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Pew Study: File Traders Don't Care About Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "A recent poll by the Pew Internet and American Life Project focused on that portion of the file trading community that is over 18. The major finding is that two-thirds of all file traders in this age bracket are not concerned about violating copyright laws. This remained consistant even when they split up the respondents by sex, income, and race."
But will it mean they're done politically? They've bought an awful lot of politicians in Washington, no matter what our honored lobbiest guest said here a couple days ago. (If Bill Clinton and other top pols show up to a going-away party for Hilary "Wicked Witch of the East" Rosen, I would say they have bought influence.)
My question is, the media like to talk about how the average person doesn't know what file sharing is and what the issues at stake are, but if there are 60 million people doing it then how can that possibly be true? If one fifth of the population of your country does anything on a regular basis, then how can you seriously claim that they don't understand what that activity is? It seems like so many other ridiculous claims ginned up by journalists like that disgraced NYTimes reporter, and repeated unthinkingly by the rest of the news crowd.
OK, so if that's bunk, and those 60 million people do understand what is at stake with file-sharing, then why aren't they making themselves heard in the government? Why isn't that anger translating politically? My theory is there is no membership organization they can focus their voice through. If we had something like the AARP or NRA for online freedoms, my bet is you'd start seeing politicians learning to dance to our tune in an awful hurry. (and no, the EFF is not that organization. they do great work, but a membership organization they are not).
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Quoted from the report:
Kinda half-serious, half-joking, but I wonder if those that participated in this survey should also be categorized as folks that are willing to submit to phone surveys. Is that something that's worth considering?
And am I reading the above correctly that of the 2,515 folks they called, only 32.7 percent actually responded? That's a little over 820 individuals. Is a survey successful if only 32% responded? Inquiring minds and all that.
Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if they did a similar survey among folks that use computer software in the workforce and found that most people don't comprehend that software itself is copyrighted. I still meet plenty of folks that pirate alot of software, with rather innocent looks on their faces when told that they're not supposed to do that. I'm not talking about lone computer users... I'm talking about the head of a business that oversees a few dozen machines and they're all running Word with pirated numbers, etc.
n/a
(I hope I didn't violate Merriam-Webster's copyright there...)
I know you were joking, but there is an important distiction here: citing a small part of M-W to explain something is fair use, but distributing it as a whole without a licence is a copyright violation.
It would have been a better study if they had delved more into the reasons why most people don't care.
For example, do people not care because they don't even think about it, because they think they won't get caught, or because they think a monopoly is abusing both copyright law and the campaign finance system? Some of the above ? None of the above ?
My only reaction to the study in its current form is like "well duh-uh !!!".
Hey, I am one of those people. I've got about 40 gigs of movies and documentaries shared on K-lite. All of them are public domain and downloadable from the Moving Pictures Database on Archive.org. During the past three months, none of them have been downloaded even once.
:)
In other news, I had an mp3, named after a particular Metallica song, of my voice saying to not buy, purchase or download anything Metallica related. I'd rather just see those meatheads not sell another album or concert ticket. Now, that's been downloaded hundreds of times.
It's no real mystery what people do with P2P applications.
And while there has been a remarkable "revolution" in the arts which has created some "in the gut" recognition for something called "intellectual property," the human animal simply has a terrible time recognizing that music, or performance, or writing, or any idea made slightly tangible, is not just something you share.
They're like the air on a hot summer day. We swim in an ocean of ideas - our own indistinguishable from those around us. We inhale and osmose and exclaim and excrete all as natural instinctive intellectual processes. We are not built to recognize such artificial distinctions as "the owner of a song" (or a sentence, or an idea) because they are simply unnatural. This ownership must be violated at every instant - as you sing in the shower, as you share a rumor, as a teacher teaches or a librarian lends you our richest treasures. Calling it "intellectual property" is itself propaganda - it is the most shocking of bad metaphors in recent times.
Copyright is the barest of fictions, intended to allow artists to live, not Michael Eisner to summer in Tenerife. It does make for some interesting, even good, results, in the way they were originally practiced (as intended by the folks who founded our nation, for instance) - where for a few (like seven!) years there were some artifical means for an artist to thrive from her work, that didn't involve the help of wealthy patrons (which was how the old world used to do it).
But I think if you asked Washington he would be very surprised at the idea of copyright taken precedence over sharing - though of course he and his colleagues would have shaken their heads at the complexity of "mass-scale distributed sharing."
They would certainly rage at and mock the outrageous "extend every time mickey mouse is in danger" new time limits (one of the more transpareant examples of the subversion of democracy by a wealthy cartel). And if informed of the new punishments for violators, or pre-punishment of potential violators, or direct trust "taxes" on things which might be used to violate... they would pick up their arms and fight.
