David Pogue on the Generational Divide in Copyright Morality
Was going through my mail today and came across a column by David Pogue of the New York Times describing the generational divide that exists today around copyright. He walks through an interesting thought process that really highlights the different shades of gray that exist around sharing digital media today – and in particular, really illustrates generational attitude differences. Here’s a snippet of responses from a talk he gave to an older, mixed audience (with an ask for people to raise their hands when someone thought the example crossed the line of legality):
“I borrow a CD from the library. Who thinks that’s wrong?” (No hands go up.)
“I
own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the same CD from
the library and rip it to my computer.” (A couple of hands.)“I have 2,000 vinyl records. So I borrow some of the same albums on CD from the library and rip those.”
“I buy a DVD. But I’m worried about its longevity; I have a three-year-old. So I make a safety copy.”
With each question, more hands go up; more people think what I’m describing is wrong.
Then I try another tack:
“I
record a movie off of HBO using my DVD burner. Who thinks that’s
wrong?” (No hands go up. Of course not; time-shifting is not only
morally O.K., it’s actually legal.)“I *meant* to record an HBO movie, but my recorder malfunctioned. But my buddy recorded it. Can I copy his DVD?” (A few hands.)
“I
meant to record an HBO movie, but my recorder malfunctioned and I don’t
have a buddy who recorded it. So I rent the movie from Blockbuster and
copy that.” (More hands.)And so on.
The exercise is
intended, of course, to illustrate how many shades of wrongness there
are, and how many different opinions. Almost always, there’s a lot of
murmuring, raised eyebrows and chuckling.
He then describes how he goes through the same exercise with a college crowd:
Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I’d
ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the
demonstration bombed.In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far
my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I
just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these
kids’ morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like
I was nuts.Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, “O.K., let’s
try one that’s a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album.
You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it.”There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.
“Who thinks that might be wrong?”
Two hands out of 500.
Now, maybe there was some peer pressure involved; nobody wants to look like a goody-goody.
Maybe
all this is obvious to you, and maybe you could have predicted it. But
to see this vivid demonstration of the generational divide, in person,
blew me away.I don’t pretend to know what the solution to the
file-sharing issue is. (Although I’m increasingly convinced that copy
protection isn’t it.)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?
I found this particularly interesting since I’ve spent quite a bit of time this holiday trying to figure out the best way to archive and playback some of my DVDs from the basement media server. Although the Xbox 360 Fall update enables a bunch of new scenarios, it’s still not an easy task, especially if you want to stream the content at its original quality… and DRM is one of the primary culprits.
This is my personal opinion, of course, but I just don’t think DRM (at least in its currently highly-restrictive state) is going to be the primary enabler of legitimate digital media sharing/purchasing business models in the long run. For one, consumers hate it – heck, even I detest the 24-hour viewing period for downloaded movies… including the ones from the Xbox marketplace. And the cat and mouse game between DRM providers and hackers will never end. As David says, 10, 20, or 30 years from now the world will be a very different place… especially as those of us who grew up with the concept of being able to use digital media flexibly become the same people who define the rules and laws around using that content.
To be clear, I think that future will have ways for content owners to be paid – that’s obvious, or content simply would stop being created! But it’s very interesting to watch the business models change from year to year – the fluidity with which DRM-free MP3s have slipped into the market is a great signpost pointing toward the future.
Right – enough rambling for now. Happy New Year!
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One way in which it almost certainly will be different is that the content providers will actually figure out a way to charge me for the content I’d like to pay for.
I will basically never, ever watch live TV unless it’s a sporting event. What I really want, is something like Zune Marketplace that will let me pay a subscription fee and have access to download current TV shows. Sure, I can DVR stuff now if I have one, but that requires me knowing in advance about shows that I would like to watch. And since I almost never watch live TV, I didn’t see the commercials for the show.
Under the current system they’ve basically lost me as a viewer.
Apart from the legality issue.
