[Infowarrior] - Piracy lectures to kids: Your Tax Dollars At Work

[Richard Forno]

Feds take a nip-it-in-the-bud approach to Internet piracy

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/673092.html

The top official in the U.S. Patent Office took his message to a Bloomington
elementary school to talk to the next generation of potential offenders.

John Reinan, Star Tribune
Wearing a blue suit and a tight smile, the fed faced his audience.

This wasn't just any Washington bureaucrat. This was the director of the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a high-powered attorney who reports to
President Bush and calls senators by their first names.

And this wasn't just any audience. It consisted of 300 potential offenders,
rounded up on Tuesday so Jon Dudas could lay down the law to them.

They sat in rows on a gymnasium floor, twirling their pigtails and tugging
their Pokeman sweatshirts as Dudas warned them not to steal music on the
Internet.

The crowd of second- through fifth-graders at Westwood Elementary School in
Bloomington was well-prepared for the visit, having earlier watched an
anti-piracy video provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Theft of intellectual property, on the Internet and elsewhere, costs U.S.
businesses as much as $250 billion a year, Dudas said.

"You wouldn't take a CD off the shelf without paying for it," Dudas said,
pretending to hide a CD inside his suit coat. "And you shouldn't get music
on the Internet without paying for it."

As he explained the fine points of copyright law and intellectual property,
the kids fired off questions about inventions, patents and the ethics of
music downloads.

Dudas visited Westwood after speaking at a small-business conference in
Minneapolis earlier in the day. He chose the school because of its
connection with Camp Invention, an enrichment program sponsored by the
National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation.

With more than half of all students in grades one through five using the
Internet, according to the U.S. Department of Education, schools have begun
teaching about piracy and plagiarism earlier than ever. In Bloomington, kids
start learning about the ethics of technology and the Internet in
kindergarten, said district spokesman Richard Cash.

The message is getting through, said Westwood second-graders Griffin Lindahl
and Mikayla Snyder.

"No taking other people's stuff!" Griffin said.

Added Mikayla: "Don't copy other people's ideas or you'll get in trouble."

John Reinan € 612-673-7402 € jreinan at startribune.com

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