Piracy fear campaign

Fear tactics persist in the education of youth and parents about digital issues. This time the "be afraid" message is echoed by the National Center for State Courts, Wired blogger David Kravets reports. In this case it's packaged into a 24-page leaflet in the form of a comic book which is being distributed to 50,000 students nationwide. One of the storylines is about how "criminal" teen file-sharer Megan's grandmother has to "fight eminent domain proceedings to keep her house while Megan ... deals with the charges against her." The story goes that Megan had learned "to download music from a friend. About 2,000 downloads and three months later, a police officer from the fictitious City of Arbor, knocks on her door, and hands her a criminal summons to appear in court." In fact, Kravets reports, "criminal copyright infringement is when somebody sells pirated works and not sharing on a peer-to-peer network. And it’s the federal government, not local cities, which prosecute the criminal cases." For perspective on this issue, see "Cyberethics: Downloading Music from the Internet" from University of Missouri-based eMINTS and "Young People, Music & the Internet" from London-based Childnet International.