You think it's melodramatic to say so, but America is a nation of ideas, of rational supremacy, and the economic achievement that can only come from intellectual liberty. The new rules that Disney and Microsoft have mutated intellectual property with over the last decade choke off that liberty in the most violent way, by destroying the commons of ideas, erasing the essential quality of trust in our democracy, and violating the supremacy of free speech and free expression that made our country wealthy, successful in affairs of state, and also a fun place to live.
And all this, not for some grave end - to fight terrorism or feed the hungry - but only so a publisher can increase their profit margins.
Not even the politicians would countenance it, ordinarily. It's bad for almost everyone but a select few, and it is even bad for them - content creators need the commons more than anyone. But politicians have a unique respect for those who control the media...
Remember what copyright was originally intended to do. Consider the new tools we have - there are better ways now than what we did in the past, and anything is better than what the cartel wants.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Seriously though, we live in a democracy, congress gets to set the limits it wants.
No, Congress is supposed to set the limits that best serve the public, i.e. what the PEOPLE want. And yes, it does need to be changed. You got the millions of dollars needed to lobby Congress? Neither do I. I do have the power to write to my reps incessantly to make my point heard. (In fact, I think that's what I'll do today...write to my new reps [just moved])
BTW, "life + 90 years" is NOT reasonable. The copyright law needs to revert back to the 14-year limit, with certain circumstances making that time frams SHORTER. To use everybody's favorite OS as an example, if I want to run Win95 for some reason and MS doesn't sell it anymore, than I should be free as the wind to make as many copies as I desire. It's not as if I'm taking away from their revenue stream, they weren't going to sell it to me anyway. (No jokes about forced upgrade paths, please.)
The same holds for music, books, movies, whatever. If I want a copy of a book or CD that the original copyright holder/publisher/etc. doesn't make available, then I should be free to make my own copy as I see fit, even if has been less than 14 years since the copyright took effect.
"Intellectual Property" my ass.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
It's no real mystery what people do with P2P applications.
1) Provide free advertising for the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software
2) Make it harder for independent musicians, independent filmmakers, and free software to be seen through all the noise of the more well-known, possibly inferior products
3) Prove that the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software vendors are relevant by demonstrating that their marketing works even if their products are inferior
4) Giving the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software vendors a leg to stand on when they go to congress to complain about illegal file sharing on P2P networks
Sharing content that the RIAA, MPAA and proprietary software vendors own the copyrights to doesn't help anybody's cause except the RIAA's, MPAA's and proprietary software vendors'. Do you want to be counterproductive?
Copyright is largely an artificial construct, unlike theft (which certain people like to erroneously and politically link it to.) It's never really existed in any significant portion of our evolution, so (I'd say) it's not really considered a real thing: it's an artificially imposed prohibition.
If the same principle was applied to food, or furniture, with everyone having their own little Star Trek replicators, people wouldn't respect it then, either.
Maybe it means: since everyone has their own printing-press, making a significant living from the prohibition of duplication of a work, is nolonger feasible or realistic? Like any number of other professions (starving (visual) artists languishing in obscurity and poverty, anyone?)
I don't think it's so much about price (though it's always a factor) as people's psychology: copyright doesn't really make sense in a world where things are easily and cheaply copyable; where the means of production and dissemination is in the hands of everyone.
Is that noise I hear the fingernails of the copyright cartels screeching down the cliff-face of a paradigm shift?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Most people have no understanding of copyright at all. They can't respect something they don't really understand.
The average person doesn't understand what a copyright is. It's too abstract. A CD or a book is something they can physically hold. To them they think they own the book not a "COPY" of the book. Stealing a book is easy to understand and visualize. Stealing potential profits that one has a limited right (sic) to is something that is harder for people to understand or care about.
If they can't see and touch it they don't care. Many people bitch and moan about ATM fees because they can see that $2 charge taken away from them right at the time of withdrawal. Yet they don't realize that the amount of taxes a person has withheld on a paycheck is really double. They don't see so they don't understand it or they don't care.
They don't understand the difference between a constitutionally granted right and a constitutionally protected right. Copyrights are granted rights. Free speech and the right to bear arms are protected rights.
Despite the Slashdot wish that this was a grand showing of defiance against the evil corporations most people don't understand about that and don't care.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
No, Congress is supposed to set the limits that best serve the public, i.e. what the PEOPLE want. And yes, it does need to be changed.
... if I want to run Win95 for some reason and MS doesn't sell it anymore, than I should be free as the wind to make as many copies as I desire. It's not as if I'm taking away from their revenue stream, they weren't going to sell it to me anyway...
