I'm actually impressed at how slanted the title is. Using the words "cartel" and "indoctrinate" hits on two major scare points and we don't even have to read a word of the article. Very tough for me to trust what they have to say since they didn't think the words themselves were convincing enough.
The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#22The doesn't seem HORRIBLE: although it may not be good that external companies are influencing the curriculum, an understanding of copyright seems like an idea that is understandable for the CSLA to want to teach in some regard.
I agree that giving kids an accurate understanding is important — the problem with these teaching materials is that they're being very selective in which parts of copyright law that they teach: According to the linked article, there's no mention of Fair Use provisions, which the record industry would much rather you didn't take advantage of, in the curriculum at all.
I submit that an understanding of taxation and representative democracy is more important. We cannot teach everything in school. Class time is a limited resource and wasting it on copyright and what not is a clear abomination. I'd rather kids learned more useful things like learning to read, write, and do arithmetic.
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#23The doesn't seem HORRIBLE: although it may not be good that external companies are influencing the curriculum, an understanding of copyright seems like an idea that is understandable for the CSLA to want to teach in some regard.
I agree that giving kids an accurate understanding is important — the problem with these teaching materials is that they're being very selective in which parts of copyright law that they teach: According to the linked article, there's no mention of Fair Use provisions, which the record industry would much rather you didn't take advantage of, in the curriculum at all.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I blew my stack when my child was assigned this worksheet from the the RIAA's Music Rules! program as homework:
http://www.music-rules.com/pdf/MusicRulesElemActivities.pdf
Part 2 is particularly egregious: "Now find out if songlifting is a real problem in your community. Use this chart to interview family members and friends about where they get their music. Bring your findings back to class and combine them with those of your classmates."
Really?!! You want our children to compile a list of family and friends (identified by age only, but still...) that you believe are breaking the law and hand it in as signed homework? I complained immediately about this not-so-subtle indoctrination and provided the teacher with a link to the EFF's more balanced and accurate Teaching Copyright site at http://www.teachingcopyright.org/.
Songlifting. Give me a break...
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#24This will probably work just about as well as D.A.R.E. did to convince Californians to not take drugs.
Yep. DARE: widely recognized as ineffective, maybe even increases drug use:
http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/03/dare-americas-most-famous-...
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#25I am going to flip this around... we should be teaching children the basics of research, citation, fair use and permission at a young level.
By encouraging children to go off and research and create I hypothesis that they will naturally lean towards simple, creative commons and other "free" or "libre" licenses and start to actively seek these out in favour of more tightly controlled, restrictive, corporate licensing schemes.
Teaching them how to cite, what fair use is and how to ask seek permission from content authors gives them the tools to fight overly restrictive copyright laws - and hopefully, one day, abolish them in favour of sane, time bounded licenses
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#26Yes, it has angered me for many years - and has been a bitter regret my entire life - that my public school basically forced me to break the law for so many years, and never more egregiously than when I made my collages. To all of the authors, photographers, and publishers of the many magazines and newspapers that I defaced and stole from: I am so, so sorry. I never realized that it was your work, your life blood, an…
> What have we become? A nation of thieves. Actually, seems we started that way.
I'm pretty sure that's Australia, right?
America started as land of religious zealots.
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#27I find this appropriate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_hWoGrxWg
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#28We should be far more worried about religious indoctrination than this.
I'd love to see people stand up to Big Religion, but... how? Religion is institutionalized mental and physical child abuse and everybody seems a-okay with all of it.
An inaccurate claim at the end given the trend toward irreligion in the united states. The wikipedia article of the same title is a pretty good summary.
Re: The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
#29We should be far more worried about religious indoctrination than this.
I'd love to see people stand up to Big Religion, but... how? Religion is institutionalized mental and physical child abuse and everybody seems a-okay with all of it.
> everybody seems a-okay with all of it.
Because it's not abuse.
Since when did it become socially acceptable to be bigoted in public? If you want to be intolerant at least keep your nastiness to yourself.