Researchers Study File-Sharing Effects on Teen Norms & Values
Researchers Study File-Sharing Effects on Teen Norms & Values
January 2, 2009
Researchers at Sweden's Lund University are studying the ways in which interaction with file-sharing and social networking sites may affect how adolescents develop norms and values.
Swedish news outlet The Local reports that controversial file-sharing BitTorrent site ThePirateBay has been cooperating with researchers on the project.
Måns Svensson of the University’s department of sociology of law commented on the scope of the research, which will take four years to complete:
We’re going to try to see if there are social patterns which legislation and state powers normally don’t see and don’t address. We have a theory that there are processes for building norms on the internet which look different than those which take place in traditional society and that they are moving in a different direction than where the majority of society and legislation are headed.
This can be a problem for the law when you have a young, growing generation which creates its morals and norms through contact with these types of activities on the internet and a set of laws which doesn’t really comprehend what’s new and which risks heading off course in its attempt to regulate them.
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Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:05am
JDKJ: I'm no psychologist, but I'm told that crazy people have a tendency to do crazy things.
JDKJ: I'm no psychologist, but I'm told that crazy people have a tendency to do crazy things.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:03am
chadachada321: Whoops, was out of the convo for awhile. I do wonder what type of ammo he used etc, but the real issue is WHY he did it, not HOW
chadachada321: Whoops, was out of the convo for awhile. I do wonder what type of ammo he used etc, but the real issue is WHY he did it, not HOW
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:56am
JDKJ: But if it turns out that they actually did, they'll have Hell to pay.
JDKJ: But if it turns out that they actually did, they'll have Hell to pay.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:45am
JDKJ: And I'd tend to rule out the possibilty of FN Herstal supplying restricted ammunition to someone merely because they're ordering it from a military base.
JDKJ: And I'd tend to rule out the possibilty of FN Herstal supplying restricted ammunition to someone merely because they're ordering it from a military base.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:37am
JDKJ: I know you don't leave your gated community and get around much in dark alleys, so you may be surprised to learn that there's this thing called "the black market" where, if you've got enough money, ain't too much of anything which can't be bought.
JDKJ: I know you don't leave your gated community and get around much in dark alleys, so you may be surprised to learn that there's this thing called "the black market" where, if you've got enough money, ain't too much of anything which can't be bought.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:36am
Austin_Lewis: Or, maybe he or someone else at the base ordered the SS190 from FN Herstal.
Austin_Lewis: Or, maybe he or someone else at the base ordered the SS190 from FN Herstal.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:32am
Austin_Lewis: the hands of private owners. They run about 300 dollars minimum for a box of 50, and boxes of AP 5.7 are extremely scarce, mainly residing in the hands of Class III stores or individuals who for one reason or another got a demo box of it.
Austin_Lewis: the hands of private owners. They run about 300 dollars minimum for a box of 50, and boxes of AP 5.7 are extremely scarce, mainly residing in the hands of Class III stores or individuals who for one reason or another got a demo box of it.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:30am
Austin_Lewis: There are other firearms that fire the 5.7. However, I too would like to know where he got the ammo and what kind was used. Maybe Hasan, planning not to live through this, went out and bought one the boxes of SS190 that are floating around in
Austin_Lewis: There are other firearms that fire the 5.7. However, I too would like to know where he got the ammo and what kind was used. Maybe Hasan, planning not to live through this, went out and bought one the boxes of SS190 that are floating around in
Posted 11/07/09 at 08:44am
JDKJ: And it isn't yet clear what type of ammunition Hasan used. It's strange that he purchased a gun but didn't purchase ammunition for it at the same place and time. Especially because the calibre required is peculiar to the actual gun.
JDKJ: And it isn't yet clear what type of ammunition Hasan used. It's strange that he purchased a gun but didn't purchase ammunition for it at the same place and time. Especially because the calibre required is peculiar to the actual gun.
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Comments
Failed research from the start... Who all wants to poke holes in this load of BS? Where do you want to start? Methods of research? initial theory? no shit sections of their theory that apply to everyone and now just 'teens'? test group?
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Boy, I wish I was an instant expert on something I just read about like you!
