Most People Still See Nothing Wrong With File Sharing

from the not-so-bad dept

Thu, Jan 29th 2004 2:03pm — Mike Masnick

While the RIAA insists they're "winning the war" by educating people why file sharing is bad, it appears that they haven't done a very good job convincing people outside of their little circle. A new study shows that, while people do believe that selling unauthorized copies of music is bad, there's absolutely nothing wrong with downloading for personal use. The majority of people also don't see downloading as being different from getting a used CD or borrowing a CD from a friend. They certainly don't understand why people should be fined thousands of dollars for the activity. Also, not surprisingly, the younger respondents are, the less they care about the RIAA's position.

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Oliver Wendell Jones, 30 Jan 2004 @ 7:37am

Founding Fathers
It's been a long time since my last U.S. History or Civics class, but I seem to recall that the United States of America is a country "of the people and for the people".

Now, I do know that we're not a true democracy, but a democratic republic, so not every person's opinion counts, but it would seem to me that if significantly more than half of the people living in the country feel one way that the laws should be changed to reflect that.
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- alex, 30 Jan 2004 @ 9:07am
  
  Re: Founding Fathers
  Unfortunately those feelings are purely imaginary. These days the United States of America is a country "of the multinational corporation and for the multinational corporation." With the whole slew of big lobbying groups lining the pockets of the Congress, et. al. you'll be lucky if you don't get sued for just sneezing (you may be infringing on some patent or copyrighted material)
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Bah Bah Black Sheep, 9 May 2008 @ 6:22am

I still dont understand any of this. its so confusing. Why is downloading song from the internet so bad?
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