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Digital
US students do not equate file-sharing with shoplifting
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 15 April 2011
A report in a journal called Psychology, Crime & Law says that American students regard stealing CDs as a much worse act than nabbing music via P2P file-sharing networks. Which isn’t a surprise really, and presumably in part because you can be prosecuted for shoplifting by the police if you take a CD, whereas first offence file-sharing will, in the main, get you a harshly worded letter. Plus, of course, it’s easier to associate a tangible value to a piece of plastic than the ethereal sounds contained on it.
According to Ars Technica, the 172 students in Midwest USA surveyed said that shoplifting a CD was “morally wrong” and “they were socially influenced not to do it”, while illegally downloading music was “not as morally wrong, there’s virtually no social influence not to [do it and there’s] no obligation to obey the law”. The male students surveyed were generally more blasé about illegal downloading, having more contempt for the music industry and more confidence they wouldn’t be caught if they illegally shared music.
So gloomy reading for content owners then. Though the author of the piece in Psychology, Crime & Law admitted that the survey he was writing about was now a few years old, and that things were changing so much in the internet space – in particular with the increase in the number of legitimate content services – that perhaps if the same survey was done now, or in the near future, attitudes to file-sharing might change.