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Good god man, this is the internet. EVERYONE is an expert.
More like no-one is an expert, but by god they have an inflated opinion of themselves.
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
Actually, DT may be right. There's a lot of different goals for this research it looks like, and many of them will be strange, hard, or nigh impossible to measure (like morals: there's no one morality, so there's no operational definition of morals. Everyone has morals. Now, it would be acceptable to see if the morals allow for pirating or not, but then you run into the fact that your subjects are coming from tPB, which is like going to an AA convention and asking 'hey, who here has had a beer at some point?'.)
"Teens who used PirateBay for 12 months were found to have 14% less morals than the control group"
But 4 levels higher on their WoW character.
haha
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xD
That was too funny.
We’re going to try to see if there are social patterns which legislation and state powers normally don’t see and don’t address.
Well, that would be almost everything that has to do with the internet since most of those old bats barely know how to use a computer.
We have a theory that there are processes for building norms on the internet which look different than those which take place in traditional society and that they are moving in a different direction than where the majority of society and legislation are headed.
No crap, but that is everyone that uses the internet, not just teens. You can not measure where it is going, because every time a new technology comes out, things go through another abrupt change. The iPhone, iTunes, and iPods changes a lot of how the internet works with things that are illegal. Torrenting programs and websites and new person to person sharing programs like LimeWire once was are impossible to keep on top of, and keep changing the dynamic of the internet. We have PS3s being used to crack SSLs, and process massive amounts of code for research purposes.
This can be a problem for the law when you have a young, growing generation which creates its morals and norms through contact with these types of activities on the internet and a set of laws which doesn’t really comprehend what’s new and which risks heading off course in its attempt to regulate them.
The rules of wrong and right, and norms are still being written for the internet. With technologies changing constantly, by the time the research is done, it will be outdated. (Like most compute based research without scalability.) Morals of corporations are in question just as much as individuals, and the internet shines a light on some of the things these people do. (Kind of like CarMax being the biggest joke in the world.) Even attempting to regulate these online communities will be pointless, because by doing so you will start destroying freedoms, making it pointless to regulate such things, because there is nothing being defended if you give up the only thing worth defending.
The research project will consist largely of in-depth interviews with ninth graders from Lund conducted over the course of four years.
How many people were Freshmen in high school and lied on those stupid quizzes they sent out for everyone to answer with questions like, do you drink, how much, how often, and same for sex, drugs, and so on.
Svensson and his colleagues will ask students about their attitudes and habits when it comes to activities such as file sharing, putting pictures on the internet, and playing internet poker.
The first 2 are relevant to a point, but the last has no relevance at all unless real money is part of the game.
Overall, you can not measure morals, especially when people have a hard time explaining what reason went behind their choices. Sometimes it is the plan and simple first level of morality. I want or it's wrong. With the internet, that is a bit more rare for people who are not already into piracy. When you work the full logic around why people pirated Spore, you get a hell of a range of reasons. Many of these reasons were well thought out, something high school students typically don't understand how to explain that well even though they went through the process in their head (and they will simplify too much). Adults have hard enough of a time explaining their thought processes.
Even if you can figure out where they ranked on the board of morality with the current standard model, there are no defined rules for the internet. Stealing is wrong, but you can record music from the radio onto a cassette tape, and it is legal as long as you do not sell it. It is legal to use youtube as a music player that you search for songs online that are being used in people's portfolios and such, because those videos can not be touched legally. What is the different from recording it from youtube? That is so easy, what is so different from downloading which is qualified as illegal. The quality still isn't assured, nor the completeness of the song. So the only good way to know for sure that you will have the whole thing in good quality is to buy it, which is what they want. Making the fact of people going after people for illegal methods of downloading absolutely pointless.
Same goes for movies, video games, and etc. Granted, the quality of piracy is going up, but companies are acting more like assholes, attacking the old methods like limewire, napster, and so on made people change how they did it all, which caused better methods of piracy.
If they would have left well enough alone corporately, it would have developed into a part of the online society that would have been easier to govern, instead it is a finely tuned illegal method of underground, deep underground, and extremely secret invite only underground. (The last group is insane, and know their shit. Some of the best programming and planning ever done, and extremely hard to detect given their methods.)
