MPAA awards Boy Scouts with Respecting Copyright Merit Badge
When I was in high school for school spirit week, my friend Ryan and I dressed up as Boy Scouts for twin day. We wore two identical Class-A Boy Scout uniforms complete with short shorts, knee high socks, and brass on brass belt buckles. We had a great time mocking the Boy Scouts but ironically, the only reason we had all that crap was because Ryan and I had been in the Boy Scouts our entire lives. We were so hardcore that when we were twelve we both went to the National Jamboree.
After satisfying the necessary requirements, in conjunction with the MPAA and the RIAA Los Angeles area Boy Scouts are now eligible for a special patch in “respecting copyright.” To earn the patch, Scouts will have to do one of the following: visit a peer-to-peer file-sharing network to identify which files are illegal and which are legal; create a 1 minute movie explaining the importance of copyright protection; or go to a movie and after watching the credits explain to their counselor who is hurt by copyright infringement. You can read the full curriculum here.
Personally I would choose the “go to a movie” option because that sounds like it is the easiest. I would not pick the “make a movie” option because filmmaking is hard and it’s really expensive to get proper clearances for your music. On a side note, amongst Boy Scouts there is a patch trading activity where you trade interesting, rare, and vintage patches with one another. When I went to the National Jamboree the most coveted patch was the Marin County totally unlicensed “Yoda” Star Wars patch (Lucas Film has since licensed the image and the 2005 patches feature a trademark.)
Contrary to recent reports, the award is in fact a patch and not a full merit badge. Since it is a local initiative of the Los Angeles Council for the Boy Scouts of America and not officially sanctioned by the National Boy Scouts of America, becoming an industry shill will not get you any closer to your Eagle. Still, it’s a little disturbing that the MPAA and the RIAA are out there indoctrinating children with their anti-consumer, anti-progress, and draconian notions about copyright. As Cory Doctorow points out, there is no discussion about fair use, consumer rights, or how copyright law orphans creative work. I don’t think it’s bad for kids to understand that artists and industry should be compensated for their work, but I do think its wrong to inform kids about both sides of the debate. Plus, that patch is probably the ugliest patch I’ve ever seen and its a shame to make the Boy Scout uniform worse than it already is.
One of my biggest regrets is that I’m not an Eagle Scout. While I disagree with a lot of the organizations intolerant values, there is still something to be said about a kid who gets his Eagle Scout. More telling, there is something to be said about a kid who jumps through all the hoops and gets all the merit badges to be a Life Scout by age 14, and then doesn’t bother to do that one last step necessary to be an Eagle. But I digress…