Could someone please tell me where to start? When I try to process this, my brain goes into a cognitive-dissonance loop, and I can actually hear the highpitched squeal of conceptual feedback coming *out *of my ears.
Please. Help me fit this into my worldview.
I’m not sure where to start either. Mostly because I don’t really see anything objectionable about this. The Boyscouts are teaching their members not to steal. Isn’t that pretty much why we have Boyscouts in the first place?
But why should there be a merit badge in not stealing?
Actually, according to the article, it sounds like a merit badge in “copyright law for kids.” It also seems to have standard merit-badge-y activities attached. (visit work sites, listen to adults talking, make a video, educate your peers, etc).
Not seeing a problem here.
Eh. I’m going to mildly object because it seems like a push from the movie industry rather than a pull from the BSA. But having been a Boy Scout as a kid, there are all kinds of stupid merit badges. It’s not all about tying knots and starting camp fires. Merit Badtes. Some of these are pretty goofy.
I like the requirement that the Scouts learn “three ways copyrighted materials may be stolen”
Meh. If done right, it could provide fodder for a lot of discussion. Many people have many different views about when copying copyrighted material is “OK” and when it is “Bad”.
I’m going to make a journal entry that this is my favorite sentence of the day…
Yeah, until I read the link I thought maybe you got the merit badge as long as you didn’t download any copyrighted material for “x” number of weeks or months.
It’s all about being prepared, you know.
That article sounds like it was written by someone who’s a little Unclear On The Concept.
Unless things have changed since I was a Boy Scout, there’s no such thing as a “merit patch.”
There are “merit badges,” which contribute toward rank (e.g. an Eagle Scout has to have earned a certain number of merit badges), and which are approved on the national level, not local.
And there are patches a scout can receive for participation in various activities (e.g. hikes, camping, etc.), but these have no official status and are merely collector’s items.
I suspect this is one of the latter, but the article makes it really hard to tell for sure.
Can one earn a merit badge in not killing people? How about in not being a filthy, evil homo?
Maybe it’s a very, very specific type of nicotine patch.
For that, you get a neckerchief with a cunning little woggle.
Oooh, oooh! I know!
Limewire, Kazaa and Bearshare!
Heh. Ya left out Shareaza, my fave.
Anyway, this isn’t such a stretch for the Scouts. There are plenty of scouting-age kids who don’t consider P2P downloading “stealing” - they don’t really get the concept of “intellectual property.” This patch or merit badge or whatever the hell it is program is just an attempt to get the kids to think of mp3 bootlegging in a different way.
Since it appears from the article that this award is available only in LA, I think it’s almost certainly an activity patch, not a badge. Patches are for local activities; badges can be earned by any Scout anywhere in the US. As a Boy Scout leader, I think this training, whether it’s a badge or a patch, is a very good thing and fits in with the code of ethics we try to teach our Scouts.
Man, it’s facinating (and I do mean fascinating) to compare the responses so far to the thread on Slashdot about this, where a good number of members believe that copyright infringement is not stealing. Folks who’ve posted to this thread really should read it; I think it’s interesting.
I wonder what causes this?
A massive sense of self-entitlement?
Someone on Slashdot linked to the requirements for the Computers merit badge. That’s one I never got (or even thought about) and, as the poster on Slashdot said, it looks like the requirements were last updated in the early 90s. I particularly liked the following requirements:
The badge requirements were actually just updated last year.