3 Ideas for Cutting Down on Illegal Downloading of Media

While we were talking in class about the topic of illegal downloading of music/movies/media, I really began to think about how none of us felt “guilty” for committing these “crimes.” Why is that? Like we said, the only thing that may stop us from downloading music for free is the risk of getting a computer virus. Not one of us felt that we were negatively influencing artists or the music industry, etc.

I truly think the only thing that would change our minds would be to flat out show us how someone out there would be negatively impacted.

Maybe the government, or the music industry or the film industry could create advertisements warning against illegal downloading. These ads would not be vague, like “pirating is not a victimless crime”: it would be specific. Perhaps these ads could be “documentary” style, following a small artist who simply cannot make money off of his/her passion due to illegal sharing/downloading. We may be surprised by the influence that our activities have on a personal life, rather than assuming that concert sales, etc. will “make up” for our wrongdoings.

Another idea that may help eliminate illegal downloading would be to put the situation in a metaphor. When I think of intellectual property, I think about any work that I create (art, papers for school), NOT work that a music artist or film producer makes. Ads could say: “How would you feel if you wrote a paper for a scholarship, and then hundreds of other students were able to download your paper and use it for the same scholarship?” This makes you realize that the concept of intellectual property applies to everyone, even people in the music and film industries.

One last idea that I’ve come up with involves the big names themselves. People like Taylor Swift are assumed to be sitting on so much money, that it feels stupid to worry about the $10 she will lose out on an album when we illegally download it. But I am sure that it affects her too: maybe less so money-wise, and more so intellectual-property-wise. A big name like Taylor Swift could be interviewed, and explain in humble terms that her work is just as important to her (creatively & emotionally) as it was when she first started out. She could talk about how it still takes her just as much time to come up with lyrics as it did when she was a teenager. This type of talk would put an emotional value on the music, rather than a monetary value. When we buy an album, we will see it as a way of respecting an artist’s work that they put love, effort, and creativity into.

Privacy vs Personalization

We don’t tend to think of the words “privacy” and “personalization” to be opposites. But in the article, “Privacy-Enhanced Personalization”, the author Alred Kobsa, proves that these concepts can but heads, so to speak. In other words, their argument is that personalization on the Internet can sacrifice privacy. The article begins by explaining how “personalization” (an example: product suggestions on websites as you shop online) is a win-win: consumers value it (easier shopping experience, you feel special, etc.), and businesses profit from it (it may influence us to buy more products). But there is a catch: privacy is also a huge concern for consumers. However, the level of concern for privacy differs among different types of people. People have been grouped into 3 groups based on their degree of concern for privacy: the Privacy Fundamentalists (those who are extremely concerned about privacy), the Privacy Unconcerned (those who do not have much concern at all for privacy), and those in the middle, the Privacy Pragmatists. More people fall into the Privacy Pragmatists group than the other two (the ratio of people in these groups is reported in the article as 1:1:2).

Different factors affect people’s perception of a website. They are more willing to trust a website (and therefore feel less like personalization poses a privacy issue) due to factors like:

-personality

-culture (According to the article, people in the US are more concerned about online privacy than people in India)

-trust in the website (factors like positive past experience, website design, reputation, privacy statement and/or seal)

-they are only willing to disclose some information (demographic info but not Social Security number or contact info)

The end of the article was a description of ways to make privacy and personalization meet in the middle. The solutions proposed included Privacy Laws, the Principles of Fair Information Practices, client-side personalization instead of server-side, and even the simple technique of users having pseudonyms instead of using or disclosing their real names/identities.

After reading this article, I have one question to pose regarding privacy: Is our generation at more of a risk of losing our online privacy than older generations? It’s not that we don’t care about privacy or other important safety factors online, but are we at more of a risk, even due to our increased time spent online? We use nearly all the social media sites, we spend hours online daily. All of the sites we use give us extremely lengthy Terms of Agreement, which we simply accept in order to get on with our lives. Is this going to bite us in the long run? What do you think?