viant Group found that roughly 500,000 movies are downloaded illegally every day.

This fall, U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft met with 100 area high school students to give oomph to the no-stealing lecture. Ashcroft spoke alongside songwriters and convicted intellectual property thieves.

At the same time, both industries have been working with schools and private educators to figure out how to communicate online ethics in a way young people can understand.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6708676/

Moral: If you download illegally, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom will come and pillage you for all you're worth.

Thanks to J m HofMarN for this one!

[Chyld]

Scaring file-sharers
Last month, the Motion Picture Association announced that it would begin suing those who download, one by one, to scare file-sharers away from the practice many believe has taken a chunk out of industry revenue in recent years. With this, the movie industry followed the lead of the Recording Industry Association of America, which started its first lawsuits in fall 2003.

Hollywood estimates that it loses $3.5 billion a year to piracy, and, although statistics for unregulated, rampant, online file-sharing are difficult to gather, a 2003 analysis by the media consulting firm Viant Group found that roughly 500,000 movies are downloaded illegally every day.

Waa waa waa, the nasty men are stealing your money. Its not because the music/films coming out nowadays are expensive and crap, oh no...

[barend]

admittedly....

"The industry's approach is two-pronged: to terrify and to teach"

is the funniest thing i've ever heard... and yet...
i lilke it...

work sucks...
making creative people work 9-5+ sucks...
removing any chance anyone has of making aliving from creative arts sucks more...

i mean sure downlaod the fuck out top 40 music that makes its money from sponsorship, and films like 2fast 2furious... no problem there...
just as long as they terrify kids from downlaoding real art.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[Chyld]

In all fairness, I don't approve of just plain stealing an artists music and not buying it at a later date. It is my full intent to eventually buy the music of all the artists I download. Admittedly, on my income (selling camels in Hull Market), that isn't going to happen until I get my pension, but its nice to not jsut burn it to disc and pretend...

But c'mon, seriously, we're human. If we see something for free, we grasp it with both hands, and usually damn the consequences.

..oh yeah, funny.

PIRATEZ!!!

[barend]

well of course...

we are human...

i know you're not a but i'm just saying i think its a shame that art by people who deserve to be fed for it aren't and poor service telecomunications companies never miss a cent...

i do beleive in the try before you buy system... i've ed heaps, but i, like, you always go out and buy it afterwards...

i think it's good that they are educating children to know that stealing is wrong though...

and i thinks it's even better that they are "terrifying" them...
scaring children is funny...

This post has been edited by barend: 20 December 2004 - 08:32 PM

[Laura]

The reason kids don't respond is because there really are no consequences and they don't see how they are hurting anyone. There's no visceral reaction. Like, if you steal something from a friend, then that friend is upset that they no longer have the object. If you steal enough from the corner store, they go out of business. But getting a copy of something that you wouldn't have bought in the first place because you have no money-- it's a lot harder to figure out who's losing and when there. Yeah, maybe sales go down gradually, but it's harder to see how you, yourself, are part of the problem there.

Anyway. I don't really rip off anything except for software that I wouldn't be able to purchase otherwise. If they made things reasonable prices-- say, $20-$50 instead of $900-- then I'd go out and buy it.

[barend]

yeah, what's the deal with that $1000.00 + for software...
$100.00 for PC games... WTF is that?

I mean... I pay for my games... but i usually wait for them to go out of fashion before touching them... when they hit the $50.00 mark*

*all prices listed are in AUD.

[SimeSublime]

I only pirate things that I wasn't going to or couldn't buy anyway. I don't go to the video store anyway, so I see no problem downloading movies.

[barend]

expect a robot at your house in the next few days...

[J m HofMarN]

Yahr it be the curse of the black MP3! You know I think this is even stupider than the defunct DARE program. Having motion picture industry and music industry PA people drag along enslaved music pirates forced to confess their "sins" is not only biased, it's just bullshit. If I were a captured music pirate, and they dragged me infront of a bunch of fifth graders, I'd wait til the PA bastards let down their guard and then yell "FREEEEDOM!" Really loud til they cut off my head. Whatcha gunna do then, music industry bastards???

The inherent logical problem with this is the following:

Kids learn that they should pay for any movie/music/software/free samples/comercial/oxygen that they happen to see, taste, or breathe.

Kids have no money

Kids tell parents they cant download movies anymore and need money to go see them.

Parents get pissed at motion picture people for advertising their wares in schools and tell kids to go steal it on the internet.

And, really, with all the crap that today's kids are doing/putting up with/not doing, is stopping them from downloading that Cher MP3 really priority number one?

"Hmmm" Says the super-intendent. "We can either have a class on how not to sling pipe bombs around in your home room while blowing away classmates with shotguns, or we can get mad funding from the MPAA for teaching something that is completely ineffectual and stupid."

