p2pnet - rss feed: MPAA: brainwashing children
p2pnet.net News:- The RIAA’s most recent marketing triumph has been to scam Penn State University and the University of Rochester into becoming record industry cops and salesmen. Unpaid, of course.
If students download ‘product’ from the Big Five record labels from ’services’ supported by the Big Five record labels instead of from online file sharing networks, they [the students] can avoid being dragged into court by the Big Five record labels, says the RIAA, with its oppo in the movie industry, the MPAA, right behind.
So that’s nicely in hand and in the meanwhile, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) - with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) right behind, of course - hasn’t dropped a frame in its campaign to win the hearts and minds of children in junior and mid-level schools.
It’s force-feeding high-toned moralistic ‘educational’ programs to the kids —– which is interesting given that Hollywood is home to some of the most immoral, greedy and dishonest people on the face of the earth.
And what makes it even more interesting is that teachers and school administrators are not only letting them do it, they’re actively helping them.
In October, last year, p2pnet reported that Hollywood was embarking on a project to pump anti-piracy messages to 900,000 students through a program being “integrated” into more than 36,000 classrooms across America.
Carrying the message to children in grades five to nine via volunteer teachers was (and still is, says a Boston Globe story here) Junior Achievement.
It’s offering students DVD players, DVD movies, theater tickets and all-expenses-paid trips to Hollywood for winning essays about the illegalities of file-sharing, it said when the program was launched, going on, “Teachers, too, can win prizes for effectively communicating the approved message in class.”
In the Globe story, “The industry is dominated by five studio-based conglomerates that also own major recording labels, television networks, radio stations, and other media subsidiaries,” writes Kathleen Sharp. “Its antifilm-piracy curriculum was developed to preempt problems suffered by the music industry, which for years has claimed that it loses as much as $4 billion a year from illegal copying.”
It has MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor saying 500,000 movies are being downloaded every day around the world, although he wasn’t sure how many of those are illegal: ”We know that one area we have to attack is on the educational front”.
Like the RIAA, Sharp continues, the MPAA has started to sue those who download content illegally. But unlike the recording industry, the studios are tapping a nonprofit business group to bring its antipiracy message to young people.
The group is Junior Achievement.
And Sharp’s story gets even more alarming.
“Earlier this year, Junior Achievement volunteers debuted the industry’s program in California classrooms,” she says.
“One volunteer, Steve Dolcemaschio, an executive with E! Entertainment Television Inc. (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.
“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’.”
A few days ago the FBI, in effect acting for the entertainment industry, raided schools in Arizona looking for ‘pirate’ contraband in the shape of music and movie files.
Sharp concludes with a quote from Alex Molnar, a professor who is director of commercialism in education at Arizona State University.
Commercialism has no place in the classroom, he said. ”This program is a time vampire. Is it more important for kids to hear the movie industry’s message or should they be learning to read and pass new test standards?”
And she winds up with a comment from Darrell Luzzo, senior vp of Junior Achievement who defends the industry’s antipiracy program by saying it’s not meant to cover all aspects of copyright law. Rather, the idea is to encourage student debate.
”We are learning ways to enhance classroom discussions.”
April 27th, 2004 at 1:56 am
an alarming percentage of children make it through elementary and high school without properly knowing how to read or perform expected levels of mathematics, yet they want to use classroom time to encourage children to tow the corporate line!!
f’ing unbelievable…
…’time vampire’ is an understatement, it’s a bloody travesty and anothger example of priorities being out of whack with reality, which seems to be a common theme when dealing with the RIAA and MPAA.
April 27th, 2004 at 3:02 am
Why don’t we mold are children into zombies? Drug and alcohol campaigns are bad enough, but now something that doesn’t ruin families or lives is now going to be a focal point in school? I guess protecting money is way more important than protecting America’s education. Bad enough most schools are under funded and understaffed.
I love that editorial comment added in the Apple iTunes article. I think the RIAA and the MPAA should join Apple and watch for not shitting on their own porch. I know as a future parent, I’m not letting my children breathe the thoughts of protecting manipulative and rotten monopolies.
April 27th, 2004 at 5:50 pm
Their strategy will work with children under 10, but will backfire with older kids. I remember when I was a kid, we would try to do things that we were told not to do.
Most people download music to sample new songs. In the future, kids will download and share music because they are told it’s wrong by their teachers. 12-16 year olds don’t want to be doing the same things 6-10 year olds are doing.
The RIAA is making is cool to download illegal music.
April 28th, 2004 at 2:47 am
Wow this is a sad state of affairs, but not surprising.
The record industry will do everything it can to make the free exchange of music “wrong”. They make millions flogging the latest crap and rely on the nieve integrity of others to enforce their limited view of the roll that music can play in our lives.
My opinon… music should be as inexpensive as the distribution mechanisms plus a small mark up for the artist. With the internet the distribution is essentially free. Arranging the small mark up for Artists isn’t worth the billions taken out by the record industry.
This is the pricing structure that makes sense, and it is the one that will eventually emerge. Kids should be taught to learn what makes sense in school, not how to pass judgement before they can reason through the issues.
To the Author: Thanks for writing such a great article.