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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?
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.
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.]