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Kiddie propaganda poisoning young Canadians
By Donnell Alexander
Posted on June 6, 2006, Printed on February 13, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/37182/kiddie_propaganda_poisoning_young_canadians
Yesterday on the "Wide World of Digital Rights," we visited Sweden and the Pirates who've decided to take their police-raided mess and talk about the origins and meaning of copyright in the digital age. Today, let's make our way back to the North American continent, where the Canadian government has launched a new propaganda campaign targeting little kids, in order to "teach" them the ins and outs of legality of copyright. Pleeeeeease welcome to the stage: Captain Copyright!
Those wacky Canadians up north have created a cartoon character to inform kids about how to spot illegal activities such as copyright infringement, much like our own Eddie Eagle, who pimps for the NRA. (Luckily, taxpayer dollars aren't paying Eddie's salary, though.) What does Captain Copyright want little kids to do? Here are some activities:
"Activity Two seeks to build respect for the copyright symbol by asking the grade one students to role play by seeking copyright permission and to sell their copyright work. Activity Three asks the students to picture a world without copyright and to discuss whether their favourite book or song would still be created. Activity Six celebrates creativity by having the class create a group book with an additional page for the copyright notice. Activity Seven envisions grade one students creating their own copyright permission form."
One can only hope that the kids of Canada are staring down the Captain in ridiculous disbelief. Nevermind all the little insidious bits (like how they reserve the right to prevent critical websites from linking to them), or the hypocritical BS (nearly all of the Captain's costume bits can be traced to other cartoon heroes, and they ripped off the Wikipedia, for cryin' out loud), this campaign of dishonesty is nothing short of the "all Russians are evil and want to hunt you down and eat you" stuff people my age were fed as kids... only this type of campaign threatens the vitality and creativity of an entire future generation.
Deanna Zandt is a contributing editor at AlterNet.
© 2012 All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/37182/
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