Paging Captain Obvious: Teens Don’t Think CD Copying is Criminal

There’s a reason why the ORLY and YARLY owl phenomenon managed to reach so far. We’re not quite sure what it is, but this this sort of news probably got the ball rolling.

There are a majority of young people who don’t see the copying of CDs or DVDs to share with friends as wrong, and these people also include a number who are vehemently against downloading pirated media.

Oh, really?

Yah, really.

A poll by the Los Angeles Times and the Bloomberg News Agency discovered that 69% of teens aged 12-17 believed it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who has an original copy. Strangely enough, only 21% thought it was legal to copy a CD if the content inside it was free to begin with. In the same vein, 58% found it legal to copy a video a friend purchased, but the percentage dropped to 19% when the video in question wasn’t bought. As 15 year-old Evan Collins puts it, “I think you’re allowed to make, like, two or three copies of a CD you bought and give them to friends. It’s only once you make five copies, or copy a CD of stolen music, that it’s illegal.”

There’s a reason why the ORLY and YARLY owl phenomenon managed to reach so far. We’re not quite sure what it is, but this sort of news probably got the ball rolling.

There are a majority of young people who don’t see the copying of CDs or DVDs to share with friends as wrong, and these people also include a number who are vehemently against downloading pirated media.

Oh, really?

Yah, really.

A poll by the Los Angeles Times and the Bloomberg News Agency discovered that 69% of teens aged 12-17 believed it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who has an original copy. Strangely enough, only 21% thought it was legal to copy a CD if the content inside it was free to begin with. In the same vein, 58% found it legal to copy a video a friend purchased, but the percentage dropped to 19% when the video in question wasn’t bought. As 15 year-old Evan Collins puts it, “I think you’re allowed to make, like, two or three copies of a CD you bought and give them to friends. It’s only once you make five copies, or copy a CD of stolen music, that it’s illegal.”

This kind of attitude, which is often termed “schoolyard piracy” by members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), is one of the things that catches the ire of copyright activists. The repeated actions of individuals usually drive activists up the wall, leading to measures such as the lawsuits against P2P networks like Limewire and Kazaa.

At the same time, the rules regarding the legality of it tend to work both ways. Laws on the matter differ per state, and you usually have to do a certain amount of copying to break federal laws.

The problem now is figuring out how to explain the idea that copying things is frowned upon in general but not entirely illegal depending on where you live, and what you’re copying. While the notion that teens don’t think copying cds is illegal seems obvious now, someone forgot to explain just what happens in the long term when content that isn’t free is copied and distributed, and how it affects any industry that uses digital media. Such is the digital age, perhaps: full of ambiguity and opinion but lacking a direction to forge ahead.