I ‘ve been using the tool from dvd-wmv.com to convert my DVD collection into WMV.
I also built my own tool to manage metadata in my WMV collection (well mostly to add Movie Poster to the WMV metadata). The movie collection with posters looks great in the Xbox 360 interface, almost like the posters in the marketplace, and NO 24hrs restriction
Us youngin’s have a vastly different view on what’s moral or not; this doesn’t mean our views are immoral- old people and their morals will be dead soon, so our morals will be moral.
Wow, that doesn’t make sense.
Ok, put it this way
What’s moral and what’s legal are quite often different.
DRM is the devil's tool. Microsoft proved it over and over again with the faulty 360's not getting fixed but replaced, making it necessary for people to be online to play purchased content (arcade games) or be stuck with trials.
Everything I've downloaded, mostly music, was purchased from sites that were cheap and either had no DRM or let me burn to a disc so I could then rip again and have DRM-free MP3s.
I hardly download movies, but when I do, I only get those I want to see before buying them. Beowulf so far has been the only movie I've downloaded but not bought, and will never buy.
Education works best. Punishment, such as the RIAA sueing random 'normal' people, doesn't work on the other millions of people that "get away with it".
The problem is how to educate people and make it worth their while to pay for content rather than to steal it.
DVDs from the UK start with a little 'commercial' comparing downloading of movies and games to stealing TVs and cars. Maybe that works, but only if they show it in theatres too and make it un-skippable on DVDs (I always fast-forward through it).
I'm not going anywhere with this. Just jotting down my thoughts
Oh, and happy new year to you Andre
Strangely I don’t think there is a huge difference between the two generations that this gentleman visited. The reason I state this is that while people of my age know what is right and wrong with regards to copying and sharing, we make a choice to do it regardless. The younger generation have grown up watching their tech savvy parents doing this without question so have no moral attitude towards the legality of their actions.
Of course I am somewhat generalising here. I grew up with adverts telling me not to copy mix tapes and duplicating Spectrum games and to a degree it worked. Over time I have come to respect the effort involved in creating all kinds of media. However, should I sit down and think hard about what I have listed on my media devices I will be hard pushed to claim that I have 100% legal copies of everything.
I suspect a lot of the angst around sharing/selling/stealing/trading digital media will die down as more reasonable business models come into play. I know way too many people (including myself) who simply refuse to rent a piece of content that will self-destruct in some short time period later. I've lost literally hundreds of dollars of iTune downloaded songs because of changing laptops and licensing issues, and I've managed to watch only 3 out of 5 movies I've downloaded from Marketplace because life got in the way. Heck, a friend of mine downloaded a movie I recommended, watched most of it the first evening, had to return to it the next evening (due to baby fussing), and was literally cut off by the DRM at the 90% mark since the clock had run out. Grr….
Imagine if you downloaded a movie and had the right to watch it as many times as you wanted… sales would skyrocket IMO. Same with music. But it'll be a while before we get there – the old guard music/movie industries need to keep fighting their rearguard battles until the lesson is learned.
Recently having graduated from college, I can definitely assert the validity of the extreme case example.
I think most of it is the lack of danger. Most times you steal something, in a store or credit cards online, or something that everyone knows is bad, you know there will be repercussions. Jail time, fines, community service, etc.
For the vast majority of people, downloading content illegally presents absolutely no risk, so it may as well be legal to them.
I used to do this, but my morals have changed, and so I don’t anymore. I would hope that for the younger generation, their indifference to the law is possibly because of a naive set of morals. As they grow older, hopefully their morals will grow (as mine did).
If not, then it is going to be tough. It certainly seems hard to enforce copyright laws without ignoring privacy laws.
This almost sounds like some forwarded email. The only reasons for the 2/500 are that a)he made it up, b)he was smarmy and hated c)he made it up, or d) all of the above (I like d). People want to pay for what they fairly use, I think the problem is that the 'industry' (MPAA, RIAA et al) are being very slow get to the right price point. And more and more, the media consuming public don't see a need to compensate anyone beyond the artist, so the high overhead the traditional media companies introduce is seen as a kind of theft, so stealing from thieves is less onerous than other kinds of stealing.
