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Teaching Your Kids About Piracy

I just found out this weekend that two of my kids had just started to download named star’s music from YouTube.com. They had found music videos and had used YouTube MP3 converter software, which they had downloaded free, to strip the music file from the video; essentially getting music for free. Yikes! Not only is downloading anything from the YouTube.com website a direct violation of YouTube’s terms of service, but it is plain and simple stealing song revenue from the artist.

I took immediate action and removed the software and removed the songs from their music players and computers. As I had a talk about piracy with all four of my kids and the reality of what could happen, some topics came up which I thought I would share as you consider if you should have this same talk with your kids.

1. They all said they did not know this was a violation on YouTube.com. I took time to show all four kids where to find the terms of use in the footer and encouraged them to always take time to read this before they assumed that they could do anything they wanted with the content.

2. One child asked “if is is illegal, why did the software maker create a program that allows people to do something illegal?” Well, that actually is a very good question, and truthfully I don’t know why YouTube and other sites don’t make a real effort to squash this type of free software. My question back to my kids was “just because you can, doesn’t make it right does it?”

I made a deal with my kids that I would help them buy music in a legitimate way and that music piracy keeps our favorite artist from making more music that we will love when we steal music from them. That’s what piracy is, it is stealing and our kids need to know that. For us music piracy simply does not match our family values.

Do you know how your kids are getting their music? If you haven’t asked, it’s time that you did. You may be as surprised as I was to find out that they thought what they were doing was okay.

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What It’s Like Being A New Blogger.

Being a new blogger is not as easy as I thought it would be. It’s just like writing for my college professors every thing has to be perfect. I thought it was going to be easy when I heard I only had to write between 200 and 300 words. I was like wow, no biggy. But after the first couple topics, I found it was very hard to come up with ideas you know a lot about and are easy to write on. Now, there is research involved and it can at times quite a while.

Also, I have trouble keeping up with the blogs. It’s hard to get myself to write them sometimes, and I know the deadline is around the corner but I just can’t bring myself to write. It’s like gah, I have this blog to do but I don’t have any ideas at the moment. I’ll just wait until later. This is not good, if you do this you have a very good chance of missing your deadline.

I was so eager to blog in the first place because Mrs. McCord made it all look so easy. So, if you are interested in bloggers, McCord Web Services has three levels of service Pearl, Topaz, and Diamond. If you want to learn more about these services check out their website.

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Our Kids – Generation Text and How To Deal With Them

I am reading an excellent book right now called Generation Text Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything by Dr. Michael Osit. I have to say that I clearly see my 19 year old college student and triplet 11 year olds as being Generation Text kids. This book “speaks” to me on many different levels as I try to be the very best Mom that I can be.

The book is excellent and if you as a parent and have ever had issues with your kids not getting off the computer when you tell them, kids performing under their real capability in school, and issues with kids being too connected to games and cell phones at the expense of real world activities, this is a book that you really must read.

My kids hate that I am reading it as I am using many of the no-nonsense practical tips for parents that so far for me are really working. I don’t review many books in my blog, although I am an avid reader, but this book really stands out as a winner.

Dr. Michael Osit give such insight into Generation Text kids and the issues that we as parents have raising them that you would think that the book was written just for you and your family in mind. One concrete thing that I have done to help my own kids breakout of the Generation Text entitlement mentality is to institute a schedule of daily activities for my younger kids, and to help my older kid with real lessons in time management and a procedure on how to push yourself to performance not mediocrity.

So far the entire family has bought in to these new concepts as a team embracing the change. As a result of the new schedule and better time management, my house has never looked so clean and my kids so happy. In fact, homework and music practice was even done before dinner without a struggle!

If you are like my family and you struggle with kids pushing the limits to game constantly either on Fiesta, video games, or DS Games, the chores never seem to get done – as playtime has taken over work time, or your kids seem to just be surfing through school without understanding that a C is not okay in the grand scheme of things, then this is the book that you have been waiting for.

I have linked the title of the book in this post to Amazon so you can check it out. I am not being paid to review the book nor have an affiliate link tied to the Amazon link – I get nothing for recommending the book to you. I just think that you would strongly benefit from reading it if you have kids from age 10 to 20 years of age.

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MySpace Vs Facebook

MySpace is a favorite for most high school kids. I was there once but now that I am in college I seem to use MySpace less and less and spend most of my time on Facebook. I used to like MySpace because you could have a fancy background and put your favorite songs on your page.

As I have come to see, it is MySpace that’s struggling to keep up with Facebook, especially in the games and application department. Facebook has always had games and cool features, but when I first made an account on Facebook back in the 11th grade I found it to be more complicated and confusing and stuck with Myspace. But I could only notice that less and less of my friends were using MySpace and had all moved to Facebook. So I made the move as well.

Once I got used to Facebook I noticed all the great features that MySpace was lacking such as, the easy to use chat window and the ability to tag photos of friends. MySpace has tagging photos available now, but it doesn’t matter I never use MySpace.

Also Facebook had entertaining little games you could play like Mob Wars and Speed Racing. When I made the move to Facebook I found so many more people I knew because they were older and didn’t use MySpace. All the kids I knew that went off to college were on there. Adults like family members were on Facebook as well.

I think my favorite tool on Facebook is the networking tool I used it to join my college network and it helps me find people I know that also attend my school. And now you can put your favorite songs on Facebook just like MySpace, so it is all around better in my eyes.