p2pnet.net News:- An understanding of copyright law isn’t enough to stop kids from downloading copyrighted software, games, music and other digital media through illegal, online file-sharing networks.

So says the Business Software Alliance (BSA), quoting from a new Harris Interactive poll – commissioned by the BSA.

There are no such entities as ‘illegal, online file-sharing networks’ but this and similar loaded, disingenuous statements are standard for the BSA, one of the many marketing and enforcement ‘trade’ organizations owned and funded by the entertainment industry and others.

The very carefully crafted, cunningly phrased, Survey Highlights is repleat with such gems as:

• “Three in 10 kids and teens are unsure whether it is okay to upload software on the Internet without paying”
• “Kids and teens are more worried about technological problems while downloading digital media than they are about the ethics of stealing”
• “When illegally downloading, young people worry more about accidentally downloading a computer virus (60 percent) than they do about whether they can get in trouble with the law (50 percent) or accidentally downloading spyware (43 percent)”

However, “Anti-Piracy Education Is Key to Ethical Behavior,” it says.

In a nutshell:

“A majority of youth are aware that digital media files are copyrighted (91 percent of young people are aware that books are copyrighted; 88 percent, movies; 88 percent, music; 86 percent, software; 83 percent, games and 64 percent, Web sites), yet many of them admit to downloading files anyway.

“Just over half say they download music (53 percent) and a third download games (32 percent), while fewer kids say they download larger digital files such as commercial software (22 percent) and movies (17 percent).”

Polls, surveys, reports, and et cetra, are interesting things.

Could it be the companies that commission them are well aware that although at the end of the day the studies have no real value, they’ll generate very predictable media responses and that’s what they’re really after?

It certainly worked in this instance.

BSA members include::

Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Borland, Cisco Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, HP, IBM, Intel, Internet Security Systems, Macromedia, Microsoft, Network Associates, RSA Security, SolidWorks, Sybase, Symantec, UGS PLM Solutions and VERITAS Software.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2004 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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