UK music Mafia threatens kiddies
MUSIC INDUSTRY FAT CATS have gone one step beyond with a nauseating campaign, hiding behind the skirts of legitimate children's charity, to stop kids from downloading music which isn't lining their own bulging, hand-stitched pockets.
The campaign, which is spearheaded by a leaflet which will be distributed to thousands of schools and libraries, uses the kind of scare tactics we thought were no longer acceptable in our free and open society.
The campaign tries to convince kids that downloading even one song without paying for it will send Daddy's computer into virus hell, and goes on to point out that, as children are not legally responsible for their own actions, downloading that Bob the Builder live bootleg will almost certainly end up with mummy going to prison.
Even rosy-cheeked, potato-faced no mark Ronan Keating has come out of enforced retirement, no doubt for a fat fee, to support the campaign. "There is a constant worry about the security of the Internet with children", he said. " This new guide helps adults and children to use the Internet safely and securely."
No it doesn't Ronan! It helps greedy music industry execs with no talent and a heavily vested interest in maintaining the status quo to protect their fat salaries without having to use their imaginations to realise that the music world is changing faster than they can drag their corpulent backsides out of their Bentleys. <Takes a breath and calms down a bit>.
The leaflet goes on to talk about helping parents and children to manage the risks of the Internet and get the most out of new technology, but we're so angry, we'll have to go and have a little lie down. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
The leaflet states "Some P2P programmes come with extra software, called “spyware”.
This may report which websites you visit to marketing companies, or
even record your passwords and send them to fraudsters."

Just the same as BT and Phorm then
If that comes to my school!!

We will fight them on the beaches....
I rang childnet today about this. The leaflet is sponsored by the music industry and is directly targeted at kids and teachers to protect the revenue stream of the music industry, under the guise of "informing children about the dangers of the internet". The only reason we have such cheap low cost music, is because its so easy to copy now, that they can't demand absurd prices, because people will copy it instead.

When I asked them why they felt that they had to advise school kids on civil issues in this manner they had no recourse other than the fact they were paid to do it.

I said it was a job of the parent not them or the schools, and why was the music industry allow special favours to promote themselves? - They paid for the priviledge and Childnet is a charity.

So it seems you can get free propaganda advertising to the most vulnerable and impressionable people in our society, by flinging money at struggling charities and bribing them to do your dirty work, or so it would seem.

I read the leaflet, its very carefully worded to scare and seem plausible at the same time.

I rang the school my kids go to and instructed the school that they must not give this leaflet to my kids, and my kids are not to participate in any school "education" classes based on information in this leaflet.

Simply put, its misleading propaganda (we call it FUD in the it industry I believe) and I want my kids to have no part of it.

Its scare-ware for the music industry. 

Most importantly why are schools advising children on civil and economic matters of this nature.

Very very wrong indeed.

Among my favourite clearly-untrue gems:

'P2P software opens “doors” in your computer which may compromise privacy and security. It is possible to inadvertently share private and confidential details including financial information with other
file-sharers.'

'...each hard drive is accessible by all other users of the P2P network at that moment.'

'File-swappers...can also be at risk of leaks of personal details possibly resulting in identity theft.'



There's also something odd about encouraging teaching staff to shill for the BPI (et al) and discuss copyright law in the classroom. Especially in such a dishonest way.
It's actually quite funny...

Sharing a hard drive with p2p... Well maybe with Kazaa, but blimee, you have to jump through hoops with Bittorrent... I loose patience after just sharing a couple of files!

All the way through their scare tactics I was thinking, odd, no mention of the tools to protect yourself from a nasty evil virus posing as Britney's latest hit... A few urls like
http://free.grisoft.com
And
http://www.safer-networking.org
Wouldn't have gone amis...
Curiously there was no mention of the safepeer plug in for Azureus, or peerguardian... Odd that. They could save daddy from Mr Big in the showers.