

The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens - timw6n
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/29/copyright-cartel-indoctrinate-kindergartens

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mav3r1ck
I know javajosh would agree, but seriously, is no one else extremely disturbed
by the clear implications of this 'plot'?

So basically, a group of corporations can't get people to behave the way they
want them to. So their idea is to literally influence the educational
curriculum in the hopes that future generations will behave exactly the way
they want them to.

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg on our already extremely broken
education system. This is what we publicly know. For example, I wouldn't be
surprised if oil companies are inserting into geology class that global
warming is a hoax.

In much the same way we have separation of church and state, perhaps we should
consider having a separation of corporation and state. The government's
interest should solely rest with the electorate. Although we legally consider
corporations people, they most certainly cannot vote and therefore they should
have no influence whatsoever on government.

I know I am speaking from an idealist point of view, but the government's
interests should never be aligned with corporations at the expense of the
voting electorate. Which is exactly the problem with what the copyright cartel
is doing.

~~~
3825
How would we enforce a separation of corporation and the state? From what I
know, the separation of the Church and the state is to stop the government
from interfering with matters of the Church.

We don't even have a mechanism to restrict the Church from interfering with
the state besides taking away a privilege of tax-exempt status. I am not
restriction is a bad idea. I am just not sure how it is achievable.

~~~
jcromartie
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

This is a protection _from_ an official state religion. Lobbying for near-
monopoly positions, favored status, and regulatory capture might be a sort of
"establishment" of special corporate status over the people.

------
anigbrowl
From the Grade 1 lesson:

 _[Select two students who are outgoing and will be able to enjoy this
activity. Send the students on a quick (30 seconds) errand before they start
drawing. Example: “Please run this note to the library.” When the students
leave, tell the class you want them to all copy one of the pictures being
drawn on the white board. Remind the class to copy the artwork without telling
the volunteer artists.]_

What.

I personally think that teachers who can't/won't draft their own lesson plans
need to be fired. I still can't get over the fact that American textbooks also
come in teacher editions with the answers to exercises provided so that the
teacher doesn't have to work them out.

The grade 5 materials are more reasonable, suggesting reliance on resources
like creative commons or voluntary sharing, and using real-world examples of
people who work in the arts not getting paid. These are just factual; a lot of
indie movies only get made because the cast & crew workf or free in exchange
for an ownership interest. As pointed out below though, they don't include any
discussion of fair use or the notion that copyright should exist for limited
times.

~~~
Natsu
> I still can't get over the fact that American textbooks also come in teacher
> editions with the answers to exercises provided so that the teacher doesn't
> have to work them out.

Pointless busywork is pointless. If they can't find the answers, you're better
off addressing the root cause, not driving anyone semi-skilled away from
teaching. And just how many times have you graded 50 1st grade math tests,
anyhow? Especially when they come up with a new edition every year.

Very sad when we should be able to do more in the way of open source textbooks
(and exercise generators), but your gripe is not well-thought out and
insulting to decent teachers, of whom I have known many.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's neither pointless nor busywork. Being able to work the problem or know
the material well enough to accurately assess the quality of students'
homework submissions is a baseline requirement for effective teaching.

~~~
Natsu
It's pointless because if you can't do it, you're not qualified to teach and
it's busywork because doing 30 students' 30 first grade math problems takes a
lot of time that can be better spent doing things that actually benefit the
class.

It sounds like you've had bad teachers, for which I pity you. I had many good
ones, as my mother was a teacher and my parents made sure we got a good
education, both at home and at school. Perhaps you've only known people who
were made to teach subjects they were unqualified to teach. That is sad, then,
if you haven't known good teachers.

But that says more about you than teachers in general. You have something
against teachers, as I've seen this axe ground before.

------
AmiiJewels
I 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

------
IvyMike
This will probably work just about as well as D.A.R.E. did to convince
Californians to not take drugs.

~~~
seiji
Don't Copy That Floppy

------
jackschultz
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.

