Anti-Piracy lessons in School

[pacmania_2001]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031023/ap_on_hi_te/anti_piracy_lessons_1

SAN FRANCISCO - As part of its campaign to thwart online music and movie piracy, Hollywood is now reaching into school classrooms with a program that denounces file-sharing and offers prizes for students and teachers who spread the word about Internet theft.

The Motion Picture Association of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the business sector.

Civil libertarians object that the movie industry is presenting a tainted version of a complex legal issue — while the country's largest teachers' lobby is concerned about the incentives the program offers.

"What's the Diff?: A Guide to Digital Citizenship" launched last week with a lesson plan that aims to keep kids away from Internet services like Kazaa that let users trade digital songs and film clips: "If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it."

"We think it's a critical group to be having this conversation with," said MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor, suggesting online piracy may not have yet peaked. "If we sit idly by and we don't have a conversation with the general public of all ages, we could one day look back at October of 2003 as the good old days of piracy."

The effort doesn't stop in the classroom. Beginning Friday, public service announcements are being released to approximately 5,000 theaters nationwide, profiling people in the movie industry and arguing that digital piracy threatens their livelihoods.

Indeed, Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, told Penn State University faculty and students this week that his industry is in "a state of crisis" over digital theft.

But some copyright law experts aren't pleased that the MPAA is the only sponsor for such classroom discussions. They worry that the lesson plans don't address "fair use" constitutional protections for digital copying for personal or educational use.

"This is really sounding like Soviet-style education. First they're indoctrinating the students and then having students indoctrinate their peers," said Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The takeaway message has got to be more nuanced. Copyright is a complicated subject."

Melinda Anderson, a spokeswoman for the National Education Association, says it's unsettling when corporate presence in the classroom is tethered to sponsored incentive programs.

In this case, Junior Achievement is offering students DVD players, DVD movies, theater tickets and all-expenses-paid trips to Hollywood for winning essays about the illegalities of file-sharing. Teachers, too, can win prizes for effectively communicating the approved message in class.

"What it speaks to is kind of a new era in commercialism emerging in classrooms where the attempts to connect with students are becoming more and more sophisticated. Schools that are often strapped for cash are more tempted to partner with these organizations," Anderson said.

"Coming from school, these companies are getting a tacit endorsement for their product," Anderson said. "That's not a school's role — to be the purveyors."

The program got a rocky start during its first presentation, to some relatively cyber-savvy teens at Raoul Wallenberg High School in San Francisco.

Andrew Irgens-Moller, 14, buried his head into a backpack on his desk and rolled his eyes as the guest teacher warned of computer viruses and hackers that could take control of a user's desktop via file-sharing programs. He objected that antivirus software could scan downloaded files and only sophisticated hackers could pull off the remote desktop computer takeover.

Then the teacher cut him off.

Bret Balonick, a tax accountant on loan from PricewaterhouseCoopers to teach the anti-piracy class, was arguing that some downloaders have been affected by malicious activity. Besides, he said, it's illegal to upload and download unauthorized content online.

"If it's illegal in America, host it in Uzbekistan," snapped the 14-year-old.

Balonick then had the freshmen role-play as singers, actors, producers, computer users. But even the "producers" quietly acknowledged that they too share song files over the Internet.

"It's not illegal if you decide to give it away," said Wilson Cen, 13, regarding burning copies of music CDs for his friends. "They don't want you selling them. It's a gift, you're not selling it."

Brenda Chen said she uses Kazaa at home: "I just want certain tracks from the CD, not the whole CD. It's a waste of money."

David Chernow, Junior Achievement's chief executive, said in a telephone interview that the explosion of peer-to-peer activity among young people is a ripe topic for public school classrooms.

"We're really trying to teach young people to be responsible and to obey laws that they may not understand," Chernow said. "Just because it's easy doesn't make it right."

What do you all think?

Personally I think that 14 year old is a legend.

[Faustus]

I like these 14 year old kids... they make good points.

[iooi]

In this case, Junior Achievement is offering students DVD players, DVD movies, theater tickets and all-expenses-paid trips to Hollywood for winning essays about the illegalities of file-sharing. Teachers, too, can win prizes for effectively communicating the approved message in class.

Makes you laugh They think handing out a few goodies is going to stop kids from using p2p....Proberly increase usage as they will introduce a few thousand more kids to try it....
Looks like the Kids are smarter than the teachers in the cases in the report...
Wonder how log before we get this in the UK.
Is there any wonder kids dont get a proper education when stuff like this is taught in the classroom....

