As per the US Patent and Trademark office homepage, a Bush administration official educated children attending “Camp Innovation” on the horrible consequences of intellectual property “theft:”

Dudas reminded the children that copying or downloading others’ property without their permission is a crime, and that this crime has real economic consequences for our economy.

Apparently while teaching children the perils of copyright violation may not be above their level, discussing the virtues of fair use were conveniently left out. Perhaps someone needs to remind Dudas that there is a very legal way to copy portions of someone’s property without their permission.

Illegally copying computer games, DVDs and other products is just as wrong as stealing these items from the store.

Perhaps we might also want to remind Dudas about the difference between physical property and digital property. To put it plainly, when I take a DVD from the store, it is no longer there, but when I make a digital copy, it is not detracting from your ability to view the file. I think the children at Camp Innovation can grasp that.

Dudas also used his remarks to educate the students about what constitutes intellectual property, explaining that the term ‘intellectual property’ can be used to describe many products—a car, a medicine, a toy, a video game or a CD—as long as the product began as an idea.

So as long as children “realize” at a young age that there should be absolute ownership of ideas, the agenda will be perpetuated. This seems analogous to British officials encouraging elementary school children to place copyright symbols on their homework.

While the PTO has set out to reach the nation’s youngest, it may in fact be too late to get the Napster generation on board. When Attorney General Gonzales spoke to high school students about “online piracy” in April, many were unsympathetic.

Is this really the message we want to be sending to our nation’s children? Accept restrictive IP policies at a young age and you’ll never even question it otherwise!

Press release on the visit

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Commentary, Copyright, U.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.