Librarians and Internet: Intriguing Filesharing Defenders

People have been sending in great tips about all the different ways MPAA and BSA are growing their curricula in schools and other groups that are doing amazing things to turn this issue on its head and into a debate. Okay, here is something that possibly smells of effectiveness:

1. MPAA hired the pro-business bridge to schools, Junior Achievement to teach MPAA’s filesharing curriculum in underfunded schools. They also hosted a letter writing contest that got kids to convince other kids about what was bad. MPAA gave away DVD players, trips out to LA and the like.

2. This year the contest is still around, but there will be no prizes. Darrell Luzzo, the vice president of education for JA Worldwide said,
“In retrospect, if we were to do this again, we would want to talk more about fair use than we did this time around.”
Luzzo said discussions with educators at the National Education Association helped them realize that the program should have taken a broader perspective on copyright instead of focusing on one side of the issue, in Wired News’ article.

3. The NEA also objected to the lavish prizes and freebies offered by the MPAA. They say, “We want to teach children to be thinking human beings,” said Melinda Anderson, a spokeswoman for the NEA. “Not a parrot for some corporate agenda.”

4. The said JA curriculum called “What’s the Diff?” can not be found on JA’s site. There is no mention of the curriculum anywhere on their site. I was last able to download the curriculum at least a month ago. You can find bits of the curriculum at Kids Smell Bullshit.

IT SEEMS LIKE WE APPROPRIATELY CALLED OUT PROPAGANDA.

From the same article, the American Library Association has beat everyone in the United States to the punch in the most efficient and offensive way possible; they are introducing a fair and balanced filesharing curriculum into schools and are distributing their materials through school librarians this winter or spring.Their curriculum must be interesting and we wanna help. If anyone knows of a better way than email to get to somebody in their offices, please let us know. In any case, librarians are so awesome, they spearheaded a strong opposition to parts of the Patriot Act, getting rid of user backlogs so that officials just couldn’t get to them and successfully standing up to barriers to distribution of knowledge and now this – they are so smart and so humble. Too bad it’s a fight of teachers vs. librarians here, though I would suggest that they both win in this case.

The librarians have the right idea of coming up with a solid curriculum and distributing it to kids, can we make an internet-based one at copyright curriculum?

On the down side it seems that the Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper has come up with their own pro-business filesharing curriculum based on the MPAA model and are distributing it in England’s schools, where they “set up a class debate between ‘downloaders’ and ‘industry representatives'”. No room for Lawrence Lessigs or miscellaneous copyright law visionaries there, then’ and get kids to design posters for the MPAA. The Register has complete details and found parts of the subscriptioned curriculum here and this one on the Guardian’s claim that DVD’s have something to do with terrorism here. The Register debunks this theoretical correlation, illuminating that the Interpol report that makes this link solely refers to a study that says dvd-burning/selling is low risk and high in profit compared to selling cocaine or those other old crimes. Thus, Interpol concluded that it was possible to state that IP crime may become a major source of terrorists’ funding. Interpol had no clear reason to make such a strongly-stated and strong, dubious link, except possibly, and I am only saying possibly to appease some industry demand.

There is so much work being done on copyright education at the university level, when are we gonna get it to the elementary level where kids are also receptive and really care about the internet?