MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-09-20 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Downloading in the News
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September 21, 2003 THE WAY WE LIVE NOW Turn On. Tune In. Download. By
ROB WALKER
Pretty much from the moment that music ''file swapping'' made its way
into the public consciousness by way of Napster, there has been a
vaguely ''Reefer Madness'' quality to the discussion of what the
practice has meant to its college-age-and-younger participants. We have
heard again and again that this new generation is coming to believe that
music is something you don't pay for but rather simply take. That idea
is in the air again since the major recording labels recently started
filing what they say will be thousands of lawsuits against people who
have used file-sharing software like KaZaA to download songs they have
not paid for.
And the implication of that argument is ominous and meant to alarm us:
file sharing is like a gateway drug that will make users unlearn their
willingness to pay for movies, video games, books. What the music
industry is doing might be thought of as administering a dose of tough
love, an intervention that will remind wayward youth not just that
stealing is wrong but also that we have a system here wherein goods and
services carry a cost. It's called capitalism, kid, and chances are very
high that your favorite recording artist -- and every other cultural
figure you admire -- loves it. Better to learn this now and kick the
download habit before it leads to harder stuff, like a general
unwillingness to pay for material goods of any kind, or a failure to
grasp the magic of a great brand. If these consumer delinquents don't
get scared straight back to the mall, the cost to us all will be much
greater than lost revenue for the music business. The very morals of a
generation are at stake.
For that to be the case, a couple of underlying assumptions must be
true. One is that file sharing is at its heart a problem of reckless
youth who simply do not understand that what they are doing is wrong and
dangerous. Another is that the habits of college are the habits of a
lifetime.
We can dismiss right away the notion that most file swappers would stop
if only they understood that what they're doing is wrong. One of the
most amusing research results from the various studies of music piracy
is the finding that most file sharers apparently don't care if they're
violating copyright laws. But this attitude doesn't mean disdain for the
marketplace. Earlier this year Forrester Research surveyed
12-to-22-year-olds and adults 23 and older and found that while about
half the kids had downloaded songs in the past month (compared with 12
percent of the grown-ups), nearly half of the young downloaders said
that they were buying as many CD's as ever. (Members of what Forrester
dubs Young Samplers on average bought 3.6 CD's in the past 90 days.)
What's more, while 67 percent of the young cohort think ''people should
be able to download music for free,'' the same percent claim they are
very likely to buy a CD as a result of a recent download.
If there isn't much evidence that young people are not having their
acceptance of the free market permanently unwired, then why do they seem
to dominate the download phenomenon? No doubt a facility with technology
really does set this generation apart. But other, probably more
important factors are not new at all. Younger people with fewer
responsibilities have much more time to devote to pleasure seeking of
all sorts than they have disposable income to pay for it. And at college
especially, they are part of a tight-budgeted community, and the culture
of sharing is stronger at this age in their lives than it will ever be
again.
But the biggest factor, as any baby-boomer politician will tell you --
in fact, as most baby-boomer politicians have already told you -- is
that youth is a time of experimentation. If everyone carried their
college-age behavior patterns into adulthood, then half our elected
officials would be current recreational dope smokers. Which is probably
not the case. Certainly we have all absorbed the lesson by now that it's
possible to party, get crazy and shrug off responsibility all through
college and still grow up to be president.
The lawsuits do make downloading riskier, but a major component of
youthful experimentation is a liberal attitude toward risk that mellows
over time. Just as important is run-of-the-mill rebellion. An unnamed
16-year-old female in Forrester's report summarizes her defense of
downloading this way: ''RECORD COMPANIES ARE UNFAIR AND ARE PART OF THE
SYSTEM, GO AGAINST THE SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!''
Well, sure. Who didn't feel that way at 16? On the other hand, how many
people feel that way forever? And even now, it's worth pointing out, the
radical anti-system ethos that supposedly underlies file sharing is not
all it's cracked up to be. The fact is, most participants do a lot more
taking than ''sharing''; one study found that nearly half the songs
accessible through major peer-to-peer networks are contributed by just 1
percent of users, and nearly 70 percent of downloaders do not share a
thing. One of the more revelatory aspects of the record industry's
strategy is that it's picking targets based less on how much music
they've downloaded than on how much they are offering up to the world.
(Of course, this won't do much to counter the industry's reputation as
the architect of an Evil System -- nor will the fact that the most
prominent of the early targets was a 12-year-old honors student.)
The urge to cast downloading as a kind of black-and-white moral issue
that simply needs to be made plain to the kids so that they will knock
it off is understandable, but it's also wishful thinking. An estimated
60 million people have downloaded songs illicitly, which makes the
phenomenon bigger than a youth fad. It's more like speeding or marijuana
use -- activities that many people in a wide range of ages know are
''wrong'' in a technical sense but not in a behavioral sense. By now,
even if the music industry is right on the legal argument, it can't win
the moral one.
Rob Walker is a columnist for Slate.
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