[barend]

so better yet, artistic type makes music, receives no money for it... has no option but to make money from sponsorship at which point sponser (lets face it we're talking pepsi here) says, "sound like this" (i.e crap) "if you want to survive, or go back to cleaning toilets where all true artists belong." ...
"okay" says artist....

long story short...
no music is ever made again outside the RnB, homboy metal, top 40 dance, p-diddy genres...

why? cause people will pay to go football game. people will pay to eat McDonalds. people will pay for the right to live in a country where the rich get richer, and the powerfull use to do their own dirty work, taking out politically subversive music, film, and literature, but don't need to any more... why? cause people have decided they no longer need to pay for art...

should people have to pay for art? should artists have to work regular jobs instead of creating the things that make it barable to put with the world? who's to say...

i think there is definatley merit to telling kids they have to pay for something that someone else had to work to create.
good music doesn't write itself, good films don't direct themselves, and good books don't write themselves, and great paintings do not occur when some asshole trips over and spills paint on a canvas (although you can sell it for fucking millions)...

It's hard to shed a tear for mainstream artists who don't really need your money to get paid... but kids don't know shit, about what's good and what's not...

as a musician i'm happy to provide MP3s for free doenloads, but not whole albums... if i can't make money from somewhere outside my day job... i'm never really going to be in any way free...

creating things is all i'm really good at, but if it's only ever going to be a hobby becasue the next generation says 'fuck it, i'll just take it'
then my existence is completley pointless.

This post has been edited by barend: 21 December 2004 - 02:13 AM

[J m HofMarN]

Barend- I understand your problem with downloading music, but for the most part the internet is a great thing for small time artists, since you can sell your MP3s and keep more of the profit and it keeps your costs down, not to mention advertising and such. However if someone (such as myself) were unable to buy your cd, would you really grudge them for downloading some of the songs off it? Not only are they then made happy but it also serves as free advertising. I'm waiting for an internet music phenomenon that will fuck up the top forty and all this pop-rap crap. The Laziest Men on Mars made 9000 dollars off a song they sold online, even though it was also readily available for download. So I think this whole thing is really beneficial for everybody except rich folks who keep most of the artists money anyhow. However, what I would like to see is a CD burning system in record stores. They should have all sorts of tracks on an HD and let you select those you want and burn them onto a CD. It would hurt bands with only one decent song but it'd take away a hell of a lot of annoyance, like when I bought the Godzilla soundtrack CD just to get the RATM and Puff Daddy songs from it.

Also, I just thought of a great simile for the MPAA and Recording industry's arguments:

People are hungry and they wish to buy food but have no money to do so and are therefore unable to purchase food. However, there are people giving away food to anyone who wants it. We believe that this hurts our sales because those people who cannot afford food are getting it for free. These online charity engines should be shut down, and anyone who receives illegal food should be executed.

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 21 December 2004 - 04:48 AM

[J m HofMarN]

By the way, does anyone see this as rather odd? The MPAA is saying "we will catch you if you do this. There is no escape." And yet at the same time they're saying "Please don't do this, it's not very nice" Methinks that if they were so sure of being able to catch the music/movie downloaders they wouldn't have to ask them to stop.

[SimeSublime]

I think a better analogy would be that of a book store owner sueing people who go to libraries. Just a thought.

I'll admit that this doesn't always happen, but sometimes pirating can be good. A friend once gave me a copy of Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. Someone had burnt it for him, but he didn't like it, so he gave it to me. I'd never heard of it before, but I absolutly loved it. After that I tracked down other things made by Black Isle(the creaters of BG). So, because of that one pirated game, I have now bought:
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast(expansion)
Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal(expansion)
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter(expansion)
Icewind Dale 2
Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

And I still have the burnt copy of BG2: Shadows of Amn.

[barend]

a few tracks is okay... but i would still prefer them to purchase the album... (after all i do the artwork, and linier notes that credit others involved if applicable)...

for instance the EP i planning to soon release has remixes by multiple artists from all over the world... with links to their websites on the sleeve...

they loose traffic if kids rip me off.

however like i said a few tracks i don't mind... but they better buy a T-shirt or come to every gig or something to make up for it...


i don't mind the occasional, but i think it's important that people grow up knowing that they have to pay their way...

i work in a barristers chambers, and there are a fuckload of solicitors/clients who outright not paying the fees they owe...

my father is a physiotherapist, who refuses all work outside of workers compensation (workcover) because he knows it's the only way he's guarenteed to get paid.

too many people think not paying for shit is a victimless crime... it's not.
my greivance isn't with MP3s its with the hypocritical attitude of 'fuck every one who isn't me'... that everyone has. it's sociopathic solipsism!!!