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Copyright Infringement from the Inside

Ross HousewrightUC Berkeley School of

Information

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Introduction

Me:

This Research:

With:

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Background

Fall 2004 - Comm 694 - The Internet as a Social PhenomenonConcept development and small pilot

Spring 2005Performed full project

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Why did we do this?

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Why did we do this at a university?

“The university environment creates a perfect storm for piracy.”

Why did we do this at Cornell?NapsterNetwork Usage Based Billing

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What did we do?

42 undergraduate subjects

Music Acquisition Journal

~45 minute semi-structured interviews

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Problems we encountered

Nervous IRB “So, tell me about your illegal activities.”

Difficulties in tracking actual behavior

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Outline

Activities

Napster

Reasons and Justifications

Education

Recommendations

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Activities: P2P

Everyone loves P2P!DC++ is P2P paradise

“WinMX would be my litmus test”

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Activities: “Radio Listeners”

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Activities: Napster

DRM - “doesn’t work with my iPod”

Selection - 30 second clips, “where is my favorite band?”

Used in conjunction with p2p

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Activities: Napster

Napster 2.0 is basically viewed as p2p

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Reasons: Free!

“If I can get it for free, why would I pay for it?”

“Why spend money when you don’t have to?”

“… for us, it’s great.”

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Reasons: Comparison with P2P

“You need to make it as convenient as possible for people to get music legally, because… we grew up in a time where you could get free music at the click of a button, it was so easy, and that’s always going to be our comparison point… The more complicated it is, the more we’re going to get it by other means.”

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Reasons: The Law

“Illegal is so relative.”

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Justifications

“If you’ve got the money, you’d be willing to spend it… but if you don’t have the money and you still want the product, you go about it illegally.”

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Justifications

“They’re still driving their Escalades and … bling bling!”

“… they don’t need a poor college student’s money.”

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Justifications

“It’s one of our freedoms? I dunno… Yeah.”

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Education Efforts

Industry efforts are unconvincing

Lawsuits are largely unthreatening

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Recommendations

What are you trying to do?

Don’t fight student battles for them

Encourage student responsibility

Talk to your students!

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Ross Housewright ross@sims.berkeley.edu

Contact Info