[The village idiot]

The give away items really bothers me! I guess we should get all the kids a subscription to 2600 magazine to represent an equal time type of campaign

I thought a few months ago good ol' Jack didn't think that the internet possed a substantial threat to the movie industry.


This is about the last straw for me, I don't think I'll ever go to a movie theater again, unless I end up completely broke and need a crappy job, then maybe employment at a theater wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Either that or a REALLY good looking woman who wants to take in a movie with me

[overloaded_ide]

Take her to a concert instead
The bands need the money more than those milionare stars or the studios!

[lordsmurf]

I normally don't say things like this, but if somebody knocked off old Valenti and his croanies, the world would probably be better off.

We have enough problems in education. I have a younger sibling that graduated high school and cannot do math at all. And he cannot write papers or even write with legible handwriting. (Assuming he's not always just playing stupid, which I doubt it the case.) How the hell did he get through school?

Unti the kids at the supermarket can count my change properly and say complete sentences free of ebonics, I don't give a flying f--k about teaching any kind of copyright law, narrow-minded MPAA version or not.

The schools should follow rules of the workplace. Gifts are not allowed when they potentially influence otherwise good decision making. In this case, Valenti and company can take those DVD players and shove up their @$$es one by one.

I cannot believe this. "Soviet-style" is RIGHT ON THE MARK!

The inverse is funny too. Sure, give them DVD players. Then they have the hardware to playback the downloads.

In the words of Beavis and Butt-head: "What a dumbass."

Oh, one more thing. Most teachers and older people only know what they read in papers. Evil viruses, hackers, etc... what YOU DO NOT NORMALLY KNOW is that many of these reporters don't know tick aboue technology. They simply run with the crap the source gave them, which is often as crooked as Valenti. Your info is only as good as your source. Luckily, the 14-year-old that rolled his eyes KNEW MORE than the teacher.

The fact is that Valenti and co. are stubborn mules. We don't want your DVDs full of extra junk and music CDs with 1 good song and 15 junkers. We want to pay for the part that we consider useful.

I cannot imagine living in a world where buying groceries would require you to take cans of soup and cereal you didn't like. Or requiring your wishwasher to to come with a full load of dishes. Or being only able to buy a refrigerator full of food. And in each case, you were FORCED to pay for the extra crap you didn't want. Even software has full and lite versions. Why can Valenti not get that through his thick skull? I do not want your pre-packaged garbage bins, I only want the good stuff, and I am ONLY willing to pay for the part I find useful. And it IS POSSIBLE due to technology at this time. Sorry Mr 1900s... your time is over.

[bugster]

In this case, Junior Achievement is offering students DVD players,

Will these machines play Divx

Are they region free

[Hardcoreruss]

In this case, Junior Achievement is offering students DVD players,

Will these machines play Divx

Are they region free

Ha Ha Ha - excellent

[freestyler]

Blame it on technology. If burners didn't exist, there'd be less of a problem.

The MPAA and RIAA have still failed to find a way to keep up with technology, so they fight it. They've fought every new technology for years, and they are losing the battle.

Just today I saw a commercial for a music album, and at the very end of the commercial they mentioned "And comes with a Free DVD that the bootleggers just don't have."

The market is saturated and it's pretty hard to survive nowadays in the entertainment world. Like Lordsmurf said, to get your money they better give you the stuff you want, and not just fluff.

It'd be nice if they lowered prices, too - maybe then folks could actually afford to buy a few cds instead of just one...

Look at DVDs, at most places you can get a DVD for less than the price of an audio cd. Maybe if they removed Macrovision, CSS and all that other useless copy protection they could lower the prices of DVDs too!

[DVO]

There is one thing that keeps coming to my mind when I read about the atempts to reduce piracy... In asia, wish is a very big part of this world and were most people earn much less then in america or europe the music CD are sold at a prize very close to america and europe. How do they even expect to sell music at all there. The prize is about 10% of a months salary for some asians! Oh, why do people copy CD?! Why do we have piracy? Is it so hard to see they need to lower the prize? Istead of earing 0$ on the piracy the can lower to a resonable prize.

