Everybody Is Still Doing It!

Last year I talked with students in my classes about the issue of music downloading from the Internet. At that time it was the hot topic. The RIAA was suing people, Apple and Pepsi were advertising iTunes, and “Kazaa, Morpheus, Limewire, Gnutella” and many others were the hip words to know. Plus, we received a note from our school’s district office encouraging us to discuss it with students.

When you get a note from up stream in the food chain, you pay attention. But I didn’t just want to tell my students not to steal music. First, I wanted to understand what they thought about it. Was it even illegal in their minds. If they did download music without paying for it, were they nervous? Second, I wanted to have a dialogue with them where we discussed and came to the right conclusion. I can’t help myself, I was a Philosophy major in college, and the Socratic method always worked in the book...

What I found out did not make me or the Recording Industry Association of America happy. Not only did the lawsuits have no effect on my student’s decisions to download music, they didn’t care if it was stealing or not. Basically, their opinions ranged from, “I don’t download enough for the RIAA to care about me,” to “So what? My parents download more than I do.” Nobody was worried about getting caught.

I don’t think Plato himself could convince teens today that downloading music, and movies for that matter, is stealing. Why wasn’t this a topic during the election? Isn’t this a Red State vs. Blue State moral value? Shouldn’t there be outraged parents screaming about the decay of our society? It isn’t. And why is that?

First of all, let’s look at the lesson of the market place. I have learned this lesson, so let me share it with you. I hate going to the mall. So what do I do when I want to buy something? I buy it on-line. My wife discovered the internet for Christmas shopping and loves it. We are busy people. We don’t always have the time or inclination to go to the mall looking for that perfect gift. The internet is open 24 hours a day and you don’t need a baby-sitter to go to it. Or a ride...

Music CD’s and video DVD’s cost money. A lot of money. Kids know this and have found a shortcut. If they can download the music for free, why should they pay for it? If you can get some obscure track from a live concert where your favorite band sings a duet with your other favorite band and it isn’t on any album you know about, you download it. Is it stealing? Hell yes! Is it wrong? Hell yes! But the RIAA has not listened to the chief complaint of kids. Music costs too much. The RIAA has not listened to the lesson of the market.

Even if you buy music legally from iTunes I’m sure you’ve read that the music companies want to raise the download price. We all know Apple isn’t making a lot of money off each song, they are using it to sell iPods. Quite successfully, I might add, as I look at the numbers of iPods I see around school. I completely get why the kids are annoyed with the prices.

But that doesn’t make it right to steal. How can a Conservative get elected president in a country where so many people are ignoring basic moral issues? So why aren’t mom and dad stepping up to the plate here? Why?

Here is why:
1. Mom and Dad are not supervising their kid’s internet access and are not aware that the music is being downloaded. You have to have a wideband ISP to do it anyway, so it goes so fast that nobody is being inconvenienced. Why don’t we parents notice? Because we are busy. Because we are not informed. Because we have good kids who would never do that. Only other people’s kids steal. If it doesn’t appear on our radar, we don’t know it is going on.

2. Mom and Dad don’t have to shell out as much money for their kid’s music, music they don’t really want to listen to anyway, so they are looking the other way. There aren’t huge stacks of LP’s around. We don’t even notice album art on a CD. Most of our kid’s music is either already installed on some kind of MP3 player or on some generic CD that says, “Manny’s Mix.” The music goes directly from the machine to the ear through tiny ear buds. We never have to hear it. The music isn’t appearing anywhere in our consciousness. We aren’t so much ignoring it as not even aware of it. We are not asking questions.

3. Mom and Dad are downloading music too. Yes, the apple (sorry Steve) doesn’t fall far from the tree. Or as my friend always says, “Ducks have ducks.” If Mom and Dad curse and swear around the house, little Johnny learns that it is okay. If Mom eats grapes in the produce aisle and Dad speeds on the expressway, their kids learn that. The excuse my students gave most often for why they downloaded music was, “My parents don’t care.”

Now, I know that with teenagers a certain amount of that just isn’t true. Their parents do care. But the parents cannot care about what they do not know about. Once again, parents don’t usually go looking for problems. Many wouldn’t even think to ask about music downloading. Maybe not until the subpoena arrives.... The kids also believe there are so many people stealing music that they cannot possibly get caught. How can it be bad if so many people are doing it?

Don’t believe me about the numbers? In just two classes, with around 30 people total, kids had downloaded over 9,800 songs. Some more than others, some none at all. The kids say the trick is to not download too many at one time and to not leave them on your computer. You have to burn them to a disk as soon as possible, then erase them. They really believe this prevents them from getting caught. I tried to explain that this will not protect anybody from liability, but until somebody they know gets sued, I am wasting oxygen.

It gets worse. Not only do kids download songs illegally, they turn around and sell them to their friends for a small profit. There are people who make money downloading and selling CD’s to their friends without broadband. Don’t get me started about downloading movies...

I assign students articles, columns, and web logs to read on this topic. Here are some questions students asked that would stun the RIAA:

“What is the RIAA?”
“What is the Recording Industry Association of America?”
“Why would they care what I do on my computer?”
“Isn’t downloading included in the price of my internet?
“Are you sure it isn’t in the price, my mom says it is.”

So then we talked about alternatives to stealing, like iTunes.
“What is iTunes?”
“Doesn’t that cost money?”
“Why should I pay when I can get the same song for free?”
“Why should I pay $.99, that is too expensive!”

The truth is that these are nice kids. They don’t get into trouble, they get good grades, their parents are involved here at school. You can try to explain right and wrong until you are blue in the face. They still look at you like you are from another planet. Forget Red States and Blue States, we need to get our PLANETS to talk to each other.