So I’m teaching this 6th grade class once a week, for 40 minutes, on ‘Computer Technology’. I also happen to be reading ‘The Long Tail’, and highly recommend it.

So far, Week 1 was Richard Sears and the railroad vs. Amazon.com and the internet. basically, we talk about how the internet is a business-changing communications medium, just like the railroad was in 1886.

Week 2 was on the merits of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britainnica. We learned that Wikipedia is a great place to go first for information due to it’s great variety, but due to the unknown expertise of the authors, a more reputable source of information should also be used.

Then came Week 3.

Today we talked about RIAA’s historical role in the music business, and their right to protect artists’ work. We also talked about how the RIAA oversteps their bounds and are countered by the EFF. We finished up with a short quiz and some Q&A on what’s right/wrong with different music-related scenarios.

The thing I love is the answers to my extra-credit question on the quiz. The question was

If you were the RIAA, and your job was to promote music, how would you do so? What would you do to keep people from taking music without paying for it?

Of those who bothered to answer, there were the obvious ‘Put it on the radio, make people pay for it’ answers, but also a few great ones. Here are the standouts, but please feel free to answer the extra credit question yourself in the comments! What is surprising is that some of their suggestions are exactly the type of stuff RIAA pulls to try and enforce themselves…

“I would put a place to put your house on a website with a camera so I could see when people were stealing”

“I would make them download a popup that wouldn’t go away until they paid for the song, and after 3 days it would make a continuous horn that couldn’t be turned down”

“I wouldn’t sell it online”

“Search the internet to see if they are stealing and if they know other people [that are stealing]“

“Let them keep 3 songs for free, and sue them if they have any more than 3″

“I call the police to track them down not myself” (AWESOME)

“Sell [music] in music stores and if people steal it track them down [through the music store]“

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