I just see this as a flop from the start.
Austin is right, they can measure the moral of if they pirate or not, but that information alone is useless without knowing the moral justification of pirating, which may change from that moment to when they think back on it to rationalize the choice, and to not taint the testing, you have to figure out a way to measure it and get this information without them knowing to encourage or discourage additional piracy.
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The article is pretty vague. Not sure how you can poke holes in the research when basically the article tells us nothing about it. Unless of course you're just approaching it from the obtuse anti-intellectual standpoint of "all research is pointless".
explained ^
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I want to see the end result of the study. Could be rather interesting.(I am not a sociologist)
The research methods will be strange, and this study may well be worthless in the end. How do you get accurate data from people who are committing illegal activity? How do you measure morals vs the norm? All sorts of interesting questions. Now, it may be possible, given enough time to think through how to conduct it, but this may be done quickly and shoddily too. I just hope they take it to the ACJS some year, the Europeans who do come often bring something fun to watch. (I AM a sociologist).
The end result, of course, will be that people who use file sharing sites have a lower moral standard than others. I mean - the problem isn't in the research study, it's in the question. Who's asking? Why are they asking? WHo even cares to be honest?
Of course, the RIAA and other simliar companies are likely funding it all by proxy.
Hmm I dunno. I think it's more a case of people like to get free stuff but don't have the guts to steal a CD or DVD so they use torrents instead deluding themselves that it's not stealing and younger people tend to be more tech savvym thus they are the ones using the torrents.
Commas are your friend. Don't be afraid to let them into your life.
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
I don't think there's much delusion in a lot of cases just a sheer lack of thought. downloading has become such a norm that people don't give the action much second thought; they don't think "is this legal" or "is what i am doing wrong"... even those who do know it's illegal only delude themselves once in awhile; 90% of the time they don't bother to think much about the action.
for a lot of downloaders, they think of downloading like they think about it like using electricity... how often do people just turn on and off electricity in their house but don't bother to think about how much the electrical bill is... maybe the person actually paying the bill will think about it and be concerned, but the rest of the people in the house will often barely give it a single thought. They'll leave lights on and waste electricity and not think about the cost of wasting it like that. Similiarly, downloaders will steal music and such but not give the legal ramifications of the act much thought...
the only time they think about it is when you question them directly and that's when they will either reveal that they are either, delusional, somehow feel justified in their actions, or understand but just don't care.... frankly, i think most of them fall into the later two groups
In part, this is down to the 'right now' mentality in modern society.
I wanted a Telescope when I was about 12, and the only way I could get it was to save money from a paper round, which I did. Same with music etc, if you were young, you were expected to save what little you earned and go out and buy things when you could afford them.
Modern society, in my experience works a little differently, things are popular for such a short space of time before the next 'Big Release' comes along, that there's no time to save up and buy stuff if you are a young person who is reputation conscious.
In many ways, I wonder if the saturation of the Video Game market isn't, in some small way, responsible in part for the levels of piracy.
Take The Sims 2, we are talking about a Teen rated game that, when the add ons are included, comes to over $200 worth of software. Now, how many Teens, or even their parents, can afford to own the entire set, and, being teens, you can be pretty sure that they will want the entire set, especially if their friends have already obtained it through one means or another, and by the time you've saved up for one expansion pack, another 2 have come out, so the inevitable urge to 'cheat' arises, in order to keep up with the Jones's.
Maybe if companies stopped trying to rush out so many games, and dedicated a little more time to development, there wouldn't be such a rush to keep up?
