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Inside, wide-eyed
A weblog on digital civil rights, Free Software and Access to Knowledge.
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Kid's book about DRM
Wow, this one is great. A Canadian programmer and artist got so pissed off about his government indoctrinating grade school children about the sanctity of copyright, that he decided to do something about it.
He drew and wrote a children's book. It's about how you can share things that you don't lose when you give them away. And about how much better life is for everyone when you do it.
The Pig and the Box is about a pig who finds a magic box that can
replicate anything you put into it. The pig becomes so protective of it,
and so suspicious of anyone that wants to use it, that he makes people
take their copied items home in special buckets that act as... well,
they're basically DRM. It's like a fable, except the moral of the story
is very modern in tone.
I made the book after hearing how the entertainment industry in Canada
is keen on teaching young kids about how to "respect" copyright. That
was a bit heavy-handed, I thought, and otherwise despicable. Preying on
small kids, brainwashing them so they believe what you're doing is
honourable and good... Feh. So I wrote this book partly as a response to
that venture, to counter-act the confused ideals that young'ns are being
exposed to these days. Also, I wanted to write potty humour.
Get the book here (.pdf, 1.6Mb, CC sampling+ license) and spread it far and wide. Make sure your children see this before Captain Copyright and those scary WIPO comics get their brains all screwed up. If you don't have children, get it anyway and make yourself smile for at least ten minutes.
If you want to translate the book or rework it otherwise, the sources are here. A German translation seems to be in the works already - check the comments if you want to help.
via BoingBoing
