Archive for January 10th, 2008

David Pogue has an article about copyright and the views of different generations.  He poses a list of questions about copying movies or music and asks audience members to raise a hand if the they think the act is wrong.

He starts with “I borrow a CD from the library” and goes all the way to “I download a movie I don’t want to pay for”.

He says in audiences with a mixture of age groups, he has more hands go up with each advancement toward the obvious “this is wrong” end.  That was until he did this exercise with a group of 500 college students.  No hands went up until the very last scenerio… and then only two hands were raised.

I will try this one with a couple of my classes. Judging from remarks I have had in the past, I expect similar results.

Pogue’s final question:

Right now, the customers who can’t even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*. What will happen then?