[DMCA-Activists] Copyright Crusaders Hit Schools

[Seth Johnson]

(Did the BSA really pick a weasel for a mascot?  -- Seth)


http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64543,00.html

Copyright Crusaders Hit Schools 
By Katie Dean
02:00 AM Aug. 13, 2004 PT

For the third year in a row, software companies are supplying schools with
materials that promote their antipiracy position on copyright law. But for
the first time this year, the library association is presenting its own
material, hoping to give kids a more balanced view of copyright law.

The American Library Association will distribute its materials through
high-school librarians this winter or spring. In September, the ALA will
hold focus groups with teenagers to better understand how they use the
Internet, what they think about the technology and what language they use.
That information will contribute to ALA-created comic books that address
various copyright issues relevant to students. 

The ALA sees a need for this because materials offered by groups like the
Business Software Alliance and the Motion Picture Association of America are
designed to influence kids with one-sided information, said Rick Weingarten,
director of information technology policy for the ALA. Topics like "fair
use" -- the right to use copyright material without the owner's permission,
a key concept in American law that intellectual-property experts say leads
to innovation -- are not adequately addressed.

"There is certainly concern about the fact that when the content industry
talks about copyright and young people in the same sentence, they are either
calling them all crooks or they are making claims for copyright that far
exceed what copyright is all about," Weingarten said. "Any education program
that comes from that source is inherently going to be biased."

A copyright-crusading cartoon ferret is the latest brainchild from the BSA.
The software trade group will sponsor a contest in September to name the
weasel mascot, which will be used in marketing campaigns to teach kids to be
good cybercitizens. The group, which represents the most powerful software
companies in the world, will also mail an antipiracy comic book and
teacher's guide to subscribers of the Weekly Reader, a publication for
grade-schoolers, in January. The literature is targeted at fourth-graders.

"We're trying to educate children at a very young age about the importance
of protecting copyrighted works," said Diane Smiroldo, vice president of
public affairs for the BSA. "It's important to start talking to them at a
very young age about creative works online and what you can and can't share
with your friends."

Smiroldo compared the BSA's program to an antismoking or antilittering
campaign. The curriculum doesn't talk about fair use but focuses on what are
"right and wrong" behaviors online.

She said a trade group like the BSA educating kids about copyright works is
not biased, and said it is important that kids receive such messages from a
variety of sources, like teachers, librarians and parents, too.

"The idea that elementary-school kids are ripping off business software is a
little strange," Weingarten said. "But that's (the BSA's) problem. They'll
decide where they want to focus their education efforts."

Ren Bucholz, activism coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
said it makes sense that the BSA would target young kids.

"Kids may not have such fully formed ideas about how the world works,"
Bucholz said. "For older students, that stuff doesn't wash."

He said once students develop critical thinking skills, read the news and
learn about content owners suing their customers, for instance, it decreases
the industry's ability to "take the moral high ground." Encouraging students
to discuss issues related to file sharing would be more productive.

The EFF has also developed a proposal for an intellectual-property
curriculum of its own, which has not yet been funded.

Last year, the MPAA sponsored a program called "What's the Diff?" with
Junior Achievement, a nonprofit organization that provides business and
economics-related curriculum to schools. The curriculum was a shorter
supplement to JA's regular programs.

The program included an essay contest in which students competed to write
the most creative plan to convince their peers not to download content
illegally from the Internet. The digital-citizenship program is still
available to teachers through local JA offices for another year, but no
contest or prizes will be issued this year.

"In retrospect, if we were to do this again, we would want to talk more
about fair use than we did this time around," said Darrell Luzzo, the vice
president of education for JA Worldwide.

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.

The NEA also objected to the lavish prizes and freebies offered by the MPAA.

"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."