"Maybe if companies stopped trying to rush out so many games, and dedicated a little more time to development, there wouldn't be such a rush to keep up?"
don't think that would actually solve much... i mean even though it seems like games are coming out so quickly, we are talking about games coming from different teams within each company from various different companies... each of those great games that you see still took a few years to develop and spending some more time in development would not change much (it's kinda like delaying the inevitable); though that's not to say some games could not have benefitted from some extra development time
though what i do think could be a ralated contributing problem would be WHEN they release games... i mean, there are times during the year that are like designated as the best times to release a game... its not hard to imagine that a lot of them best games wait until those high points to be released. The result being that you have several hot video games coming out at almost the same time but not nearly enough money to afford them all; you might have enough if you saved up through the year, but you most likely spent that money on good, but less anticipated titles... in essence, things might get a bit easier if publishers were more willing to release games randomly throughout the year... but asking publishers to stop paying attention to the high points of the market year is probably like asking them to just burn money
True, I doubt development times alone would solve the problem, but sheer volume of goods coming out, all of them being claimed as 'must-haves' (though that is a long long way from a new advertising technique) does cause a backlog of 'want to own' games. Same with music, time was when a band would spend 2 years in the studio developing their next album, nowadays, if you don't release an album every 3 months, you fall out of fashion, that kind of increase in release rate could quite possibly be correlated, to some degree, to the increase in downloading.
As for seasonal releases, agreed on all counts, businesses will always target the 'affluent' times of the year, such as Christmas or Easter, where people are in money-spending mode, but that may not be as advantageous as it looks in the long term, once again, the problem is, if it was released in October, by December it would be out of date.
But you don't actually NEED the newest The sims expansion. And that's something wrong with America today; a lot of people don't understand need and want. Look at the sub-prime mortgage;10% or less down on a house? LUNACY! But people felt they needed the house, enough to ignore the shitty deal they were taking, so they could move out of their appartment or smaller house or whatever they lived in/at before. No one needs a video game. No one needs a movie. No one needs a song. People NEED to grow the fuck up.
Exactly.
The problem is these companies try to tell people 'You must own this game, right now!', and people actually think this is true, and if getting it 'Right Now' means downloading it, then they will.
In some ways this is a Monster in closet created by the companies themselves, they've been training society up into thinking that owning the latest version of everything is the be-all and end-all of existence, and it's turning round and biting them, because even when they can't afford it, that 'must-have' mentality has been too deeply inground to resist.
Interesting point!
ROFL!! I can see the big 10 media companies cringing over this. It basically says tPB will be around for at least four more years.
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"The most difficult pain a man can suffer is to have knowledge of much and power over little" - Herodotus
I guess I'll vote for tPB in four more years again.
Who's with me? FOUR MORE YEARS!
It could be quite interesting, though they do need to take into account that the methods available for file sharing have increased exponentially over the years, so direct comparison to past rates of copying will not give a clear picture on the surface.
The hard question will be 'If this technology were available 40 years ago, would the download rates have been any lower?'
Strangely enough, I think the answer would be 'yes', but it's not something you can answer easily, because it's not an isolated thing, you cannot seperate FileSharing from the rest of the situation in many societies today and treat it as a singular thing, since it involves, in part, an ongoing change in the mentality of the Public towards large, over-bearing corporations.
So, how much is greed, how much is perception and how much is just a case of 'everyone else does it'? It could be interesting to find out if the study is conducted correctly.
Why not ask DeepThorn if it's going to be conducted correctly, he's an expert after just a single reading of this news story!
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
that wasnt really called for. cant we keep this civil and not pull out the flamethrowers?
No.
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
This could be very intriguing, even if the original study on file sharing is a bit narrow in scope (though to be fair, studies are easier to interpret when you restrict the focus). Goes deep into social theory and emerging technology. Think "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex," but without the pretensiousness.
As gamers and people comfortable with the internet, we're already aware of many differences that being connected has brought. Anonymity plays a big part here. People tend to be as blunt and rude as they want, as there are no consequences. Good for letting people speak their minds, bad for civil discourse. A lot of people not only see no problem with pirating, even lauding how they are entitled to something for nothing because they weren't going to pay for it anyway. Increased sources of information means that you get to choose your news from someone who already thinks like you, so you never have to have your opinions challenged, thus leading to people not being able to understand the other side or find a compromise. Viral information sharing can make even the most inane, suddenly famous and interesting. People have lost all sense of privacy, posting the most embarrassing things about themselves, then wondering why it comes back to bite them in the ass. Internet campaigning practically decided this last US Election's winner.