[housepig]

Blame it on technology. If burners didn't exist, there'd be less of a problem.

if tv's didn't exist, you'd be forced to see movies in the theater... maybe the MPAA should ban tv sets...

the stupid thing is, I've bought waaaaaay more dvd's over the past year than I have cd's... partially because there's not much new music that's impressing me, but moreso because I get better value - most of the dvd's I've bought average out to around $7 each, with 3 for $20 sales at Best Buy, or 2 for $10 deals at Circuit City, or getting stuff from deepdiscountdvd.com.

$5-$10 is a price I'm willing to pay for a dvd...

[mysticgohan17]

"If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it."

No, if you haven't paid for it, you've got it for free.

[lgh529]

We don't want your DVDs full of extra junk and music CDs with 1 good song and 15 junkers. We want to pay for the part that we consider useful.

My daughter just got a DVD with a couple of Bear In The Big Blue House episodes. This is all fine and dandy, but there is ... are you ready ... 15 minutes of commercials before the main video begins, and of course its all a first play video, so you can't skip to the main menu.

What do they think they are trying to do? Screw trying to back up the DVD, I'm just killing all the ads so my kids don't have to watch them.

[SquirrelDip]

Teach it in the schools is a great! You'll probably see an increase in the amount of P2P - I'm sure many are thinking "I didn't know you could do that..."

Didn't Napster usage go up 10 fold the day the news of them being sued hit the papers?

[Gazorgan]

I wonder how many kids never knew you could d/l movies off the Internet, but after the propoganda lessons went out and looked?

Scary thought?

[K(c)offee]

What a stupid waste of time. Honestly lets make sure our kids can do basic math(I would have said spelling but I cant spell myself ) before we start pumping them full of whats best for big buisness. I can think of 100s of better uses for this money and time in a school then this crap.

[vmesquita287]

@SquirrelDip and Gazorgan

This is definatelly true. Kids love to do what is forbidden. Probably the ones that never heard of p2p will get interested in knowing more about it.

[]'s
VMesquita

[smearbrick1]

The funny thing about all of this is the fact that they attempt to misdirect the students in the class from the real issue. The class is supposed to be about stopping piracy... what's legal, what's not... copyright 101... the whole deal... and then they jump into "why p2p is bad for you and your friends." It sounds almost like a really bad anti-drug campaign. Ultimately, you end up with half the students (who did know about p2p, heard of it, but didn't know where to get the software) saying, hmm... I can download a piece of free software, install it, and download anything I want for free? Where do I sign up? They don't realize how much they glamourize the whole thing, making it something more than it should have been in the first place. They say things "you can download music and software, but it could contain viruses that wipe out your entire harddrive and cause irrepairable damage to your PC... What are these viri? Name them! I've got enough anti virus crap on my pc, coupled with the hardware and software firewalls... and nothings getting through. Besides, most kids could care less about computer viruses. As long as it doesn't get in the way of you downloading... welcome home virus!

I think maybe educating kids in a classroom is a step in the opposite direction of where they want to be. I agree with 98% of the rest of the people in this forum... if a kid comes out of school knowing copyright laws but can't read them, something is f'ed up, and my friends, it's not the kid.

[ta2]

As long as it doesn't get in the way of you downloading... welcome home virus!

a kid comes out of school knowing copyright laws but can't read them, something is f'ed up, and my friends, it's not the kid.

LOL!!!

I agree totally...

One thing I'd like to point out. They are probably spending more money on anti-piracy than there are losing from people on p2p.

It's sad isn't it.

Its like directory enquiries here in the UK, its CHEAPER to go to India, train 100s of people in English and Directory enquiries than it is to employ english people.

LOL!!!

[bayaraa_us]

I wonder if any thick skulls from RIAA or MPAA (or whatever it's called)ever read this forum. They should at least get an idea of what they are doing.

[iooi]

Its like directory enquiries here in the UK, its CHEAPER to go to India, train 100s of people in English and Directory enquiries than it is to employ english people.

LOL!!!

Not quite true, what happens is they come over here to learn in our universties, then go back home with the degree's but cant get a well ?? paid job at home. Now many brit companies have targeted these people to staff their call center's they pay them peanuts.
The losers are the idiots who come over here get their degree and end up working a call center, why bother spending all that time at uni when they could have walked straight into that type of job....
Only way to cut piracy is for the prices of cd's and dvd's to fall to a level where its as cheap to buy as it is to make a hooky copy....

[cplevel42]

None of this crap they are pulling suprises me. They have just moved their brainwashing scheme up one notch higher on the disgusto-meter.

Friggin Sickophants!

