Only 2 in 500 College Students Believe in IP

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "David Pogue of the New York Times has an interesting story about how fewer and fewer people believe that infringement is wrong. He mentions talks he gave back in 2005 where people were willing to believe that making backups of DVDs you own is wrong. Today, however, at his talks, he was only able to get two people out of a crowd of five hundred college students to say that downloading a movie or album is wrong. He goes on, like many before him, to bemoan the immorality of young people today, saying: 'I do know, though, that the TV, movie and record companies' problems have only just begun. Right now, the customers who can't even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*. What will happen then?'"

Comments

hah

[deathtopaulw]

as if there is some sort of basic right and wrong
I download music and movies because I hope to one day witness the entire industry come crashing down... but along the way I'd still like to hear and see what's going on

what I'm doing happens to be perfectly in the right, for me
but then again im completely crazy

Re:I believe in IP...

[shark72]

"In my analog world, if I didn't like all the crap on an album the shills are trying to sell, I could purchase the single, and probably get a B-side or two with it. Now, I can't. Furthermore, with digital distribution, I'm asked to take a quality hit in order to help defray the costs of the distributor. Not likely. I'll download it."

This position is a common one. The argument used to be that P2P allowed us to break the tyrrany of having to buy the entire album. When iTunes and other retailers grew their catalogs and it became trivial to buy any track of of a CD (a far superior offering to the old "you can only buy the songs we choose in single form" model), the position changed to focus on DRM. Many people argued that they preferred P2P so they could get a DRM-less version. Now that iTunes, Amazon and more online retailers are offering more and more DRM-free tracks, the position has shifted to one of quality: P2P allows them to get a lossless FLAC or somesuch. And when iTunes and the rest start offering higher bitrates, you just know that this crowd will come up with a new rationale.

The irony is that the vast majority of music listeners aren't doing so on $350 Grado headphones or Emu studio monitors; they're using the crappy earbuds that came with their iPods, or (slightly less crappy) $50 Sony earbuds if they take their music a little more seriously. Yet the "it's all about the quality" piracy rationale is quite popular.

Present company excluded; of course... you're probably one of those "golden ears" people for whom only uncompressed will do, so you really don't have any choice but to use P2P. At least the upside is that you're also saving a lot of money.

We don't need copyright

[Mr2001]

It's kind of scarry to see this attitude (IP = imaginary) coming from american students. [...] Sure, there will always be some level of 'physical' work needed - but it has dwindled, and our economy exists now primarily based on the concent of intellectual property - because it's the main thing we produce in this country. That may be true, but it's a mistake to conclude that we need copyright to survive. People can still sell their intellectual labor even without "intellectual property" laws - and the labor is where the value comes from. Copyright puts the cart before the horse anyway; moving away from it means moving closer to a sensible economic model.

I'm talking about exact iPod clones made by the same plants making them for Apple, if you're truely throwing out IP let's even put the apple brand on them and the Apple phone support number while we're at it - it's not "real" property, right? Yes and no. What you just described is fraud more than anything else: the clone factory is lying to everyone who buys one of these iPod clones. The logo and phone number say it was made by Apple, but in fact it wasn't. That's fraud, and you don't need copyright laws to prosecute fraud. Personally, I don't mind trademark laws in principle, even though I'm completely opposed to copyright, because trademarks are about nothing more than preventing fraud (at least when they're enforced properly).

Now, if some Chinese factory wants to make cloned iPods, put their own name on them, and sell them back to us, good for them! If they can sell the same product at a lower price than Apple, they deserve that income. It's called competition.

You might respond that Apple has to charge more because they have to pay for the research that went into designing the iPod, and I wouldn't disagree. But it's not my fault, or any other potential iPod owner's fault, that Apple chose to structure their business that way: paying the researchers out of money that might materialize down the road someday.

They're in the same boat as a musician who records a song for free and then hopes to get paid later by selling copies. It's a flawed business model, trading actual money today for imaginary potential money next year (when you may not be in a position to compete with others who are selling the same thing), and anyone who gambles like that has to be prepared to lose.