I'm sure I could think of several other ways the internet has helped to mold this generation's social climate, but I'll stop there.
I hope they don't conclude that file-sharing = legitimizing stealing as a social norm. Well, at least they're taking a good four years to study it. There really aren't enough attempts to make longitudinal video game studies out there.
"There is no sin except stupidity." - Oscar Wilde
Well, my money's on that like ALL research on politically charged things this'll be heavily skewed one way or the other, or will draw inconclusive results.
<rant>
Do these people have no common sense? What do they THINK they're going to find?
I can already tell you now by looking at the U.S. rock and roll revolution what's happening. We'll have the beatles and the monkeys (MP3 downloading), the 'nay' side will react strongly and try to suppress it (RIAA and MPAA lawsuits), we'll go further into heavy innuendo (bittorrent and software piracy), which will result in further attacks against it (Federal legislation on modchipping).
This is where we are now. We're jaded, the old farts are yelling at us, and because of the prices of software and music we're basically being told to 'do the right thing' and not partake in what 'everyone else' is doing, often in very nasty, rude ways. Instead of offering a carrot on the stick we're being threatened with lawsuits. There is no penalty that will stop piracy. To continue my analogy... (We're at 1990, the darknets are just starting to become available)
We'll have our 90s generation of music (Totally encrypted but low availability darknets) which'll garner some griping and the occasional censoring, but no one will be able to do anything about it. The more people that realize they can do ANYTHING wihtout being caught, the more people will join the encrypted darknets. The punitive measures won't stop, and we'll end up putting a choice in our legislators laps.
Restrict freedom of speech, encryption, and put many many innocent people in jail for being in the darknets, or let it continue. By then it'll be too late to switch to the carrot, and it'll continue.
After which we'll go into the 2000s, where there are some sensible musicians, but equally as many nasty ones. The rule will be 'do what you want when you want regardless of who's harmed, because it feels good'. (High availability darknets, high speed darknets).
The further we go down this road the less pay will be available in technology.
The fact is that there is no stopping a small amount of piracy, at a small enough amount, it's a scab. Because these companies keep picking it, it continues to bleed and turn into a bigger and bigger scab. The way to turn it back into that tiny scab is simple for software.
1 purchase of software, 1 household with as many users as they want
No DRM or anti-piracy tricks, use a CD-key (or dual CD-keys that aren't asociated by algorithm, but only work in a pair, with only your server knowing which pairs are valid.) and leave it at that.
Stop complaining, people hear the word piracy and think of it as an option
Expect 10% of your potential users to be pirates and/or people that buy used. Take this loss, if only 10% of spore players were pirates, sales would be triple what they are now-but the DRM and anti-piracy measures picked the scab.
For music? Publish in lossless formats on the internet for little money, say even ten cents a song or a dollar an album, then offer on store shelves (If you even want to pay a publisher) DVDs with live performances, etc. And do it like they did in old days, and make most of your money in concert. The fact is it takes a person less time to pirate the entirety of K.I.S.S.'s works than it does to drive to the store and buy a single CD of it.
What my generation was essentially taught by the punishment is the same things I learned in public schools before I was pulled from them and homeschooled. If a person isn't caught, they didn't do anything wrong, and the wrong thing here has much reward, and with the darknets, zero risk of being caught.
"Right for right's sake" isn't going to fly when a teen's favorite band wants 20 dollars, they want to learn photoshop (900 dollars), and 3DS max (3200 dollars), they want to try vista ultimate (300 dollars), and they want to play some of the new games that came out that year (200 dollars for 4 games).
I can't afford the music next to purchasing the software and games I play, so I simply don't listen to any music I don't get out of my games. That is entirely unreasonable to ask of this generation of teens, when they can have all the music they could ever listen to, all the software they could ever use, and all the movies they could watch for absolutely nothing.
</rant>
...ha, that was pretty long.
There's two things I dislike about your rant.
