Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Microsoft: Teens don't understand intellectual property
Microsoft has also released the findings of a survey stating that 49% of teens between 7th and 10th grade don't know "the rules and guidelines" for downloading media from the internet. But 82% of teens who said they were familiar with those rules said that people who downloaded content illegally should be punished. That's compared with 57% from teenagers who were unfamiliar with the law.
And while 90% of those surveyed said someone should be punished if they steal a bicycle, only 48% said people should be punished for downloading copyrighted material. Microsoft's takeaway point is that kids don't know much about the rules governing intellectual property and don't think of downloading as stealing.
So the goal of the MyBytes web site is to teach kids about intellectual property. The problem is that the site has so many things going on, it's not really clear what users are supposed to be learning. If you watch the videos, you get the impression that teenagers don't really think much about copyright when they grab an image from the web and post it to their MySpace page. If the goal is to teach kids that downloading content without permission is wrong, we're not sure MyBytes sends that message.
Oh yeah, and of course, there's no mention of Creative Commons or other licenses that artists and content producers might employ to make their content freely available. And there's no mention in the press release or on the web site about Fair Use exceptions for news, parody, and other purposes.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gardiner Westbound said 4:40PM on 2-13-2008
Microsoft should also acquaint them with the terms "monopoly", "predatory pricing" and "robber baron".
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michael said 6:03PM on 2-13-2008
Where do you get monopoly from? As far as I'm aware, Microsoft does not control the OS market. I know so, because I'm on a Mac right now.
So how can they be a monopoly, if they don't have the entire market?
Edde said 11:15AM on 2-14-2008
@michael: In 2004 Microsoft was sentenced to pay 497 million Euro and in 2006 to pay an additional 280 million Euro for violating anti-monopoly laws in the European Union.
FYI: (the sum) € 777,000,000 is about $ 1,060,000,000
Randal said 5:14PM on 2-13-2008
That's an excellent! Look everyone... I'm 25 and I also don't know the importance of intellectual property. Awesome so now I can go download albums and it's all good! :)
That's a dumb as the people who blame GTA and Mario for being the cause of their killing spree!
I love these excuses! Man I remember when it took an hour to download one song! I was like 11 and I knew what copyright laws were. Kids play stupid to get away with it! Common we do it as adults if it gets us off the hook!
Microsoft! The problem is you charge $400 for a POS operating system! Man at least OS X is $130. A little more reasonable! Think pricing! Then get back to us!
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michael said 7:22PM on 2-13-2008
now, i too use a mac...but dont pretend that os x only costs 130 dollars...you have to pay for the mac first of all, which sells at a premium, therefore allowing you to pay 130 dollars for it, also...os x without hacks cant be installed on anything but a mac, where as windows can be installed on almost everything with a processor, memory, gpu and a hard drive, also imagine, that apple didnt charge you every time they released a new version of 10, 10,10.1,10.2,10.3,10.4,10.5...in theory you paid 780 dollars for OS X not to mention the chance you went from a PPC cpu to an intel one, so yeah...ms may charge more up front, but atleast they dont require you to pay for SP1, SP2, SP3-10000000000 or what ever they are gonna do to fix vista, (its called windows 7) but anyway, lets not pretend apple is perfect
thethirdmoose said 6:43AM on 2-14-2008
So what do you call Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98 special edition, ME, and XP?
James said 8:21AM on 2-14-2008
Thirdmoose, don't try to pretend he's wrong about how effed up it is to charge separately for each 10.X. Let's take a look, starting in 1990:
Mac OS went through System 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 came out in 2001.
In the same time, Windows went through 3.0, 3.11 (free upgrade, I'm nearly sure), Win95, Win98, 2000, ME (which I don't think counts since 2000 came out first and was widely known as the better OS), then XP in 2001.
So basically, there were 4 Windows paid upgrades from 1990 to 2000, and 4 Mac OS paid upgrades in the same time. What Randal said is that paying separately for OS 10.1, 10.2, etc. is a ripoff, and I think he's right -- most desktop users are still on XP, and haven't bought a new OS since 2001. In that time, Mac users have had to shell out for *five* new operating systems, making ~300 bucks (retail, mind you -- OEM is about 1/3 that much now) a relative steal.
Bufsabre said 8:27AM on 2-14-2008
well you just listed 5 dos based os's and one nt based, but they are drastically differnt, and beside windows xp has been standard for what, 7 years now? mac osx, osx.1..... all are built on the same thing and they add a couple features then bug fix them, mac is just as bad as ms with that.
i say we all move to ubuntu and stop paying for os's that arent worth it
Edde said 11:27AM on 2-14-2008
Hehehe, this has the makings of a holy war: Mac-users versus Window-users. Man, does that bring back memories.
Oh, and if you want a free OS (they actually send you the installation CD for free), have a look at Ubuntu.
Edde said 11:27AM on 2-14-2008
@Bufsabre: Sorry, I obviously overlooked your Ubuntu appraisal.
waterskier357 said 6:45AM on 2-14-2008
you spelled understand wrong.