It will be fun to see how it all works out. I'm associated with several bands that market themselves, sell their own cd's, produce their own dvd's and are doing ok. And probably better than they would be if they were with a 'major label'.
On another note, I think XBL needs to revisit the way they price media. I'd pay additional money to be able to watch tv shows. I'm not going to pay ala carte, at a per episode price that is comparatively very high. Same with movies, personally I'm a BB Total Access guy, but every now and then I do some PPV. I've never gotten a movie from XBL because I see the value to reward ratio as out of whack compared to every where else I get a movie. Then, adding insult to injury you expire the movie.
I USED to pirate a lot (games, music (tapes!)) – at university or school it was the way things were. As you get older you do start getting a bit more moral though – when I had a ‘proper’ wage I was buying my games, not pirating – same for music.
Musics a tough one – I’m not buying music now because of DRM and lack of what I want.
Films and TV – pay to download, sure. Live marketplaces restrictions on watching IS too far out. Give me 3 days of watching after I start and I’m sure I’ll be a lot more friendly towards it. The 14 day download expiry without watching needs to be scrapped though – 28 days minimum IMHO. Right now Amazons DVD rental service does the job for video for me.
It would be interesting to follow up the same group that was mentioned and do the same ‘test’ in 5 and 10 years time. Have their moral compasses changed in the meantime?
I think peer pressure was at play. Plus the audience was not wanting to give in to the ‘old guy’ telling them that some of them were acting morally irresponsible. I’m curious what kind of class and college it was. Some systems seem to be trying to rid us of morals altogether and the students might have thought by raising their hand they would have to defend their ’strange’ intact and functional morality.
Ozymandias said" I’ve lost literally hundreds of dollars of iTune downloaded songs because of changing laptops and licensing issues, and I’ve managed to watch only 3 out of 5 movies I’ve downloaded from Marketplace because life got in the way. "
So you can understand why Microsofts poor stance on allowing license changes to arcade titles sucks, all those people who upgraded to an Elite need to be connected to Live to play the titles they purchased (which atm is an achievement in itself).
There needs to be away of having a license revoked and enabled on a new system.
What say you?
[quote=frontieruk]So you can understand why Microsofts poor stance on allowing license changes to arcade titles sucks, all those people who upgraded to an Elite need to be connected to Live to play the titles they purchased (which atm is an achievement in itself).
There needs to be away of having a license revoked and enabled on a new system.
What say you?[/quote]
@ Ozy,
Yeah I got the same thing..I got 2 Xbox 360's in my house (as media center extenders and ofcourse to play games) Some of my XBLA arcade games I bought on the Xbox 360 upstairs and some on the Xbox 360 in the livingroom.
Now the way I see this.. is that
I[/b] am the owner of those machines, 
I[/b] bought those XBLA games.. It's my stuff!! Why can I not play them offline?..especially since I hardly can't connect to Xbox Live for about a week now..It's ridiculous!
Talking about ridiculous ok I couldn't play my
own[/b] XBLA games, so since it's holiday over here (The Netherlands) I thought then I gonna watch a movie (Xvid)..but guess what?.. I couldn't even stream my 
own[/b] DVD movies converted to xvid off my own network?! Get a message every time that the Xbox 360 must be connected to Xbox Live to get an update..and since that ain't working I even couldn't watch a movie..Crazy!!
It seems that for some crazy reason the Xbox 360 must be connected to Xbox Live to play xvid/divx files even tho you stream them off your own network since a day later I had a connection to Xbox Live and the xvid files played fine. So you will think it got the update (Since you get the message before that it needs an update) but when you sign out of Xbox Live again you can't play those xvid / divx files anymore?!.. So what's up with that?
