Pay attention where your teaching material comes from

I just saw a promotion for teaching materials called Ideen sind etwas wert (Ideas have a value) on the official swiss education server. Their object is to promote awareness for copyright and intellectual property in music business. So, this is basically an interesting topic, especially for computer science teachers.

Now guess, who has paid for these materials? (Hint: It's not some official swiss education office, you can find the answer in this link). Of course, this made me slightly suspicious and so I took a closer look. Want a sample? There's a claim that copy protection on audio CDs was absolutely necessary because of internet piracy (although they somehow forget, that this measure mostly is a punishment for people who actually buy CDs and - along with the CDs themselves - does not work. Oh, and there's also this story of violating a very succesful standard...). They also remind you of the fact that downloading MP3s is a huge security risk (in comparision with, say, buying Sony CDs?).

Although there are some interesting and correct facts, the makers of these teaching materials seem to have missed quite a lot of the recent development in music business. But then againg, you didn't expect a well-balanced account on copyright from something sponsored from the IFPI, did you?