Nonprofit Group Sends Filesharing Propaganda To Students

palegray.net writes "The National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit organization, has sent file-sharing propaganda to thousands of students. The supposedly 'educational' materials, presented in the form of a comic strip, are intended to frighten students with gross exaggerations of the legal consequences of sharing music online (lose your scholarship to college, go to jail for two years, and more). From the article: '"The Case of Internet Piracy," however, reads like the Recording Industry Association of America's public relations playbook: Download some songs, go to jail and lose your scholarship. Along the way, musicians will file onto the bread lines. "The purpose is basically to educate kids — middle school and high school-aged about how the justice system operates and about what really goes on in the courtroom as opposed to what you see on television," said Lorri Montgomery, the center's communications director.' I'm not encouraging anyone to break any laws, but this is ridiculous. What's truly discouraging is the fact that several judges appear to be in full support of this sort of 'education.' The propaganda material is available in PDF form, and it lists the judges and others involved in its creation. Wired's post has a summary of the story (which is good, since the story is awful), and Techdirt notes a couple of the legal inaccuracies.

Best coverage on p2pnet.net

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The best coverage of this has been on p2pnet.net [p2pnet.net], where Jon Newton has been trying to get answers out of these people as to (1) where this drivel comes from, (2) who is responsible for it, and (3) when is it going to be corrected or withdrawn? See, e.g, here [p2pnet.net], , and [p2pnet.net]here [p2pnet.net].

But this one [p2pnet.net] was my favorite.

Cruel Mantra?

[ProlificLurker]

That's my favorite band too!

Re:Best coverage on p2pnet.net

[multisync]

Look, I'm no fan of RIAA, but calling this "propaganda" and saying the the RIAA is behind it is over the top, invented out of whole cloth, and a conspiracy loon's fantasy.

You're either a troll, or incredibly naive. This reminds me of the the Captain Copyright [wikipedia.org] propaganda campaign Access Copyright ran in Canada a couple of years back. In addition to giving one-sided and often inaccurate information to school children, and omitting important aspects of copyright such as fair use (known as "fair dealing" in Canada), they also appeared to violate copyright law themselves by failing to abide by the terms of the Wikipedia's Free Document License.

I would like to see an effort made to educate the next generation on issues such as the erosion of our privacy, the lack of balance in current and - in Canada, at any rate - proposed [youtube.com] copyright legislation, and the importance of looking at the source of information and considering what that source's motives may be for providing it. Maybe some savvy teacher will use this as an example of never relying on a single source for information on a given subject.

For one thing the IP of 25.369.46.251 can not even

[Joe The Dragon]

For one thing the IP of 25.369.46.251 can not even be a working one as they max out at 255.

Can I ...

[PPH]

... share this with a few friends of mine?

Re:For one thing the IP of 25.369.46.251 can not e

[Skuldo]

This is probably intentional, they do this whenever an IP address is mentioned in a film or TV show.

Re:Time we hit Hollywood with a Digital Tea Party

[Uther_Dark]

Amen to that, I'm going to start by violating any copyright you have on your post, making it a text file and spreading it across the internet. Your message will be heard. :D Toss that tea...

How about making our own comics?

[Doug52392]

Why not make comics that represent the sad, pathetic truth of the fucked up legal system and unconstitutionality by the RIAA and MPAA? Hell, just edit this one and add the truth to it, like change the police officer giving here the trial notice to a money-hungry lawyer in a suit and tie, with $ signs for eyes. And add in some details in the end, so it says "I say it's good I got caught because some people don't get caught, which means they are hurting the (take out music industry) the artists that make music, because now they won't be able to afford their 10th Lear jet or 4th luxury sports car or huge mansion because people are waking up and realizing that this is BS."

Oh, and add some stuff about how the RIAA are demanding 9,250 times the "damages" the poor girl caused, and have the RIAA lawyers say "We don't give a fuck it's unconstitutional or not. This is America god damn it, and in America, we have a truly fucked up legal system where we, the legal representatives to the few conglomerates that control the entire media in the United States like Commies, can sue innocent people for not doing exactly what a certain industry wants us to do!

This bitch should have realized that we make you PAY so much money for music for a reason, because we WANT $$$$$$$. And yet she chose to get in the way of our capitalist dream, so she must burn in Hell!!! (but since we can't go that far, let's just sue her for 9,250-20,000 times the value of the music she downloaded). I mean seriously, if the government didn't have a problem with us harassing Sweden to shut down ONE WEBSITE FOR A FEW DAYS just for hosting LINKS to copyrighted materials (The Pirate Bay), what makes you think they'll have a problem with this? "

And, with the eminent domain BS (isn't that a thing Republicans love to do), edit the section and have the mayor come down to the house, with police officers armed with AK-47s saying "Get the fuck out of this house, it's the city's now biach! We take this house under Eminent Domain, SO GET THE FUCK OUT"

So once we make these comics, distribute them to all the collage students that received the lying propaganda!