1. Whatever happened to going without? If you don't have that album, you don't have that software, you don't have whatever it is you want, you have to save up for it. Big fucking deal. I remember saving money for cartridges and Cd's when I was poorer, and even now I still teach my son that he has to save and make decisions on what he wants. Sure, if he's asking for a CD that I enjoy, chances are I'll buy it in a week and loan it to him, or if he's asking for a game that he wants to play and it looks interesting to me I'll do the same, but what happened to going without? Is this new generation really that spoiled? 'Oh no, I can't afford some music, I guess I'll just download it because I NEED it. Oh no, I can't afford FarCry 2 (only using this as an example because I just beat it after buying it earlier this week), I'll download it because I NEED it. Same goes with programming software; I knew people who scrimped and saved for the software they needed to learn on. How'd they do that? They budgeted out the things they wanted for what they NEEDED (although yeah, those licenses are getting retarded expensive, let's face it). A lot of people put a lot of work into that music, that game, that movie, that program, and they deserve their money.
Obviously, DRM is different, because I just hate watching consumers being treated like they're all criminals.
2. Rant too long.
1. Whatever happened to going without?
It's unfortunately rapidly getting devoured by the culture of consumerism. The whole "faster faster, and instant gratification!" thing has done a lot to reduce or eliminate people's ability to be patient. Couple that with the "spend spend! Even if you have to max out your credit card or mortgage your house, spend!" push of marketing and social pressures and you get people doing whatever it takes to get what they desire as quickly as possible. Whether the means used to get it is a good idea, or legal, or even sane gets pushed out of consideration.
-Gray17
Agreed with the other reply. Quite frankly, I personally do without when a game or music album costs too much. I actually don't buy albums, nor do I pirate them. I had a 40 dollars a month allowance, and couldn't get a job due to medical issues.
The advertising today is MUCH more aggressive, the peer pressure much higher, and the pirated copies of software typically are of HIGHER quality than the store bought ones (Due to DRM).
So if this is the 'must have game of the year' 'don't miss it' 'get it now' 'If you don't have it, you're missing out' game, your friends are playing it, and you can join in for absolutely free and still have your monthly allowance to spend on something else, what's the motivation to do so?
I have to say, it was VERY difficult for me-as a computer guru-to not pirate visual studio and learn to program. I had no option but self study as I was homeschooled, and visual basic was the easiest to get into.
Even now, as I'm faced with getting into 3D design, all the guides I see say that what I can afford is severely limited, and to buy the 3200 dollar software. Unfortunately, as a student that isn't majoring in art, I can't afford that.
The fact is I could, in ten minutes, have over 50,000 dollars worth of software music, and movies downloading to my computer, and have it done completely anonymously. I was taught that there are moral absolutes in this world, and what I take as my moral absolute says it's wrong. Conversely, I also believe it's wrong to rip people off.
I'll do without and eventually be able to get it, but by then I will have graduated and no longer have the time to learn how to use any of it.
----------The big point----------
It's absolute lunacy to expect rebellious teenagers without parental supervision or moral absolutes that want to 'keep up' with their peers to spend as much money on a single game as they would if they paid for an expensive date, ESPECIALLY when they can have it ALL for free.
This problem is only made worse by DRM, and hearing how much these executives and musicians make. "I'm giving up dinner with my friends to pay for someone's new corvette and personal theatre?"
What we'll likely find if we could do a reliable survey is that high income families that adhere to a moral absolute (read : religious beliefs, code of honor, etc) have almost no piracy of any sort, and as you move down that scale you'll find more and more piracy among those that can afford electronics.
I think recorded music should be free or nearly so. People should support the bands they like by going to their concerts or buying merchandise. I'll end up paying 10 an a CD and maybe 45 to 80 on band merchandise (clothing, concert tickets, etc...) to essentially promote the same album I purchased. I don't feel justified doing that anymore, especially with less and less money to do so.
If recorded music was higher quality across the board (the CD needs to be replaced completely) I would feel justified paying for it. Until then, my music money goes toward concerts and merchandise.
This only works for established bands with resources and funding to recoup those intial costs, though. Recording is insanly expensive and if you can't at least make your money back for what you spent to record then you're not going to have the money to tour and make your money back that way. Sure MCR or Radiohead can afford to do that but they're in the minority of bands/musicians with those kinds of resources and backing. Often those artists aren't the ones that put their own money up for the recording and packaging and such in the first place. The small guys and those just starting out don't have those kind of luxuries. They have to do everything out of pocket and then giving away their studio work for free just isn't an option.