[MOVIEGEEK]

The MPAA will be distributing this video to all schools:

[cplevel42]

i00i wrote:

Only way to cut piracy is for the prices of cd's and dvd's to fall to a level where its as cheap to buy as it is to make a hooky copy....

Agreed!!!!

[The village idiot]

This whole thing makes me endeavor to find a way to take a theater sized motion picture film print, and create a series of high quality jpegs. And it needs to be a system that will not require several days to convert. Something hacker friendly and fairly cheap, unlike a Cineon transfer machine. Then it is time to find that new job as a projectionist So far I can only come up with a way that takes about 1 or 2 frames a second, that is just not fast enough. Need to be able to push that to 10-12 frames per second before you can get away with it. And that is pretty fast for most digital still cameras, the video cameras just don't have the quality needed for this job. The audio would have to be done in another pass when the print plays back. You would need a multi-input sound card and then take the audio from the amplifier inputs so that you can get multi channel audio. Edit the frames that may have any kind of "markers" on them and smudge the areas where there might be the low bitrate coding for the newer Sarnof based scheme. Even better would be to fully implement the Sarnof encoding to replace the ID with a message for the MPAA :P . Then release the completed project as a DVD onto the 'net and let the bastards really see what pissed off hackers will come up with. Please NOTE: The above info should only be used to transfer your homemade 8mm and 16mm films to video, and should never be used to provide a means to duplicate copyrighted material. To use this for duplicating said copyrighted material would be an act of criminal intent, and would subject you to whatever laws your area may have regarding theft of copyright.

I hope the early education tactic backfires very soon. And for the MPAA lesson planners, you shouldn't focus so much attention on the P2P garbage, you should teach the kids about things like Ixx, Uxxxxt, and Fxx. Teach them that if you get a good fast connection, in the neighborhodd of 600K to 1.2 Mbps or better upstream and the same down, you too can run with the big dogs. You should also teach them about antivirus software, ad of course about modifying a virus to do your bidding. As long as you are teaching them what it takes to steal your product, you might as well teach them about other skills that might come in handy in their digital life.

Jack, you are a real wanker

[lordsmurf]

"If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it."

No, if you haven't paid for it, you've got it for free.

Take this Valenti:

[next]

"If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it."

No, if you haven't paid for it, you've got it for free.

Take this Valenti:

Very sad.

[phatslug]

The Motion Picture Association of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the business sector.

In other news the MPAA added $100,000 to its defecit this year-- analysts blame widespread movie piracy....

[jolo]

This is way more of a serious issue than discussed.

Junior Achievement has been an orgination with impecable integrity in the past. Now with new "leadership" they are selling out.

I have worked for them for over a decade and for a stinking $100,000 they sold out to the MIAA.

The big deal about this is that JA has been hounded for years by companies that want their logo on their material, etc. This is because of JA's reputation and former integrity, they get to go directly into public schools !! It is an extremely rare privilige to do that, very, very few organizations can say that. They have done a great service in the past, and I have been very proud of working or them.

Understand about the brainwashing first of an adult consultant who the kids see as an authority figure coming in to your public schools and not talking about the fair use law, or the horriffic history of the movie industry, especially with regards to children.

Please call you local school and tell them that you DO NOT want JA's programs in your schools. It is your right, you pay for the schools.

A note or call to the media bozo at HQ 719-540-6297, ebodensiek@ja.org
helps.
A call or e-mail to their CEO dchernow@ja.org (719) 540-6203 is great.
SVP of operations mlee@ja.org (719) 540-6269
Luzzo, Dr. Darrell SVP -- Education dluzzo@ja.org (719) 540-6273
Kosakowski, Jack SVP -- Area Relations jkosakowski@ja.org
(719) 540-6290
Thibodeaux, Buzzy SVP -- Public Affairs bthibodeaux@ja.org
(703) 739-3204 - This one is important.

At this page http://www.ja.org/near/near_map_alt.asp you can get the contact information of your local JA office. They all have e-mail addresses and a call or e-mail would be great. Especial to their board members.

This totally goes against their mission and their charter. It is a way to make a fast buck. They were never "for sale" before and now they have abused their privilage of entering public schools and taking up parts of the regular school day. Their former leaders must be turning in their graves. It is a call for action.

[chotoboto]

Stupid method, who is going to follow something is learn in the school?


If the teacher say to them one thing, they do the against thing.

We all was school boys, or girls, or perhaps both :P