Teaching Copyright

According to the program's web site, Music Rules is "a free educational program designed to encourage respect for intellectual property and responsible use of the Internet among students in grades 3-8."

At Ars Technica, Nate Anderson takes a look at the curriculum, which happens to be sponsored by the RIAA, Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum: "If this sounds more like 'propaganda' than 'education,' that's probably because Big Content funds such educational initiatives to decrease what it variously refers to in these curricula as 'songlifting,' 'bootlegging,' and 'piracy."

I tend to think that copyright basics are part of the discussion about information literacy, plagarism and general internet skills that should be taught as part of teaching in the digital age, as copyright is not just recordings, but also text, images and movies.