I'm a musician myself and I know my bands last album is being pirated heavily in other countries. Yes it's great that more people thoughout the world like it enough to find a way to get a copy but we still haven't made back what the cost of recording it was. Thus, we can't afford to tour it and make our cash back that way because we're still in hole from our initial costs. Without having a cd and other merch (all of which costs out of pocket money to make) touring would be pointless. You aren't going to make door money because no one outside of your initial area knows who you are so selling merch is pretty much your only source of income on the road. This isn't even counting all the other expenses that come with touring. You still need to pay rent and utilities so you have somewhere to come home to when the tour is over and considering how long a decent tour can take you probably have to quit your job to be able to do it so there's a good chance you won't have any source of income when you get back.
Basically only the minority of bands out there can afford to give their studio work away for free and those are the ones that are rich already. If you want to take that stance and not pay for recorded music then at least take a look at who you are pirating from and whether or not this will actually have an effect on them. If they're already well funded and label backed then it probably means nothing, if they're not and are trying to make it, then it probably means everything.
You're creating a new copy of something to avoid paying for an original, sounds very much like theft to me. The effect on the victims is the same.
This study sounds like it could (and probably should) be done WITHOUT the whole piracy connection.
It is already known that (a) youth tend to grow up with a differnt set of norms then thier parents and (b) exposure to both a world and endless niche communities allows them to pick up norms that are widly differnt then their local communities.
This has been an effect scaring community leaders (who want to insure that THEIR norms are passed down) for a while now. You see it even stronger in Europe and the Middle East where countires are scambling to make sure that thier specific local culture stays intact dispite their youth being influenced by other cultures.
Add into that the point that you have an abstract 'internet culture' that, while derived from IRL, is at this point pretty distinct, you have a set of norms coming in from something that older generations don't even acknoweldge exists as a culture unto it'self.
So I would say that file sharing makes up one small part of this effect (one specific set of norms), but the whole effect is far more intersting then this one little narrow piece ^_^
Maybe more people are becoming pirates in the sense lol because more people are accesible to the technology associated with it. Theres alot of posts like "Well when I was growing up I had to save up money and get it." Maybe that because you never had the opportunity to do something these "kids"(adults are doing it just as much as kids I'm certain) are all doing.
There has always been movie pirates, games, books all sorts of things. I remember walking down Manhattan and walking by a few vendors selling bootlegs movies back in the early 90s. That didn't happen in every town, in every state so there where a lot of people who HAD to save up to buy the movie. What I'm trying to say this isnt becoming the Norm because this generation has grown up with a lack of morals and responsiblity but because its become so easy to access pirated data..
In the past you had to wake up get in your car and find that one person with the connections to get you, your movie. Now all you do is get on tPB and download a movie its simplier, its easier, and more accesible to everyone.
There is bootlegging in every major city in the US, just like there's a trade in ripoffs of brand names in every major city. You could find bootlegs everywhere in the 90s and 80s. There are a few differences:
1) not such an instant gratification culture back then
2) the people who sold bootleg tapes were seen as sleazy. It was commonly accepted that bootlegging was fucking sleazy. It wasn't the norm nor would it become the norm, not because of lack of availability, but because it was a low-class thing to do.
3) That 'easy access' idea is a cop-out. If you grew up near a store that had tape cassettes or VHS casettes or vinyl albums you had easy access, and a lot of stores would never notice a few missing (except the vinyls, things were huge). And everyone had that one friend who had that dad who bought nothing but bootleg and could always hook you up with a bootleg of whatever you wanted.
To be honest i don't find filesharing of music, movies, games, software, ect, to be what i consider stealing. Stealing IMO means taking something physical or material from another person so they no longer have it. If i was to steal a 40 oz of JD from a friend's house then that would be stealing, because he/she no longer has it. If I download a few songs off of a bit torrent site i'm not actually taking away something from someone else so they no longer have it. That person still has those files on their computer.