...
Yup. You should write your reps if you feel that your are not being sufficiently represented. Unless they know what the people want, they can't do it.
Why do they NEED to be changed?
BTW, "life + 90 years" is NOT reasonable. The copyright law needs to revert back to the 14-year limit,
The same holds for music, books, movies, whatever.
I disagree. I like the life + 90, and I think it is very reasonable. Perhaps the post-life extent could be shorter, but 14 years... Tell your favorite author what you want to do to their work -- most authors don't get paid as well as musicians and other artists...
Anyway, as for your Win95 example, you are hurting their business - Win95 is the ancestor of Windows XP, they would really like you to buy XP -- but if you can get Win95 for free... then they have to compete with themselves, and while they did attempt to make improvements over previous versions, free is a hard price point to beat, especially when many applications will run on either OS.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Copyright could be abolished tomorrow if you could just get the votes in Congress required to pass a bill to repeal it. Sure, Dubya might veto it, but if you can get a two thirds majority in Congress, you can override a veto.
If you don't think this can happen, consider that more Americans are trading files today than voted for George Bush. Yes, many if not most file traders are under eighteen, but political upheavals usually take time. The sort of time that would allow most of today's youthful peer-to-peer users to come of age.
My new piece Change the Law explains this in more detail. It recommends several specific steps you can take to repeal copyright. The recommendations I give are:
- Speak Out
- Vote
- Write to Your Elected Representatives
- Donate Money to Political Campaigns
- Support Campaign Finance Reform
- Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Practice Civil Disobedience
If you're under eighteen, you can do all of those things but vote. And your right to vote will come in time. The RIAA is not going to go away.Finally, Should Copyright Even Exist? considers the question of whether the ability of computers to make faithful copies of digital data without significant cost so outweighs any benefit that copyright may have to society, that we would be better off if copyright were eliminated entirely.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
You hit that nail squarely, sirrah.
... I abide by the spirit of law.
Just as a jury member should be doing (ref. the Fully Informed Jury Association), We The People are the judge of the law, not that overpaid, elitist punk behind the podium.
... I buy my CDs used for much less than new retail prices.
And my CDs seem likely to last me for the rest of my life.
... the manufacturing industry wants a piece of each sale, not just the first one.
Luckily for Lady Justice, the used industry is too unstable and laborious to regulate ... making it singularly pathetic that those are the only things that protect us.)
... yes, the Constitution is all too clear about limiting copyrights.
But the Congress simply ignored that.
Since war has already been declared, don't be shocked when you see me firing shots.
... to the RIAA, I invite you to spend yourselves into debt trying to chase me down.
You won't win, because you can't win.
Your desire to sit back and collect income (one aspect of the modern American social disease) has cost you all your ability to adapt to social change.
The arrogance and mistreatment coming out of the recording industry, combined with the corrupt actions of the Congress, makes copyrights a game of the elite. Hence, I have as little respect for it as I would have for some fop strutting around America with some European royal title.
Anyway, grabbing a song off of a site, board or p2p user is hardly a violation of copyright, since (waaaait for it, this is important) I claim fair use. For almost all of the songs I've grabbed, I eventually buy the disc. This is similar to when I zip down my local highway at 70mph, right past the sign that says "SPEED LIMIT 60". I don't care about the technical aspects of law-breaking
If the entertainment industry wants me to tone back my claim of fair use, then they should really clean up their act. Taking an MP3 song from some Russian site primarily hurts the industry, not the artists (since in practice I can't hurt the artists more than the industry is doing right now). But I've been hurting the industry for years
(But don't think that that method itself is not under threat. I know people who run used book stores, and every so often the book industry makes noises about regulating and therefore taxing them on the sales of their books. I'm sure the used CD industry has been similarly threatened for the same reasons
As for the Congress
Soooo
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
no
but steve gerber was limited by donald the duck
"Back in the late 1970s, the Walt Disney Company threatened to sue Marvel Comics over the design of Howard the Duck, which, or so they claimed, was too similar in appearance to Donald Duck. To avoid litigation, Marvel's old management signed an incredibly stupid agreement with Disney. Under its terms, all future appearances of Howard must conform to a set of designs that Disney provided for the character. You've seen this design. It's the one from the black-and-white HTD magazine, with the ghastly swollen beak, the beady eyes, and the baggy trousers that make the duck look like a derelict. What's absolutely astonishing, though, is that the Disney agreement is worded in such a way that Marvel isn't even permitted to create a new, alternative design for the character, even if that design bears no resemblance to Donald."
donald duck debuted in 34, 40+ years later they were using ip law to throttle the creativity of others based on a passing resemblence