- Britain's The Times has just published a long, highly innacurate 'report' which "for the first time" reveals that parents could, "be facing a bill for thousands".

It's a shameful put-up job behind which is the Big Four record label cartel's BPI (British Phonographic Industry).

The Times misinformation piece is an element in another phase of Big Music's carefully orchestrated international campaign designed to scam people into believing online file sharing is criminal and that the cartel, with truly mind-boggling revenues in billions of dollars, is being ravaged by it.

Elements two and three appear to be London-based Childnet International and the British Broadcasting Corporation, the world's largest radio broadcaster and one of the UK's most trusted information sources.

"A campaign urging parents to become aware of their children's music downloading habits has been launched," says the BBC, going on, "As little as one tenth of parents understand how music is obtained from the internet, according to children's online charity Childnet. It adds that young people may be swapping files illegally without their parents' knowledge."

A leaflet and a web site will "help parents everywhere to keep up to speed with the music downloading habits of their children, and to be aware of the associated risks in terms of legal, content and security issues" says the site, continuing, "the initiative, which is endorsed and supported by Pro-music, the international music sector education campaign, will be translated into 8 languages and distributed through different partners in 19 countries worldwide."

Like the BPI, Pro-music is owned and operated by the Big Four record labels.

"The campaign has been welcomed by the UK music industry," says the BBC, which is hardly surprising considering the music industry is wholly responsible for the campaign in the first place.

It's understandable that the BBC would carry the news of the "campaign'. However, what's unconscionable is that, like The Times, it does so without questioning the source or the premise.

File sharing is not a crime and neither the music nor any other industry has ever shown that it results in lost sales, diminished profits or anything else.

And the lawsuits the industry so earnestly warns parents about are instigated by the industry itself.

Childnet International lists its raisons d'etre as:

1 - Helping children and young people to use the net constructively, showcase quality content and enable others to use our resources and develop new projects
2 - Helping children and young people acquire new xnet literacyx skills and giving advice to industry
3 - Working with others to help protect children from being exploited in the online environments provided by new technologies as well as seeking to initiate and respond to policy changes

It can now confidently delete to help protect children from being exploited in the online environments and add a fourth category: Acting as an unpaid propaganda machine for the Big Four record labels.

The Net Family Newsletter, another non-profit "public service" providing weekly "kid-tech news" for parents and educators "in more than 50 countries," is distributed in partnership with two organizations: Childnet International and with SafeKids.com.

Net Family Newsletter's top story for May was "File-sharing realities for families" and it kicks off with, "You may have heard terms like 'file-sharing,' 'music-downloading,' peer-to-peer' ('P2P' for short). If you haven't, you must not have an online music fan at your house. If not, the only reason why you might want to keep reading is to find out what all the fuss is about - thousands of recording-industry lawsuits and lots of news about musicians' rights and music piracy."

Soon, the only way to protect our childrens' minds from being polluted by the venal and completely corrupt entertainment industry will be to cosset them in homes or safe institutions that lack any form of electronic communication device, and which allow only carefully vetted print products inside.

As I've said before, thank God we home-school our daughter.

JN

See:-
highly innacurate - File sharing: The Big Lie, p2pnet, June 7, 2005
BBC - Parents urged to check downloads, June 8, 2005