James Delahunty
9 Jun 2005 21:51
Children's Online Charity, Childnet, has launched a campaign to try to urge parents to check if their kids are downloading and sharing music illegally on the Internet. The campaign is in place to help parents to protect from the dangers of filesharing. Thousands of parents around the world have ended up sued for their kid's downloading habits but Childnet has said that less than one tenth of parents understand how music is obtained from the Internet.
Leaflets will be distributed to many public including libraries and also will be available in record stores. Titled "Young People, Music and the Internet: A Guide for Parents about P2P, file-sharing and downloading", the leaflet will be available in 19 countries and eight different languages. "We believe most parents have no idea how file-sharing works," said Stephen Carrick-Davies, CEO of Childnet. "Parents need to get up to speed with what their children are doing online."
The UK music industry is delighted with the campaign. "We are committed to working with parents to make them aware of the dangers of illegal downloading," said Peter Jamieson, chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). "There has already been huge publicity about this issue, but we are committed to doing even more to get the message across. Across Europe, the numbers if music sharers is growing rapidly.
You also have to remember that in a lot of cases, parents would see downloading music from the Internet as a pretty harmless task and wouldn't understand the logic of record companies suing kids for sharing music. However, Childnet's campaign appears to be geared more towards protecting families from having to settle lawsuits for thousands than it is towards boosting record sales for the music companies.
Source:
BBC News