Messages grow manic as piracy nears high court

Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a pivotal case pitting copyright holders against the makers of file-sharing software.
The New York Times

The story "Messages grow manic as piracy nears high court" published February 7, 2005 at 6:19 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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Garret the Ferret is copyright infringer...

While I appreciate the media's desire to
indoctrinate our youth into their fanciful
retelling of American copyright law, I think a
better lesson is found in that Garret the Ferret
is a character from a children's book (and, I
believe, used in the propaganda without the
author's consent). The "we're rich and we write
the rules, but they don't apply to us, peasant!"
lesson is one of the most important any child
will ever learn. Moreover, the selection of a
weasel for the media-industry mascot is nothing
short of inspired.

If you have never seen the Garret the Ferret
copyright propaganda, it's in the comic-book
format and targeted at kids around 8 years old.
They typically have quite a bit of false
information about the nature of copyright, fair
use, licenses, etc. A recent one from Weekly
Reader had Garret spreading the word to a youth
copying software provided by a friend. The only
factual element was that Garret correctly
identified the copyright symbol. Everything else
was, at best, misleading if not intentionally
false.