If anything i consider filesharing to be like copying few pages out a book from a library through a copying machine, which people have been doing for years and is to my knowledge perfectly legal.
"No law means no law" - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the First Amendment
It is stealing, but not in the sense you are thinking. When people fileshare copyrighted stuff, whoever made the work being fileshared is not getting paid for that person to own/use it. So, even though the copyright holder still has a copy of their work, they have had money 'stolen' from them in a way. Now, add the fact that a file can be pirated 10974023947 times a day on limewire, that is alot of money being lost.
Of course, if anyone pirates an RIAA song, let them. The RIAA and their lawsuit crusade deserve to be pirated. xD
Copyright laws are fucking over society at the moment and that is a major issue in play that almost never gets addressed. An interesting case in point is the copyright on Popeye just expired (75 after the creators death) I wonder how soon it will be before some companies start to try to recopyright it with some minor change or try to reissue the videos under their own "new" copyright.
Additionally every copy of something is NOT a lost sale.
Then there are those who copy stuff they cant not purchase locally no matter how much they try.
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"The most difficult pain a man can suffer is to have knowledge of much and power over little" - Herodotus
The laws really ARE over people, and that's just sad...in school, someone was COMPLAINING that their parents grounded them for pirating on limewire, and then made them delete their whole ipod and buy all the songs on itunes. I want to give those parents a high five, because people shouldn't be pirating in the first place.
I will agree with you on popeye though...it will be very amusing to see all these greedy corporations fight for a new copyright. xD That article also says mickey mouse is going to follow in a few years, and it will be more interesting to see how disney rolls with that.....
Its not stealing its CP infringement, technically tis not a crime as there is no illicit gain to it.
It boils down to disturbing the legal monopoly on distribution the rights owners have, the trouble its impossible to enforce because tis very much like the trade of thought and word. CP is antiquated it needs to mvoe away from distribution rights to profit rights.
I muse over this idea on mew blog.here
http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/zippy-profit-rights/
Shearing/Downloading will never be a mainstream market.
Gore,Violence,Sexauilty,Fear,Emotion these are but modes
of transportation of story and thought, to take them from
society and you create a society of children and nannys
I just LOVE how people have been bashing on stuff kids like to do these days...I know alot of people who use file sharing sites, and they still abide by the law and don't have affected morals. (well, except for the fact that they are using limewire, lol.)
I think there are some really good points that you guys made about this. Are todays kids any different than us back in the 80's? I don't think so. I just remember how many music tapes I copied. Was I breaking the law? I guess so. The tapes were my cousins. Back then you could buy dual tape decks. Why? To copy bloody tapes? That to me is a sin based on how p2p is viewed today. So, because it's easy to do now, corporations are starting to care. I know it's dishonest to be sharing files and programs, but lets face it. It's not new. It's not because of this generation. I agree with whoever said that it's because its simply easier to do now. Humans haven't changed in nature because of p2p. It just made it easier to do.
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The difference between copying a buddy's tape and file sharing is the volume though. If you got the tapes from your cousin then you're looking at a couple of copies max shared between a few people at most. With p2p, you're talking about millions of copies shared between millions of people. Sharing music with those you know is a good thing and lets friends expose things to friends that they may not have heard otherwise. Torrenting someone else's work to millions and millions of anonymous people is another matter altogether.
You could build a library out of copied tapes if you wanted to but it would take a substantial amount of effort on your part, not to mention knowing a hell of a lot of people with those albums already in their possetion. That's a completely different beast from filling a 500gb drive with a couple clicks on limewire. It seems like the same thing on the surface but the reality is much different. CD and tape trading equates to a small scale community of "hey, check these guys out, you should pick up their album" while p2p generally equates to "here, build a full music library and it won't cost you a cent, besides, they're just being greedy for wanting compensation for something they spent years working on and perfecting."
Brings to mind “Sharing of open and free thought, friendship and files makes for antiquation of modern society/industry.”
/Incoherent intellectual
Shearing/Downloading will never be a mainstream market.
Gore,Violence,Sexauilty,Fear,Emotion these are but modes
of transportation of story and thought, to take them from
society and you create a society of children and nannys