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kojo87 said 6:46AM on 2-14-2008
i am quite familiar with the intellectual property and copyright laws....i just choose to ignore them.
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James said 8:27AM on 2-14-2008
"Microsoft's takeaway point is that kids don't know much about the rules governing intellectual property and don't think of downloading as stealing."
That's because downloading is *NOT* stealing, it is INFRINGING, which is totally different. Black's Law Dictionary defines larceny (the legal term for stealing): "Larceny is the taking of personal property by fraud or stealth, and with intent to deprive the owner thereof, and to constitute stealing (or theft) there must be a wrongful taking with felonious intent of the taker to permanently deprive the owner thereof and to convert the property to taker's own use." Focus on "permanently deprive" -- infringing deprives nobody of anything. That doesn't mean it's not wrong, but people conflate the two constantly online, and brightening the line between them can only help.
I grew up downloading music and games that I flat-out did not have the money to buy. I rationalized to myself that if I literally *could not* pay for it if I wanted to, it because a tree-falls-in-the-woods sort of Zen question -- if you download something you would never have paid for, is anybody really hurt? I suspect that's how a lot of these kids feel. Like a previous commenter said, I think the kids were just bullshitting the interviewers, and I think most of them know perfectly well that what they're doing is wrong. They just think that playing dumb will keep them out of trouble.
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Peter said 8:57AM on 2-14-2008
James - You can argue whether it's "theft", "stealing" or "infringing" all you want, but you said it yourself at the end, "most of them know perfectly well that what they're doing is wrong."
And that's the point, whatever you want to call it, it's still wrong. You wouldn't take a car because you can't afford one. You wouldn't take a toaster because you couldn't afford one. Why it is ok to take music if you can't afford it? No one is going to die from not hearing a song. Either save your money or turn on the radio. Since when is taking something just because you think it's too expensive a acceptable option? If you think the price is too high, then don't buy it.
Or is it that most people now devalue music and other electronic items? You can't have it both ways. You can't have non-physical items (intellectual property, music, movies, software, etc...) provide jobs and value, yet not place any monetary value on them. If you find value in them, you should pay for them.
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Peter said 8:58AM on 2-14-2008
James - "infringing deprives nobody of anything." That's not true, it deprives the content owner of the money you would have paid for it if you didn't infringe.
You can say you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, but clearly you wanted the item enough to spend some effort downloading it. If you really weren't interested you wouldn't have downloaded it at all.
I think you're right that most people know it's wrong. To be downloading stuff you don't have the rights to and then playing dumb, poor or victimless crime is disingenuous at best.
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Edde said 2:56PM on 2-14-2008
For some reason, the internet has clouded (some) peoples minds. It seems everything has to be free: access, services AND content.
I'm maintaining a somewhat bigger (Dutch) site, containing 1000+ articles, written by several writers. The articles accumulated over a period of four years. Years in which the site had major upgrades a couple of times, many articles were "upgraded" with sound bites and graphics. In short: the site is the result of a lot of hard work of several people.
Recently I was pointed at a site where they were copy/pasting our articles into their own site. Hundreds of 'em. When I urged the owner to remove these articles immediately, they didn't understand what the big fuss was all about.
Mind boggling...
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Lane said 6:38PM on 2-14-2008
The newest poll:
"How many times should you be able to burn a copy of a CD that you purchased"
Zero 0%
One to two 1%
Three to seven 0%
As many as I like; I own it 98%
Well, so much for that...
lol
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Edde said 4:20PM on 2-15-2008
That has nothing to do with not understanding copyright laws or intellectual property, that's more of a "I don't give a rats ### about stuff that belongs to someone else. If I like it, I'll take it." attitude.
DRM Freeby said 8:38AM on 2-17-2008
The point about the difference between theft and infingement is that when you take a cd from a shop then the shop owner has one less to sell. But when you download it there are no less objects to sell.
Beyond that this is about microsoft trying to influence young people into their way of believing what copyright means. A fruitless waste of time and wholly laughable in my opinion.
Copyright laws change.
All of those artists who write anything don't pay to use the alphabet.
All musicians are stealing something from previous musicians. wether they can accept or even recognise that is moot.
Copyright is irrelevant in the digital world, and the sooner law reflects that the better so that the world can move on to what should be a better experience for everyone.
Copyright laws are trying to make ownership by corporations (fascism) into an accepted truth for the population.
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Jack Dooferson said 7:34AM on 3-14-2008
Heheh. I always get a giggle out of this. Listen, the reason you wouldn't steal a car or a bicycle is because if you did, the owner of that car or bike would not have a car or bike anymore. Now let's say 50 cent puts out a new record. I take a copy of it off WinMX. Now 50 cent has his gold album nailed to his wall and I have a shiny disk in my car. Worst case scenario, he has to wait a week or two to buy that new house in the Virgin Islands.
Everybody wins. Pirate.
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