~~~
emiliobumachar
"Cartel" seems like a distortion to me, too, but "indoctrinate" seems like a
perfectly valid label for the attempt to systematically teach small children
to support a political stance. If you wouldn't call _that_ true
indoctrination, what would qualify?

~~~
rayiner
Respecting a widely acknowledged property right isn't a political stance. Nor
is it indoctrination to teach kids to respect other peoples work.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Respecting a widely acknowledged property right _is_ a political stance when
widely acknowledged exceptions to that right are left aside. There's also the
controversial subtopic of draconian policing of violations of those rights in
recent years.

Copyright is not a topic for small children. Adults are barely grown up enough
to discuss it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the also controversial subtopic of expiration and lack
thereof.

------
arh68
Comedy gold:

> _Artists are “graded” or valued by how many people buy their work._

> _We hope others will respect our work ... And we ‘play fair’ with their work
> too._

No mention of Melchior Rietveldt, Patrick Robin, of course. And certainly
nothing like Courtney Love Does The Math.

------
javajosh
Yes, 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, and your property that I was so
recklessly and wantonly stealing from. My teachers never even mentioned the
word "copyright" and I had no idea I had to ask your permission, individually.
Of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse, even for a young child, and now
I have to live with the shame and the guilt every day.

There are many ways that America's schoolchildren have wronged the members of
the RIAA and the MPAA. But record companies and the movie industry aren't the
only ones victimized by school children. Literally millions of school papers
are written every year, containing billions of quotations and materials, some
quoted at length, and virtually none of those papers asked the original
creator for permission.

What have we become?

~~~
foobarbazqux
> What have we become?

A nation of thieves. Actually, seems we started that way.

~~~
Ygg2
I'm pretty sure that's Australia, right?

America started as land of religious zealots.

~~~
VLM
The people who were here thousands of years before Puritan nutcases started
getting dumped here to get them away from the civilized people, would beg to
disagree, if they hadn't mostly been genocided away. Thats probably what OP
was referencing.

America started as a bunch of vaguely Asiatic foragers crossed over more or
less in Alaska a couple thousand years ago. The noob bible thumpers arriving a
couple centuries ago wiped out the first wave pretty effectively but they
hardly "started it".

~~~
pessimizer
I'm pretty sure that "America" was being used to refer to the United States,
not the entire New World or even the particular portion that the United States
happens to sit on.

------
lawnchair_larry
We should be far more worried about religious indoctrination than this.

~~~
seiji
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.

~~~
ars
> 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.

~~~
derleth
So telling little gay kids that they were born broken and are going to Hell
isn't abuse?

Don't you dare say that it doesn't happen or that it doesn't matter. Don't you
dare.

~~~
drdeca
To me it seems like calling that the fault of "religion" seems roughly
analogous to blaming the concept of "government" for the actions of a specific
city or state/province government? (that is, either 1 or 2 levels below a
national government , though I might have made a mistake with the analogy
there)

Not all religions/versions of a religion are the same.

I acknowledge that an analogy is not always a particularly strong argument,
but it was the first responce I thought of, and it seemed an acceptable
responce to me.

Also, it might have made more sense to respond a few levels up, not sure what
would have made the most sense to reply to.

~~~
derleth
It isn't a bad analogy. My counterargument is that local government policy can
usually be changed a lot more easily than religious dogma, especially dogma
surrounding who to demonize. Maintaining a strong notion of who is in the in-
group and who is in the out-group seems to be an important mechanism in
maintaining tribal cohesion.

My point is that religions seem prone to demonizing people as a quick and easy
way to define themselves and maintain cohesion. Look at all the really nasty
doctrinal splits through history.

------
joliv
The 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.

~~~
timw6n
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.

~~~
jackalope
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](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/](http://www.teachingcopyright.org/).

 _Songlifting._ Give me a break...

~~~
noonespecial
I sense the approach of Mike Godwin on this one.

------
Ygg2
I find this appropriate
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_hWoGrxWg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_hWoGrxWg)

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jmgrosen
_Brave New World_ , anybody?

~~~
aqme28
How exactly?

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tpainton
religious indoctrination? from the California teachers union? Now that is
funny.

