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P2P Users More Likely to Cheat, Shoplift
prostoalex writes "New research report (sponsored by the recording industry, so should definitely be objective) suggests that those who download music online are also likely to cheat at schools/universities and to shoplift. From the Globe and Mail: 'Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada's economy and values at the core of our society,' said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which commissioned the polls."
It bewilders me to think that the Recording industry is wasting their money sponsoring crap studies that paint their customers as theives instead of genuinely trying to understand their changing userbase to better serve them and thus MAKE MORE MONEY.
Seriously, who is running these companies and why are investors not extremely upset about this?
From everything I've read about Environics, they have to be the most idiotic polling company on the planet...which is saying something. Read some of their polls and you'll see that the answer they are looking for frames their questions to the point of rediculousness. Clearly their clients are paying for these results.
Most polling companies are bad but these guys have to be the worst. Who gives a shit what they say?
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
On average upon leaving university, every student says they've cheated at least once. Be it copying a question, glancing at another paper, or other such small offence. Everyone cheats. Period.
"Gharbad no Hurt!" -Gharbad
I guess I'm just not in this statistic. P2P abrubptly stopped in my house when I subscribed to Rhapsody. Where's the study that shows P2P represents a market demand that the RIAA could be making money off of?
"Derp de derp."
Such studies are going to be extremely hard to perform, because there are so many hard-to-measure factors involved. It's well known that there have been fewer CD sales in the last few years, but how much of that is due to P2P, legal song-at-a-time downloads, satellite radio, or just plain crappy music is nearly impossible to sort out. They were up last year, but I can't say if that's due to better music or to RIAA lawsuits scaring some people into buying rather than downloading (or even crappy accounting designed to convince RIAA shareholders that their campaigns are working).
Personally, I put the burden of proof on the music sharers. Given that the people who paid to have the music made have asked them not to do it, "prove to me that I'm costing you money" seems like the wrong way around. (And I'm tangentially involved in a band; I know how expensive it is to get an album made and promoted.)
I do not doubt that at least some CD sales have been lost to P2P. That seems pretty straightforward: at least some poeple who would have bought an album have instead chosen to download it (or part of it) for free. So there's very good reason to believe that at least some money has been lost.
Combine the two (you'd expect file sharing to lower CD sales, and CD sales have fallen), and that's as close to "actually and truthfully show[ing] that this is the case" as you're likely to get. It's not genuine proof, as I'm sure everybody is likely to remind me in their replies, but it seems strong enough to me to put the burden of proof on the shoulders of those who contend that file sharing isn't immoral.
Has it harmed artists? That's even harder to say. How many fewer bands do less-profitable recording labels sign? Even the bands that they do sign receive a negligible sum for actual CD sales, but do people go to concerts or buy merchandise from bands they've downloaded but weren't willing to pay for? I can't even begin to tell you how to measure that. There are so many bands (so, so many) and such a small chance of making any real money off of it that it's nearly impossible to measure how much they've been harmed, helped, or otherwise.
At least one band I know likes it when you download their music; it means you're listening and may even go to a club to see them or buy a tee-shirt. But the fact that many people would download their music anyway, even if they weren't fine with that, bugs the hell out of them.
Why? Because those people got to be in control of their companies/associations by knowing the old system like the back of their hand. They know all the moves, they know how to squeeze artists and retail chains and radio station in just the right way to make money.
What they don't understand is how to make money in the New World. So they have declared the world flat by law and indicated that There be Dragons (and thieves) in the P2P world. This is to keep their jobs and protect the system that has been good to them.
The music industry was screwed the minute people figured out how to make craploads of cash doing it. That meant that the aggressive, territorial types who tend to be major corporate CEOs got involved. Big money and big egos and insecurity make for bad news for innovation.
As for investors, they're not immune to being dinosaurs as well, not to mention they tend to believe what CEOs tell them. Investors are hardly immune from lacking any imagination. Yes, investors will flock to someone who manages to overcome the hurdles and make scads of money with P2P distribution, but for now, their current model makes plenty of money, thank you very much. Remember, today's investment community has a hard-on for short term gains, not long term value.
No, if we had won in Vietnam, the refugees would have stayed in vietnam instead of coming here. Instead of them coming here and taking our jobs, American companies would have just moved our jobs to vietnam. So, the main benefit of losing the war is that it is much easier to find a good vietnamese restaurant in the US - for which I am greatful to the vietcong.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
What you are referring to is the common cause fallacy. The two statistics are linked, because they are caused by the same thing.
In the case the article talks about, the common cause of music downloading and shoplifting may be that those people are young, or don't have money.
I was just appalled at the number of spoiled, self-obsessed, ingrate college students who were advertising for coders to write their CompSci and Engineering projects for them. What the hell ever happened to academic integrity?
What do you mean? Our culture teaches people that money can buy you anything, therefore all you should try to get is money. A college degree is simply a ticket to get a good paying job. If you could buy them outright, people would do so. (And in fact, with degree mills, that's exactly what happens.)
Other than that, there are also a lot of "students" who are nothing of the sort. They are very overworked laborers who are trying to squeeze themselves into a higher wage bracket. They generally work while going to college, hence simply don't have the time to properly be a student. For them, it makes a certain kind of harsh and practical sense to simply buy up blocks of academic effort. They are too busy, hence can only trade money for academic results; they already traded off excess time for money simply by being a working college attendee.
I don't condone any of this, of course, but there's nothing I can do about it except lavish my spite upon it all. Equally of course, being a college dropout myself, my criticisms are inevitably filed under "sour grapes" until my predictions come to pass.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Americans invaded France in 1944 as foreigners from an immense industrial power, part of a coalition of forces, barely singed by resistance forces during their obvious coming over the ocean, and furthermore coming into a nation that itself was occupied by other invaders ....
I could go on, but all that was hardly comparable to the (farcical) Commie Invasion of North America. The point is clear that there was NO Commie Invasion being planned seriously. Americans would have blown the unbelievable shit out of any forces that would have tried to cross either ocean or via land routes across the cold north. Americans would have severely met anyone who dared to drive a tank across American native soil.
In short, the Commie Invasion was a myth that was used to keep people scared enough to continue the extremely good times of the military-industrial complex that was created during WWII. The MIC essentially made a Fascist state within the American Republic, and we today are living in the Empire that said Fascism transformed the Republic into.
Now, people are still so scared of America's endless enemies (which are largely manufactured by Americans) that they are willing to attack other nations who have no invasion capability and had no intention of assaulting American native soil whatsoever. Americans under their sick little Empire are so lacking in courage that they are willing to pre-emptively strike and invade just on the possibility of a strike upon themselves. All this is making the world a very unsafe place for civilization.
In short, Americans no longer understand the philosopy of self-defense. They have gone completely offensive, and entirely mistake such things for self-defense. Sad.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]