I can understand that there are problems with Xbox Live (Still this is the longest period I can remember and I got Xbox Live since day 1)
WarriorSan
Re: "So you can understand why Microsofts poor stance on allowing license changes to arcade titles sucks, all those people who upgraded to an Elite need to be connected to Live to play the titles they purchased (which atm is an achievement in itself).
There needs to be away of having a license revoked and enabled on a new system."
*I* personally agree… but my personal opinion doesn’t necessarily match A) technical realities, B) business realities, and C) where we are time and space. Trust me, it’s not like we don’t get that this isn’t ideal… but it’s not as simple as just "fixing it".
Don’t mean to come across as a jerk or anything here – just want to explain that people some of these things just take time.
My comments from last night didn’t get past the spam filter? They were very witty.
This is why I’m hopeful that NetFlix, will expand their online monthly subscription/streaming model to Media Center and XBox.
Im a university student in the UK, which, if Im to believe wikipedia, more or less equates to the American College system age-wise.
I can safely say I wouldnt think twice about making a backup copy of any media I have purchased. The reason being is that when I buy an item, be it a CD, DVD or Game, then Im doing so to get the actual media content rather than the item itself. Once Ive payed for the content I want why should I have to do so again just because I cant quite get to the content which I have the right to use, as in the case of a scratched or lost DVD?
After all, for some media at least, Id rather skip the whole process of having to obtain a DVD in the first place. I buy a PC game. I install it. Before I even bother to play it Ill get a no-cd patch so I never have to bother with the disc again. It will then be put onto a shelf where it will remain until it gets shoved into a cupboard instead.
I dont want to have to look through a game collection to find a game I want to play when I can instead just look through the Windows start menu and open it up instantly. Its just a general pain, and made moreso when you consider having to take all the media you own to University just in case you might want it at some point.
So if a PC game disc goes missing I wont even know about it, yet alone consider replacing it by purchasing another copy.
Recently I seem to have misplaced my copy of Super Mario Galaxy, which is quite annoying seeing as Ive only played it for about 5-6 hours. If I could just create my own copy from an Internet download then I would; I dont see why I should have to pay any more than the price of a blank DVD for a replacement.
Unfortunately thats not really an option, but I know I wont be buying another copy until it drops to £20, and even then I will do so very begrudgingly.
With Internet speeds constantly increasing and HDD space becoming extremely cheap the idea of being able to download games straight to a console machine becomes more and more reachable.
And when it does come Ill be one of the first ones there.
Was my follow up caught by spam filters for </rant> or ignored by moderation… let’s see.
It seems that we are now spying on everywhere. When the world does not feel safe, schools and businesses to return to the use of electronic means. Usually, this consists of hidden cameras. Sometimes there is even a bathroom hidden cameras.
Schools are using more and more surveillance. That should help keep students safe. It also helps solve crimes that have already occurred. Knowing the cameras have reason to think students before they came to misbehavior.
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"To be clear, I think that future will have ways for content owners to be paid – that’s obvious, or content simply would stop being created!"
That’s quite a cynical view of the creation of entertainment and art! So, if an artist can’t be paid, he will stop being an artist? I think it’s human nature to create and to entertain one another. Maybe it’d be a GOOD thing if the industry around it toppled over every once and awhile.
>So Apple being able to impliment an Authorise/Deauthorise system for X number of Ipods/PC’s doesn’t cover A+B?
An iPod isn’t an Xbox. Just because it’s feasible and/or simple on one doesn’t follow that it’s similarly easy on the other.
>I dont see why I should have to pay any more than the price of a blank DVD for a replacement.
That’s because you’ve been careless with your stuff, and now have to pay the consequences.
(At least you didn’t lose an original disc of the super-rare Marathon 2 for Windows… grrr)
>So, if an artist can’t be paid, he will stop being an artist?
If an artist has to choose between starving or doing something else, it’s almost always going to be ‘do something else’. Art is not edible. Also, money does not grow on trees.