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Teens Don't Think CD Copying is a Crime
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the Orlando Sentinel reports on a poll done by the LA Times and Bloomberg. The informal study looked at teenager attitudes towards copying media. Only 31 percent said they thought it was illegal to copy a CD borrowed from a friend who had purchased it. Attitudes about ill-gotten media were less clear, and the article admits than even the legal system is slightly fuzzy on this issue." From the article: "Among teens aged 12 to 17 who were polled, 69 percent said they thought it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original. By comparison, only 21 percent said it was legal to copy a CD if a friend got the music for free. Similarly, 58 percent thought it was legal to copy a friend's purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19 percent thought copying was legal if the movie wasn't purchased. Those figures are a big problem for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, both of which have spent millions of dollars to deter copying of any kind. The music industry now considers so-called 'schoolyard' piracy -- copies of physical discs given to friends and classmates -- a greater threat than illegal peer-to-peer downloading, according to the RIAA."
Is it right to deny your friend a copy of your CD because some company claims to own the right to make copies of it? It's a stark moral choice: do you help your friend or do you defend the rights of the owner? It's pretty obvious to me which one is right. Unfortunately it's probably just as obvious to others that I'm wrong.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Let me stake out a position here:
I think that most people who are happy to freely duplicate copyrighted works have never been in the position of selling anything of their own.
I think that people who sell their own materials (be it books, music, software etc.) are more likely to be aware of the effort that creators put into their creations. Such people are more likely to identify with fellow creators. They are thus less willing to duplicate material without fair recompense because they know how wretched they feel when they see copies being made of their own materials.
These beliefs lead me to make the following testable proposition: A person who starts selling their own original materials will be less willing to duplicate the copyrighted works of other people.
I welcome informed discussion. Of course, this is Slashdot, so I expect the signal-to-noise ratio to be woeful!
AussieScribe
What we need is anti-campaigns. Here's my idea. Show the victims of theft.. like a woman who has just had her handbag stolen. Crying, shocked, trying to tell a police officer what happened. Show someone freaking out when they discover that their car has been hot wired. Show people being laid off because the factory they worked in is being shutdown. For each one you have a caption that lists the crime. "Bag Snatch." "Grand Theft Auto." "Corporate Embezzlement." Then, finally, show a music executive, laughing, having lunch at some expensive restaurant, drinking fine wine, getting some young artist to sign on the dotted line. "Copyright Infringement" [fade to black] "It's NOT theft."
How we know is more important than what we know.
So now we have a whole generation that knows they are stealing but don't know why they feel okay with it. We have a whole generation of kids that we have to "fix" with reeducation. They are still sheep, but they are knocking over the fences.
I used to care about being legal. I spent a lot of time reading about copyright law and following cases and history. I concluded that copyright infringement is a crime. It is illegal to do what I do very often. I just don't care anymore. I honestly do not care whethere SONY/BMG or Universal miss out on my 16$, I don't care if my generation thinking that way costs them their whole goddamn business. Copyrights were instated to promote the progress of the sciences and the arts, not gaurantee a multibillion dollar industry its profits. Some people I know cry about it, but I know in MY heart that music will still be made.
And I think these kids, some of them, are starting to get it. Maybe now they are just enjoying free stuff, but they are setting the standard. We want instant distribution, we want to share our culture, and we want it now. If the record labels can't fill the demand, someone will, and lots of people will make money off of it. Perhaps together we can profit from this tragedy.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Wow, did copyright infringement run over your dog or something?
No, but since everyone in my family makes their livings in the production of one form or another of things that can (and do) get ripped off, it's a very familiar topic.
But more importantly, I'm just sick to death of kids who spend $30/week on overpriced coffee, and while drinking it with their friends bitch about how their favorite performers have the gall to have their life's work sold for a dollar or less per song. I've seen my work ripped off (in ways that do not magically contribute to a larger audience for me that will eventually somehow contribute to my bottom line - that recurring notion is really BS in most circumstances), and have seen the same things happen to other writers, artists, etc. that are close to me. Of course you want more people to enjoy your creative work - but you also have to wake up to the fact that if you're a professional who spends your entire waking life producing that work, it has to pay the bills. No one owes creative people a living - that is, no one except the people who choose that artist to be their entertainer when that artist has set a price for that experience.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yeah, that's fair enough. Of course, if they can't actually afford to buy your work, does your answer change, or should they just be deprived of it? Personally, I'm a very broke student, I really can't afford to buy music. Either I get it free, or I do without. (Oh, and I can't help but notice Green Day seem not to have gone bankrupt due to kids sharing tracks... are they drug dealing on the side do you think?)
Tomorrow, I may eat another house plant
"No, but since everyone in my family makes their livings in the production of one form or another of things that can (and do) get ripped off, it's a very familiar topic."
Perhaps you should consider lobbying for alternate methods of compensation that lets you get paid anyway.
There have been various suggestions ranging from direct payments to authors for every incarnation of a copy actually sold (ie, bypassing the entire publishing structure and levying a point-of-sale fee instead), to pure taxation and payment per copy schemes. All of which would get a far higher percentage of the money spent on creative content to the actual authors.
Consider how much money the *AA's claim is being lost to illicit copying, compared to how much money is actually spent on, and intended for arts that _never reaches the artists_.
For an MBA case study I came up with a business plan for a record company that actually gave away CDs and still had gross revenues approaching 70%! How? It's simple.
e als_itunes_stats/ [Accessed September 10th 2005]
You can get CDs pressed in China for as little as $0.25 in quantities of 10K. Even cheaper, approaching $0.10 in sufficient volume. Domestic record companies already own the means of production, so I'm sure their cost would approach $0.10 per CD if not actually be sharply lower.
My business plan called for giving these CDs away, primarily at live shows but this could also be accomplished via other channels. CDs given away are intended to be nothing more than loss leaders, contain maybe six tracks, with advertisements and "hidden extras" such as Bios also included and, most importantly, prominently contained URLs leading people to iTunes.
Now it gets profitable.
iTunes pays 70% of the selling price to the distributor / band / whomver owns the music.
Give away some tracks on CD, get people interested and then reap massive margins from electronic distribution rights. The average customer on iTunes purchases SIXTY tracks (Smith, 2005). The average customer will more than pay for that CD. Just the average; we're not talking about the higher volume, rabid fans either.
I did a market analysis and we projected annual growth rates in excess of 60% from the iTunes distribution channel.
So I think record companies have it half ass backwards. Give the fucking sound away, and they'll make more money in the long run.
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References
Smith, T., 'Apple Touts iTunes customer total', [online], Available from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/08/apple_rev
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How much money does a teen steal from you when he or she rips off your CD? 11, 12 cents, if you're lucky?
Now how much does the music industry steal?
Did you know, for example, that if you sell a thousand copied of an album through the music industry, you will make pennies, whereas if you sell that many yourself, you will make much much more?
Here's a quick example. A friend of my uncle's got his song played on a national radio station here in Britain as a record of the week. He then sold ten thousand copies of his self-produced CD. If he had a record deal, he would have earned about two-hundred pounds for that. But he didn't have a record deal. He had the CDs pressed and printed by a local professional reproduction service for about two pounds each. He sold each album for ten pounds. Eight pounds profit per CD multiplied by Ten thousand CDs is? He bought a new house with that.
I realise this is a rare event, but it needn't be. And it goes to prove just how unnecessary the music industry really is. I do believe in paying for music. But if I had a choice, I'd rather pay the artist than the middle manager, the T-shirt guy and the tour promoter.